By Belle Lin
Despite the AI-driven software stock meltdown, America's largest corporations aren't ditching their core business software just yet. Instead, they're using the moment to squeeze better deals from vendors and "vibe-code" smaller apps and software customizations.
And their efforts could be providing a preview of what comes next, when AI agents drive more workflows on top of that software.
Vishal Talwar, chief digital and information officer of FedEx, said the shipping giant is "not looking at this point for [software] to leave our enterprise."
Yet he sees the uncertainty over software's future, and the advent of AI agents, as a chance to re-evaluate how it is priced. "We're contemplating all of these shifts," Talwar said. "And having proactive conversations with each of our partners to see how they plan to keep up."
The weekslong selloff in software stocks, triggered by the threat that AI poses, has hit shares of companies like Salesforce and Adobe hard. Investors have questioned whether legacy software vendors that sell to businesses can withstand competition from AI-powered rivals. The selloff has intensified with each new announcement from AI developers.
Still, there are plenty of reasons why corporate technology leaders say that narrative doesn't hold true -- and that they aren't looking to completely replace their business software, which is provided by vendors like Salesforce, SAP and Workday. For one, it's not easy to do, and in some cases, it's simply not worth their time.
"We are not looking at [software], for the most part, as systems of differentiation for us," Talwar said, meaning the company's strategy is to put its technology resources into building tools that offer a unique competitive advantage.
Mike Kempe, chief information officer of audit and consulting firm Grant Thornton, said that business software like enterprise resource planning systems are equipped to handle the complexities that large companies deal with. That includes regulatory requirements, multiple geographies and languages -- making it "very challenging to build this using AI today."
There's also the matter of maintenance, Kempe added. Once companies build their own software, they have to keep it updated and dedicate engineering resources toward the effort. "I'd much rather spend our internal dollars and effort building something that is truly cutting-edge and helps us grow," he said.
But, there's no denying that AI coding tools and vibe-coding have made it easier than ever to build software in-house. Aiming to tap the potential of AI, 96% of software engineering organizations surveyed by market research and IT consulting firm Gartner offer the use of AI tools to their developers. And over the next two years, Gartner predicts that over 70% of business software developers will use AI agent-based coding tools.
Vibe-coding an AI agent future
Some business technology leaders, for now, say they're vibe-coding smaller apps and customizations on their existing software. That work offers a glimpse into what the future of business software could hold -- one in which AI agents replace much of the software's functionality.
Raj Sharma, a global managing partner for growth and innovation at Ernst & Young, said the audit, consulting and tax firm doesn't plan to do away with its longstanding ERP software from SAP, but it is vibe-coding and using AI agents to build its own customizations on top of it.
EY, which has an annual technology budget of $1 billion, is able to save some of those IT dollars by vibe-coding rather than purchasing upgrades directly from SAP, according to Sharma.
"If this AI wasn't there, vibe-coding wasn't there, the agentic frameworks weren't there, it would've taken another very costly, expensive upgrade of the SAP software," he said.
Thimaya Subaiya, executive vice president of operations at Cisco Systems, said the networking-equipment maker replaced a presentation software tool with its own AI agent, saving the company nearly $5 million annually in license costs. Cisco is also looking to replace other software vendors -- some of which are costing the company $50 million to $200 million each year in subscription fees -- with AI-created tools, he said.
"You need to look at all the applications that you're using and say, 'Which one of these can become automated workflows where we don't need this application anymore?'" Subaiya said.
Replacing a piece of business software involves replacing business processes with AI agents, Subaiya said, and those bots then become the interface by which employees interact with software. "You don't need an application anymore, because an application just becomes part of the agent database," he said
Seemantini Godbole, chief digital and information officer of Lowe's, said the home-improvement giant needs to carefully spend its IT budget, and vibe-coding its own content-generation software is one way to do it. Lowe's distributes a circular to every store, for instance, and it's a task that regularly requires new image creation.
At the same time, some small and midsize companies have successfully vibe-coded their own CRMs. Business technology leaders say smaller firms don't encounter the same level of human, regulatory and legal complexities as they do, and can more easily vibe-code CRM or ERP software to suit their needs.
Amjad Masad, founder and chief executive of Replit, said many of the vibe-coding startup's customers are small and medium-size businesses that build their own CRMs. But larger enterprises don't -- and shouldn't -- vibe-code their own Salesforce-like software. "What they want to do is create their own processes, their own workflows, their own agents, their own automations on top of it," he said.
Kempe, Grant Thornton's CIO, sees a similar trend playing out where the role of core business software changes. Rather than functioning as the heart of how businesses operate, it shifts into becoming a source of corporate data. AI agents will lead that charge -- becoming the means by which businesses interact with software, he said.
Godbole, the tech chief at Lowe's, said it's not likely that all employees will need a "full-fledged" CRM in the future, and more likely they'll need a simpler, AI agent or chat-based interface for the software.
While there will be some software vendors who will be "extremely innovative" in that future, there are also others where Lowe's will say, "Actually, we can do this much better with OpenAI out of the box," she said.
Write to Belle Lin at belle.lin@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
March 23, 2026 07:00 ET (11:00 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2026 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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