Skip to main content

What SaaSpocalypse? Atlassian, Twilio, and Five9 stocks soar as their AI moves deliver earnings beats [Business Insider]

In a tech landscape often painted with broad strokes of doom and gloom over software-as-a-service (SaaS) valuations, a trio of enterprise stalwarts just flipped the script. Atlassian, Twilio, and Five9—three companies that have weathered their fair share of market skepticism—delivered earnings beats that sent their stocks soaring this week. The common thread? A sharp pivot toward artificial intelligence that isn't just a buzzword in a press release, but a tangible driver of customer uptake and revenue growth. Forget the "SaaSpocalypse" narrative for a moment; these results suggest that AI might just be the lifeline the sector needed.

Atlassian: The DevOps Darling Gets an AI Upgrade

Atlassian, the company behind Jira, Confluence, and Trello, has long been the backbone of developer workflows. But its latest earnings report, released late Wednesday, showed that the company is successfully moving beyond its traditional "self-managed" roots into a cloud-first, AI-powered future. Revenue for the quarter came in at $1.22 billion, slightly above analyst estimates, but the real headline was the 35% growth in cloud revenue. CEO Mike Cannon-Brookes didn't mince words on the earnings call: "We are embedding AI into every product, and it's not just about chatbots—it's about automating the entire development lifecycle."

The company's new AI features, like automated code suggestions in Bitbucket and intelligent sprint planning in Jira, are resonating with customers who are desperate to cut down on manual toil. Investors cheered the news, sending the stock up nearly 10% in after-hours trading. For a company that had previously been criticized for a slow cloud transition, this AI-driven acceleration is a major vote of confidence.

Twilio: From Communications API to AI Customer Engagement

Twilio, the cloud communications platform, has had a rough couple of years as it struggled with slowing growth and a shift away from its high-flying pandemic era. But its Q4 earnings, released Thursday, revealed a company that is finding its footing again—largely thanks to AI. Revenue hit $1.15 billion, beating estimates, and the company posted a surprise adjusted profit of $0.27 per share. The stock surged by over 15% in early Friday trading.

The key driver is Twilio's new AI-powered CustomerAI platform, which helps businesses automate customer service interactions, personalize marketing messages, and even predict churn. CEO Khozema Shipchandler highlighted that customers using AI features are seeing 20% higher retention rates. "We're not just a pipe for SMS and email anymore," Shipchandler said. "We're the intelligent layer that helps brands understand their customers in real time." This shift from a commoditized API provider to a high-margin AI services company is exactly what investors wanted to hear.

Five9: The Contact Center Gets Smarter

Five9, the cloud-based contact center software provider, might be the least flashy of the three, but its earnings beat was arguably the most impressive. The company reported $271 million in revenue, a 12% year-over-year increase, and an adjusted EPS of $0.72, crushing the consensus estimate of $0.62. The stock jumped 17% on the news. Five9's secret sauce is its deep integration of generative AI into its platform. Agents now have access to real-time sentiment analysis, automated call summarization, and AI-powered coaching tools that reduce handle times by an average of 30%.

CEO Mike Burkland pointed out that the company's AI features are not just "nice-to-haves" but are becoming a requirement for enterprise deals. "Our customers are under immense pressure to do more with less," he said. "AI allows them to handle higher call volumes without hiring more people, and that's a value proposition that wins every time." Five9's success is a clear signal that the contact center industry—often seen as a laggard in innovation—is now at the forefront of practical AI adoption.

What This Means for the "SaaSpocalypse" Narrative

For months, pundits have been warning of a "SaaSpocalypse" as growth rates decelerated, venture capital dried up, and public cloud companies saw their valuations slashed. The argument was that the easy growth of the pandemic era was over, and that SaaS companies were overpriced for their actual performance. But these three earnings reports tell a different story. Atlassian, Twilio, and Five9 aren't just surviving; they're thriving by integrating AI directly into their core products in ways that generate measurable ROI for customers.

The pattern is consistent: AI features are driving higher adoption of premium tiers, increasing customer stickiness, and—critically—improving unit economics. Unlike the hype cycle around AI in 2023, which was mostly about experimental chatbots, 2025 seems to be the year of "AI for the bottom line." These companies are proving that AI can turn a commoditized SaaS product into a high-margin, indispensable tool. If this trend holds, the "SaaSpocalypse" narrative might need a serious rewrite, replaced by something more optimistic: the "AI-Powered SaaS Renaissance."

The Takeaway for Investors and Operators

For investors, the message is clear: don't write off SaaS just yet. The companies that are winning are the ones that are embedding AI into their workflows, not just slapping a chatbot on top of a legacy product. For operators, the playbook is equally straightforward. It's not about building a separate AI product; it's about using AI to make your existing product smarter, faster, and more automated. That’s the lesson from Atlassian, Twilio, and Five9. The "SaaSpocalypse" may have been a convenient headline, but these earnings prove that the real story is about adaptation, innovation, and—ultimately—growth.

The next few quarters will be critical. If more SaaS companies follow this playbook, the market's pessimism could turn into euphoria. For now, at least, the AI moves are paying off in real dollars, not just press releases.

Ahmed Abed – News journalist

Latest

Trump, Secret Service director say agent at dinner not shot by friendly fire

You know how news cycles work. One minute everyone’s talking about a trade deal, and the next, you’re scrolling through a blur of claims, counterclaims, and grainy footage. This week, that blur has centered on a dinner, a Secret Service agent, and the phrase “friendly fire.” Let’s untangle it. The Incident That Sparked the Questions It started with a dinner. Not just any dinner—an event involving former President Donald Trump and a member of his Secret Service detail. Reports trickled out that an agent had been injured. Immediately, the internet did what it does best: filled in the blanks with speculation. Was it a security breach? An inside job? A rogue bullet? The word “friendly fire” started trending, and suddenly everyone was an expert on ballistics and protocol. I’ll be honest—when I first heard the rumor, my gut clenched. Friendly fire incidents, even in law enforcement, are ugly, messy things. They erode trust. They leave scars that don’t show up on X-rays. So when both Tr...
Read more

China's Commerce Ministry blocks US sanctions against five refineries

When you’re a major global player, you don’t just take a punch—you parry, step back, and sometimes throw one right back. That’s exactly what we’re seeing unfold between China and the United States, and it’s not just another diplomatic spat. This time, it’s personal, and it’s about oil. On a recent Tuesday, China’s Commerce Ministry dropped a statement that felt less like a formal press release and more like a chess move. They’ve officially blocked a set of U.S. sanctions aimed at five Chinese refineries. Let me tell you, reading through the official language, you could almost hear the gears grinding in Beijing. It wasn’t subtle. Now, you might be wondering: why does this matter to anyone outside a boardroom or a policy wonk’s think tank? Well, because these refineries aren’t just random factories. They’re processing Iranian crude oil—a substance that’s been under heavy U.S. sanctions for years. For the average person, this might seem like a distant trade war. But for anyone who’s f...
Read more

Sam Altman says Elon Musk can come to his GPT 5.5 party: 'World needs more love' [Business Insider]

In a move that feels more like a Silicon Valley olive branch than a typical tech feud escalation, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has extended an unexpected invitation to his most vocal critic: Elon Musk. The offer? A seat at the table for the upcoming launch of GPT 5.5, the next major iteration of OpenAI’s conversational AI model. “The world needs more love, and honestly, more smart people working on the same problem,” Altman said in a brief interview following a product demonstration in San Francisco. “If Elon wants to come see what we’re building, the door is open. We’re all trying to get to the same future—just maybe taking different roads.” The comment is notable given the frosty history between the two tech billionaires. Musk, a co-founder of OpenAI who left the board in 2018, has since become one of the company’s harshest critics, accusing it of straying from its original nonprofit mission and of prioritizing profit over safety. He has also been building his own rival AI, xAI’s Grok, ...
Read more

Jensen Huang is so over the dire predictions of AI leaders like Dario Amodei [Business Insider]

If you’ve spent any time in the tech press over the last six months, you’ve probably seen the headlines. “AI could kill us all.” “The risk of extinction is real.” “We need to pause development.” These warnings, often delivered with the gravitas of a late-night public service announcement, have become a staple of the industry’s public relations diet. The man leading the charge? Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, who has made a second career out of predicting the worst-case scenario for the very technology he is building. But there is another voice in the room, and it isn’t whispering. It’s Jensen Huang, the leather-jacket-clad CEO of Nvidia. And lately, he’s had enough of the doomsday rhetoric. In a series of recent interviews and public appearances, Huang has made it abundantly clear that he is “so over” the dire predictions coming from his fellow AI leaders. He isn’t just disagreeing with them; he’s rolling his eyes in a way that only a man who has seen two decades of tech cycles can. ...
Read more

We sold our dream home in the US to move into a rental abroad. Our family has less space, but our lifestyle improved. [Business Insider]

It was the kind of house you see in a real estate catalog and immediately assume belongs to someone else’s life. Four bedrooms, a sprawling backyard with a swing set, a kitchen island big enough to host Thanksgiving dinner, and a mortgage that felt like a second job. My wife, Maria, and I spent five years curating that home. We painted the nursery ourselves, planted the magnolia tree by the driveway, and replaced the carpet with hardwood floors because we believed we were building a legacy. We sold it last spring. Not because we had to. Not because we lost our jobs or fell into debt. We sold it because we realized the house was eating us alive—not financially, but emotionally. We were spending more time maintaining the lawn than lying on it. More weekends fixing the gutters than exploring the city. More energy worrying about resale value than actually living. So we did something that felt terrifying at first, then liberating: we packed two suitcases each, put the rest in storage, a...
Read more

Berkshire Hathaway's first Q&A without Warren Buffett opened with a question from a deepfake Warren Buffett [Business Insider]

When tens of thousands of shareholders filed into the CHI Health Center in Omaha this past weekend, they knew it would be different. For the first time in over six decades, Warren Buffett was not at the helm of Berkshire Hathaway’s annual meeting. The “Oracle of Omaha” stepped back this year, handing the reins to Vice Chairman Greg Abel and a new generation of leaders. But no one could have predicted the meeting’s very first moment: a question from a deepfake Warren Buffett. The auditorium, packed with investors from around the world, fell into a stunned silence. A large screen flickered to life, displaying a hyper-realistic digital avatar of the 94-year-old billionaire. The avatar, dressed in Buffett’s signature suit and glasses, leaned into an invisible microphone. “Hello, Omaha,” it said in a voice that was uncannily accurate—right down to the Midwestern cadence and the slight crackle of age. “I know I’m not supposed to be here, but I had a few things I wanted to ask Greg about th...
Read more

I was in the room when Warren Buffett gave a surprise interview at Berkshire's annual conference. The mood swung from excited to gloomy, then hopeful. [Business Insider]

I was in the room when Warren Buffett gave a surprise interview at Berkshire's annual conference. The mood swung from excited to gloomy, then hopeful. OMAHA, Neb. — I have been covering Berkshire Hathaway’s annual shareholder weekend for six years. I thought I had seen every trick the Oracle of Omaha pulls out of his sleeve. I was wrong. This year, the main event was scheduled to be a standard Q&A with Vice Chairman Greg Abel and a few portfolio managers. The official program listed no appearance by 94-year-old Warren Buffett. Most of us expected him to skip the stage, perhaps sending a video message from his home in Omaha. The whispers in the media center were polite but resigned: *He’s getting older. This is the transition.* Then, at 9:47 a.m. local time, something changed. I was sitting in the third row of the press section, laptop open, coffee lukewarm, when a Berkshire PR staffer walked on stage, leaned toward Greg Abel, and whispered something. Abel nodded, stood ...
Read more

After my divorce, I dreaded any type of holiday alone. A group of friends changed that. [Business Insider]

For years, the word “holiday” felt like a trap. After my divorce, the idea of booking a trip alone sent a cold knot into my stomach. It wasn’t the logistics that scared me—I could plan a flight and book a hotel in my sleep. It was the silence. The empty seat next to me at dinner. The awkward look from a waiter when they asked, “Table for one?” I spent two years convincing myself that solo travel was for the brave, and I was not that. I was the guy who stayed home, watching travel documentaries and eating cereal for dinner. Then, something unexpected happened. A group of friends—not close friends, more like familiar faces from a shared hobby—invited me on a long weekend trip to the coast. At first, I said no. The thought of being the “divorced guy” in a group of couples and singles felt like a social minefield. But one of them, a woman named Sarah I barely knew, called me out. “You’re not hiding forever,” she said, half-joking. “Pack a bag. We’ll handle the awkwardness.” I packed that...
Read more

I'm an 84-year-old landlord. I charge reduced rent to my housemates who help me with food, tech, and transportation. [Business Insider]

I’m an 84-year-old landlord. I charge reduced rent to my housemates who help me with food, tech, and transportation. When I tell people I’m a landlord at 84, they usually picture a grumpy old man yelling at kids to get off his lawn. That’s not me. I own a three-bedroom house in Portland, Oregon, that I’ve lived in for 40 years. After my wife passed five years ago, the silence was deafening. I didn’t need the money—I needed company. So I turned to an experiment that’s changed my life: renting out rooms not for the highest dollar, but for help with the stuff that gets harder every year. I call it “assisted living, but on my own terms.” I charge my housemates—two men in their 30s—a reduced rent of $400 each per month. In this market, that’s a steal. But the catch is simple: they help me with three things. Food. Tech. Transportation. Let me break down why this works, how I set it up, and what I’ve learned from living with strangers who became family. Why I ditched the traditional l...
Read more