Bernstein believes Anthropic's shift to a partnership model is a "positive" for SaaS stocks

Investing.com — Bernstein analysts have issued an optimistic outlook for the SaaS sector after the “Enterprise AI” event hosted by Anthropic, believing that the launch of Claude Cowork has alleviated market concerns about a “negative bubble” of existence. The report notes that the market initially plummeted due to fears that large language models (LLMs) would disrupt existing enterprises. However, Anthropic’s “Swiss” neutral collaboration strategy has actually strengthened the competitive resilience of established platforms.

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This shift toward end-user productivity is expected to benefit veteran suppliers with strong operational backgrounds, potentially shifting the market narrative from substitution to modernization-driven spending.

Strategic partnerships and the “Swiss” moat

Bernstein’s report emphasizes that Anthropic deliberately chose to collaborate with Line of Business (LoB) SaaS providers rather than engage in predatory tactics. Anthropic positions itself as an independent AI layer that coordinates across various applications. This approach avoids the high-risk “acquisition” strategy reportedly adopted by OpenAI, which aims to directly replace vendors like Salesforce and Workday.

Analysts believe that Anthropic’s neutrality grants it longer-lasting relevance and reduces executive distraction, echoing the successful platform strategies of ServiceNow and Atlassian.

The outlook for specialized vendors is mixed but generally defensive. Platforms with proprietary data, such as Datadog, Palo Alto Networks, and ServiceNow, are seen as winners. Their specialized “mini-models” often outperform general LLMs in targeted tasks like incident remediation or security classification. These platforms leverage unique access to organizational context, which cutting-edge models cannot easily replicate, creating defensible advantages.

Infrastructure isolation and IT budget shifts

Infrastructure software is largely unaffected by LLM disruption because its value lies in serving other applications rather than human language interactions. Bernstein believes Confluent, Cloudflare, and Twilio will benefit from large-scale “modernization” efforts, as companies need to upgrade traditional mainframe systems with APIs to participate in new AI productivity workflows.

Without modernized interfaces, current applications cannot be integrated into the AI-driven workflows that enterprises now prioritize.

Cybersecurity budgets are increasing, with reports warning that tools like CrowdStrike’s Charlotte AI may face fierce competition from “AI-native” neutral agents like Torq. The success of independent agents suggests that the total addressable market for vendor-specific security AI may be smaller than initially estimated.

Overall, Bernstein maintains its investment recommendation, viewing the current shift as an opportunity to revalue software, as it is becoming the primary vehicle for delivering AI value to enterprises.

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