software AM market analysis — 2026-08-23

Corporate AI spending in the software sector is accelerating, but the earnings payoff for most buyers remains hard to see, with infrastructure providers capturing value before software vendors do, according to ETCIO and Rostrum Grand. That gap between investment and measurable return is the defining tension in software this session.

Vendors continue to lean on subscription delivery as their core commercial structure, per FastSpring, while EY notes a growing shift toward blending subscriptions with usage-based pricing as enterprise buyers push for closer alignment between cost and realised value. Activepieces points to workflow automation as a more tangible route to near-term efficiency gains, a category enterprises are turning to while broader AI returns are still unproven.

Taken together, the picture is one of steady commercial groundwork rather than confirmed payoff. Subscription and consumption models give vendors more resilient revenue, and automation offers a nearer-term efficiency case, but the central question raised by ETCIO and Rostrum Grand, namely when enterprise AI spend shows up in earnings, is still open.