Xero CEO Unafraid of the ‘SaaSpocalypse’

Since ChatGPT arrived on the scene some three years ago, analysts have been warning that entire industries, including software programming, legal services and film production, are at risk of being disrupted by artificial intelligence. But it took a wave of disappointing earnings reports, some improvements in AI models, and the release of a seemingly innocuous add-on from AI startup Anthropic to suddenly wake up investors en masse to the threat. The result has been the biggest stock selloff driven by the fear of AI displacement that markets have seen. And no stocks are hurting more than those of software-as-a-service (SaaS) companies.

Sukhinder Singh Cassidy, the CEO of cloud-based accounting software provider Xero, explains why she believes the firm's small business tools will be enhanced by AI, not overtaken, as the firm builds its large language model (LLM) "on the back of" AI models. Sukhinder speaks with Carol Massar and Tim Stenovec on Bloomberg Businessweek Daily.

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