Mastercard ran live trials in ANZ where AI agents analysed business data, made payment decisions, and executed transactions without requiring human sign-off. The trials involved Hnry, MYOB, and Pay.com.au. Target market: SMEs spending 10-20 hours weekly on payment admin.
One-third of Australian SMEs now use AI, but most are juggling chaotic piles of logins and half-adopted copilots instead of strategic workflows. The pitch: less AI, not more, might actually drive better outcomes for small sales teams drowning in subscriptions.
Gartner revised its 2026 software forecast up for the third time in six months. Total software spend now projected at $1.44 trillion, growing 15.1%. That is $190 billion in net new budget this year. If your company is growing slower than 15%, you are losing share.
Meta is cutting 8,000 employees while spending $115bn on AI. Microsoft is offering buyouts to 8,750 US workers while dropping $22bn per quarter on data centres. Analysts call it AI washing: using automation as cover for cost cuts that might not be about efficiency at all.
ServiceNow dropped 15% after beating revenue guidance. IBM fell 10%. Salesforce down 7%. The carnage hit every seat-based SaaS company, but infrastructure plays like Cloudflare and MongoDB are up 60% to 230% over 12 months. The market is repricing one specific business model: per-seat workflow software that agents can replace.
ServiceNow posted Q1 subscription revenue of $3.67B (22% YoY growth), $1.67B free cash flow, and raised guidance. The stock dropped 13% after hours. Classic beat-and-lose: numbers shipped, market wanted more.
Fast-growing AI agent vendors are restricting Forward Deployed Engineers to enterprise accounts only, leaving mid-market customers with self-serve onboarding. The shift matters because deployment support is the single biggest variable in whether AI agents actually work. Zendesk data shows enterprise customers with FDE involvement hit 60-80% automation rates versus 20% for self-serve.
Meta is cutting 10% of its workforce (8,000 people) on May 20 and leaving 6,000 roles unfilled. The reason: capital investments of up to $135 billion in AI infrastructure for 2026. Sales teams at Meta, already hit by earlier cuts targeting advertising operations, face more uncertainty as the company trades headcount for compute power.
Australian comparison platform Finder shed 54 roles in April 2026, marking its fifth redundancy round since 2023. The cuts hit roughly 10% of remaining headcount across multiple markets. For sales professionals, this signals continued pressure on fintech B2B partnerships and affiliate revenue models.
Alliance of Industry Associations submitted pre-budget demands for AI investment, skills funding, and tax reform ahead of May's federal budget. The submission tests whether the Albanese government's December National AI Plan translates into actual budget allocation after AI got zero mentions in 2024 papers.
SaaStr AI Annual 2026 has 2,548 registered attendees, 49.5% holding founder, CEO, or C-suite titles. That is not a conference. That is a room full of budget holders. Sales leaders selling to enterprise B2B should note: engineering leaders now make up 12% of attendees, up from 3-4% five years ago.
Sub-1-year contracts jumped from 4% to 13% of new logo deals in three years, while three-year commitments dropped. Sales cycles are shorter (19 weeks, down from 25), but buyers won't lock in long-term when the category leader could flip in 12 months. This is not hesitation: it is rational risk management in a market where AI tools barely existed a year ago.