Latest updates for ANZ sales professionals
Jason Lemkin published market data showing AI spend up 44% year over year while non-AI SaaS companies trade at 4x ARR versus 61x for AI-native players. The message for sales teams: if your company is not capturing AI budget in your category, you are fighting for scraps in a shrinking market.
Anthropic inked an MOU with the Australian government that includes sharing Economic Index data tracking how Claude is used across sectors. Unlike previous OpenAI and Microsoft deals, this one commits to showing actual adoption patterns by industry and occupation. Worth noting: Anthropic has no local presence, suggesting remote API access rather than boots on the ground.
Redpoint surveyed 141 CIOs managing $765B in capex. The numbers are not friendly to incumbents. 54% are actively consolidating vendors, 45% say AI budgets are cannibalising existing software line items, and 83% are open to replacing their CRM with an AI-native vendor. Public SaaS multiples sit at 4.1x NTM revenue, the lowest since 2008.
Small businesses won one in five NSW government contracts last financial year, securing $8.3 billion of the state's $40 billion procurement spend. New direct engagement thresholds raised from $150k to $250k drove 1,500+ contracts in 2024, with Labor targeting more local supplier deals while cutting consultant spend by $300 million.
Ramp data shows Anthropic captured 73% of new enterprise AI spending in the past ten weeks, up from a 50-50 split with OpenAI. The shift signals vendor lock-in is happening now, with enterprises committing to Claude for coding and data analysis workflows. For sales teams evaluating AI tools, the window to switch providers is closing fast.
Lee Hickin, National AI Centre exec director, says Australia should focus on AI applications in data-rich sectors like agriculture and healthcare, not competing on frontier models. Worth noting for sales teams: enterprise AI adoption is already at 68%, but the play is sector-specific tools, not generic platforms.
Google has put a reported $20 billion data centre investment on hold after the Australian government indicated the infrastructure would create a permanent establishment, triggering local tax obligations. The move comes as competitors like AWS commit billions to ANZ cloud infrastructure.
Tech Council of Australia reports the sector now contributes $248.5 billion to the economy, making it Australia's third-largest industry. Worth noting: nearly half that value comes from indirect tech adoption, not the tech industry itself. Job growth is lagging the council's 2030 targets.
Meta's reported 20% workforce reduction is not about AI replacing jobs. It is about capex priorities: when you spend tens of billions on Nvidia infrastructure, the depreciation eats operating cash flow. Meta cannot afford both the compute and the headcount. Meanwhile, NVIDIA's $1 trillion revenue forecast landed with a shrug because the market already priced it in.
Google says it's building controls to let sites opt out of AI features in search. Publishers aren't buying it. The proposed opt-out still ties traditional search visibility to AI inclusion, and there's no detail on how it actually works or what penalty you'll pay for using it.
ServiceNow reported 603 customers spending over $5M annually, averaging $14.7M each. The company closed 244 deals over $1M in net-new ACV in Q4 alone, up 40% YoY. Paul Fipps, President of Global Customer Operations, detailed how they built the GTM engine behind $10B+ revenue and five years of 20%+ growth.
Every major software company has printed lower growth rates each year since 2021. Salesforce went from 25% to 8%, Snowflake from 106% to 24%. The culprit is not AI replacing software yet. It is simpler: CIOs are reallocating finite budgets to foundation model providers, and traditional software vendors are taking the hit.