At least three major SaaS categories will see 50%+ price compression by 2029.
Timeframe
December 2029
Confidence
High (4/5)
Category
Economic
How I'll know
At least three established SaaS categories — CRM, project management, customer support, security scanning, content management, HR/recruiting, accounting — experience 50%+ median price compression, driven by agent-first competitors with near-zero marginal labour costs.
Why I believe it
Cloud SaaS did this to on-premise software. Salesforce priced CRM at $25/user/month when Siebel charged $1,000+ per seat — a 90%+ reduction. Slack was free to $12.50/user/month when Lotus Notes charged $100–$300. Agent-first companies have an even more radical advantage: the primary cost line (human labour for execution) approaches zero. When you can profitably price at levels that make a competitor's business model impossible, compression is inevitable.
What would make me wrong
If fewer than two SaaS categories show more than 30% price compression attributable to agent-first competitors by December 2029, or if agent-first companies fail to gain meaningful market share in any established category, this prediction is wrong.
This is the falsification trigger. If this condition is met, the annual verification review will say so publicly.
Read the full analysis
Full reasoning is in Book 1, Chapter 9
The AI Agent Economy develops each of the 15 predictions from the frameworks built across the preceding eight chapters — the dependency layer thesis, agent economics, the trust problem, India's structural advantages, and the dharma framework for ethical building.