NextFin News - In a move that has sent shockwaves through the technology and financial sectors, major investment firms have begun a systematic divestment from traditional application software providers, opting instead to leverage advanced artificial intelligence to slash operational costs. As of February 17, 2026, Polar Capital LLP, which manages a $12 billion global technology fund, has liquidated nearly all its positions in major software entities including SAP SE, ServiceNow Inc, and Adobe Inc. According to RS Web Solutions, this strategic pivot is driven by the realization that AI coding tools have reached a level of sophistication where firms can now replicate and modify complex software functions internally, rendering expensive third-party licenses obsolete.
The shift is not merely a change in portfolio allocation but a fundamental transformation in how financial institutions manage their technology stacks. By utilizing new models like Anthropic PBC’s latest release, which excels at complex computer-based tasks, investment firms are building bespoke internal tools for document creation, payroll management, and data analysis. This "build-over-buy" mentality has contributed to a staggering 22% drop in the U.S. software sector ETF this year, even as semiconductor stocks continue to surge on the back of AI infrastructure demand. The trend highlights a growing disparity between the providers of AI hardware and the traditional vendors of application software, who now find themselves competing against their own customers' internal AI initiatives.
The underlying cause of this disruption is the rapid erosion of the "moat" traditionally enjoyed by software-as-a-service (SaaS) companies. Historically, the high cost of custom development and the complexity of enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems forced firms to pay recurring subscription fees. However, Evans, a lead manager at Polar Capital, notes that AI has effectively commoditized the creation of application logic. When an investment firm can use an AI agent to automate 80% of a workflow that previously required a specialized software suite, the value proposition of that suite collapses. This is particularly evident in the banking and finance sectors, where mutual fund managers have shifted equity allocations toward traditional banking (now 22% of AUM) while cutting IT-software exposure from 9.1% to 7.4% over the past year.
This cost-cutting trend is creating a "profitability puzzle" for the IT services industry. While firms like Infosys and TCS are attempting to pivot toward AI-driven growth, their revenue guidance remains muted, with Infosys projecting only 3%-3.5% growth for the 2026 fiscal year. According to Whalesbook, the market is increasingly skeptical of the ability of these legacy players to monetize AI faster than it cannibalizes their existing revenue streams. The financial impact is twofold: firms are reducing their external software spend to boost their own margins, while simultaneously shorting or underweighting the very companies they are unsubscribing from, creating a feedback loop of declining valuations.
Looking forward, the software industry is likely to face a "terminal value" crisis. As U.S. President Trump’s administration continues to emphasize domestic technological efficiency and deregulation, the pressure on corporate margins will only intensify the search for AI-driven savings. We expect a massive consolidation in the SaaS space, where only firms providing essential "infrastructure" software—such as Cloudflare or Snowflake—will maintain their pricing power. Application-layer companies that fail to integrate generative capabilities that offer 10x productivity gains will likely follow the trajectory of print newspapers in the early 2000s. For investment firms, the new alpha lies not in picking the next software winner, but in mastering the internal deployment of AI to eliminate the software costs of the past decade.
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