Stripe CEO’s AI-era software pitch: Start serving it like pizza

Stripe’s CEO, Patrick Collison, delivered a provocative thesis about the future of software in the age of AI.

Appearing on the “TBPN” podcast last week, Collison told show hosts John Coogan and Jordi Hays that software shouldn’t be mass-produced but created on demand instead.

“Software should be like pizza, and it should be cooked right then and there at the moment of use,” said Collison. “Up until now, the economics of software have been conceived as fixed cost and then infinitely monetized.”

“Once there are inference costs and custom creation involved, it really shifts,” Collison added. “It’s kind of the non-Walrasian software regime.”

Collison’s analogy echoes a broader tension gripping the technology industry on whether AI tools could replace, rather than just augment, traditional software.

That anxiety briefly turned into market reality earlier in February. Releases and updates from Anthropic’s Claude AI, especially enterprise-focused capabilities like Claude Cowork and the automation plugin, triggered a deep selloff in software stocks as investors fretted that AI could automate tasks that once required licensed software or human expertise.

The selloff wiped out billions in market value, with broad software ETFs and enterprise names sliding sharply, as investors interpreted Claude’s expanding abilities as a threat to traditional SaaS business models that count on recurring licensing revenues. The iShares Expanded Tech Software Sector ETF is down nearly 30% since the beginning of 2026 as of March 2. IBM is seeing some of the heaviest losses among software companies, recording its worst slide in 26 years as the stock fell 13% on February 23.

The stock slide aside, not everyone is sold. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang pushed back on the idea that the tool industry is in decline and will be replaced by AI at a recent Cisco AI event.

“You could tell because there’s a whole bunch of software companies whose stock prices are under a lot of pressure because somehow AI is going to replace them,” said Huang. “It is the most illogical thing in the world, and time will prove itself.”