Generative AI has prompted market doubts about the traditional software-as-a-service growth model, contributing to recent weakness in SaaS stocks and eroding investor confidence, Appier CEO and co-founder Chih-han Yu said. He argued that the greatest impact falls on non-native AI SaaS providers.
Yu outlined three factors for assessing software competitiveness: ownership of unique, hard-to-replace, differentiated data sets; the ability of a product to solve core business tasks, such as revenue growth; and the transformation of the billing model. He said the traditional seat-based pricing model is obsolete and predicted a shift to value-based pricing, where fees are tied to the actual return on investment customers receive from AI, directly linking enterprise willingness to pay to revenue outcomes.
Yu also assessed prevailing approaches that treat AI as a copilot or plugin as insufficient. He said those methods mainly change user interfaces and dialogue workflows without materially improving operating leverage. He advised software vendors to redesign product architectures around AI from the outset, specifying which processes will be handled by AI-in-the-loop and which will remain human-in-the-loop, enabling systems to learn company operations and deliver measurable operating leverage rather than adding AI labels to existing products.
Addressing competition from major platforms, including Google and Meta, Yu said Appier's strength lies in cross-platform integration combined with customer-centric AI models that create agentic AI tailored to client workflows, which he said can expand market penetration and increase customer stickiness. He argued that as app numbers rise and user digital footprints fragment, single platforms struggle to capture the full picture, creating opportunities for cross-platform players.
Yu cited Appier's 2025 growth rates of 40–50% in e-commerce and travel, which he said outpace Meta's and Google's current growth rates. He disclosed plans for aggressive overseas expansion in 2026, targeting countries with higher per capita GDP and advanced digital maturity, but said those initiatives are in early stages and details will be disclosed as progress is made.
For fiscal 2026, Yu projected accelerated revenue growth to JPY54 billion (approx. US$348.07 million), up 24% year-over-year. He forecast gross profit of JPY29.4 billion, a 25% increase and a gross margin of 54.5%. Operating income was estimated to rise 45% to JPY4.3 billion, with EBITDA increasing 37% to JPY9.4 billion.
Article edited by Jack Wu
