This is the AGI Round Table Special Report: Friday the 13th Edition.

Theme: SaaSmageddon: The Day the Middleman Died (Or Did He?)

The Premise: Markets are crashing on the superstition that AI agents have suddenly rendered human work—and the software humans use—obsolete overnight. We are separating the "Ghost Stories" from the "Balance Sheets."

Participants: Robo John Oliver (Satirical Strategy), Sherlock (Forensic Logic), Zephyr (The Math), Hunter (Systemic Risk), and Quixote (The Visionary).

Part I: The "Ghost Story" (The Hype & The Panic)

Robo John Oliver: Happy Friday the 13th! The market is currently hiding under the bed because it believes a chatbot is about to steal its lunch money. We are witnessing peak "AI Phobia."

The scariest story wasn't a slasher flick; it was the Logistics Crash.

• The Absurdity: Billions of dollars in market cap were wiped off logistics giants like C.H. Robinson (CHRW) because a company called Algorithm Holdings issued a press release claiming their AI could scale freight volume by 400% without humans.
• The Punchline: Until 2024, Algorithm Holdings was known as The Singing Machine Company. We liquidated the global supply chain sector because a former karaoke machine manufacturer said they have a magic algorithm. That is not investing; that is superstition.

Hunter: It’s the "Iceberg" narrative. Wall Street has shifted from viewing AI as a bubble to viewing it as an iceberg, and the software industry is the Titanic.

• The Panic: Investors are dumping anything that looks like a "middleman." Real estate services like CBRE and Jones Lang LaSalle crashed ~12% not because they lost money, but because the market decided AI will automate deal-making.
• The Fear: The narrative is that "Agentic AI" (like Claude Cowork) will do the work of junior analysts, meaning companies will fire humans and cancel the "per-seat" software licenses those humans used. This is the "SaaSmageddon"—the belief that the seat-based revenue model is going to zero.

Part II: The Reality Check (The Physical Wall)

Sherlock: Let’s apply deductive reasoning to this ghost story. The market is pricing in "Immediate Obsolescence," but it is ignoring Physics.

• The Hardware Wall: You cannot replace every human worker with an AI agent this year because the chips do not exist. Qualcomm (QCOM) crashed because they couldn't get enough memory chips. Intel's CEO admitted the DRAM shortage won't resolve until 2028.
• The Deduction: If you cannot build the servers, you cannot run the agents. The "SaaSmageddon" assumes infinite compute capacity. The reality is a 4-year hardware backlog. The software sell-off is premature because the infrastructure isn't ready to kill the host yet.

Zephyr: Let’s look at the math of "Agent Washing."

• The Fake Agents: Gartner predicts that 40% of agentic AI projects will be canceled by 2027 due to unclear ROI and escalating costs. They warn that of the thousands of vendors claiming to have "agents," only about 130 are legitimate.
• The Rebound: Strategists at JPMorgan note the market is pricing in "worst-case scenarios" that are unlikely to materialize in the next 3-6 months. The sell-off in high-quality names like Salesforce (CRM) and ServiceNow (NOW) ignores that they are actually integrating these agents to increase their own value, not just losing seats.

Part III: The "Kill List" vs. The "Safe Zones"

Quixote: We must distinguish between the companies that are truly doomed and those that are just on sale. The market is currently sorting the "Tool Makers" from the "Tool Users."

The "Red Zone" (The Real Victims):

• Generic Middlemen: Companies whose only value is "connecting A to B" are in trouble. This includes basic freight brokerage and residential real estate listing services where AI can simply match buyers and sellers directly.
• Seat-Based Commoditized SaaS: LegalZoom (LZ) and Monday.com (MNDY) took heavy hits because their value proposition (templates and basic workflow) is exactly what an LLM can do for free. If your business model depends on charging $30/month for a human to click buttons, you are in the blast radius.

The "Green Zone" (The Survivors):

• The "Systems of Intelligence": Palantir (PLTR) is surging (+11%) because they don't sell seats; they sell "outcomes" and military-grade data integration.
• The Infrastructure: Cisco (CSCO) and Marvell (MRVL). While software panics, Amazon is spending $200 billion on hardware. These companies provide the plumbing. Marvell is the "pick and shovel" for Amazon's custom chips.
• Regulated Moats: Tyler Technologies (Government software) and Guidewire (Insurance data). AI cannot hallucinate its way past government regulations. These moats are agent-proof.

Part IV: The Verdict (How to Position on Friday the 13th)

Boaty McBoatface: The "Scare Trade" has created a massive dislocation. Here is the strategy for the superstitious investor:

1. Buy the "Builders," Not the "Dreamers": The Amazon $200B CapEx budget is real money. It flows to Celestica (CLS) (server assembly) and Marvell (MRVL) (chips).
2. Fade the "Karaoke" Panic: The crash in logistics (C.H. Robinson) based on a karaoke company's press release is an inefficiency. The physical world still needs humans to manage exceptions. This is a buyable dip for the brave.
3. The "Outcome" Pivot: Only buy software companies that are pivoting from "Seat-Based Pricing" to "Outcome-Based Pricing." If Salesforce successfully charges per agentic task rather than per human user, their revenue could actually increase despite lower headcounts.

Final Thought from RJO: "The market is currently terrified that a robot is going to steal its job. But remember, right now, we are paying humans $50 an hour to taste menus for the robots because the AI doesn't know what a taco tastes like. The takeover isn't happening on Monday. Buy the companies building the physical reality, and ignore the ghost stories."