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The Takeaway

Leaders at enterprise app makers such as Figma, Workday and HubSpot have downplayed threats from AI that could crimp their growth, a concern that has pressured their stocks for months. But the securities filings those leaders sign every quarter are beginning to note the competitive risks the companies face from AI agents, which their customers could use to replicate their apps or draw data from them.

So far this year, 27 software firms, including the three just mentioned, have described AI agents as a competitive risk in their securities filings, up from the seven that disclosed such risks in the same period last year, according to The Information’s analysis of filings using AlphaSense, a market research platform.

Design app Figma is arguably under the most pressure among software as a service firms, with its stock trading lower than its initial public offering price last year, in part due to concerns about its sales growth. In its 10-K filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission last month, Figma said agentic AI “may change how people access and interact with digital products in ways that reduce reliance on traditional software applications.”

On an earnings call the same day, Figma CEO Dylan Field brushed aside a question about whether AI agents will disrupt the industry for web design software.

“I think it is the case that humans will continue to use software, and increasingly, agents will, too,” he said. “And I’m excited about that.”

Field warned customers about using AI for important work. “I think right now, if you’re willing to hand off mission-critical work to agents and just let them do it unsupervised, you’re a very brave person,” he said. (He’s not wrong about the risks involved, though the comment doesn’t fully address the AI-related competition his company may face long term.)

Most companies have only been talking about AI risks in a general sense so far. Over the past two years, more than 200 software firms’ filings have referenced AI as a risk factor in terms of rising competition, cybersecurity vulnerabilities and regulatory issues. References to AI agents in particular have only just begun to trickle in.

Such dangers have grown as Anthropic, OpenAI and other AI firms have released new products to automate coding and other white-collar tasks. They’re also releasing or developing AI superagents that could use enterprise apps the way humans do—except much faster and in the background—which could lessen the power of the apps’ makers.

Many software executives have yet to publicly comment about the implications of superagents, also known as computer-using agents. Oracle executives, for instance, dodged a question about them in an earnings call last week. Revenue growth from the company’s enterprise apps has been flat for years, even as the executives have been talking up AI’s potential to boost growth for the better part of a year.

Investors are also concerned that if AI agents produce efficiency gains in the business world and slow down hiring, that would impact subscription growth for software app providers. To be sure, plenty of software firms have reported slightly accelerating sales growth lately.

Some software companies’ filings are more direct than others about the risks they face from AI agents, appearing to support investors’ sell-off of software stocks in what’s been dubbed the SaaS apocalypse.

Graphic design provider Adobe said in its annual report in January that it faces “increasing competition from companies offering generative and agentic AI solutions” and could see lower sales if its products don’t compete effectively.

Last week, though, the company’s soon-to-be-departed CEO, Shantanu Narayen, said in a call with investors that the company’s offerings are “uniquely designed” to meet the evolving needs of enterprises in a world filled with AI agents. The stock has tumbled 28% so far this year—even as its AI revenue has begun to surge and as overall sales grew at a slightly faster rate in the company’s first quarter, which ended Feb. 27, than in prior quarters.

During a November 2025 earnings call, HubSpot CEO Yamini Rangan said the firm, a provider of software to manage customer relationships, was “positioned to lead in the AI era and drive durable long-term growth.”

‘Market Differentiation’

HubSpot’s shares, however, have shed nearly half their value in the past six months. The company said sales growth ticked 1 percentage point lower in its quarter ending Dec. 31 compared with the previous quarter.

In its annual filing in February, HubSpot said its customers could build their own internal customer relationship management tools using AI. The company added in the filing, “We must convince [customers] that our products and solutions are superior to other solutions available to their organizations, including generic [large language models], software created using natural language prompts and generative AI (referred to as vibe coding).”

Workday’s annual 10-K filing in early March fed into the fears that its human resources app could become less valuable with the rise of agentic AI tools. The filing acknowledged potential issues in the company’s “ability to maintain market differentiation” and said it “may not be effective in convincing prospective customers that our solutions will address their needs.”