AI platforms eat incumbent software by wrapping it first and replacing it second.
Challengers run agents on top of the installed system and route the incumbent's own workflows and partners through a horizontal interface, converting today's integration into tomorrow's replacement until the legacy vendor is reduced to a database.
The same conclusion keeps arriving from across the workspace's research — 1 topics independently instantiate this theme. Filter the evidence by where it came from:
Ema's wrap-then-replace wedge deploys agents on top of incumbent SaaS and shrinks customer dependence until the incumbent is displaced outright — all while billing on outcomes, not seats.
OpenAI's vertical foundation partners with legal incumbents like Thomson Reuters while routing their specialist tools through its own interface, hollowing them into components of its stack.