HaaS will be the new SaaS…but we’ll still call it SaaS because it’s all just software.
I had this realization when I tried using GPT Codex and Gemini in Cursor with plan mode. Opus/Sonnet are insanely good with Cursor plan mode, but Codex/Gemini are pretty bad in that harness. What I learned is that the models work different in how they plan execute, which makes sense.
The next software frontier
It makes me think there will be a whole new group of products optimized for certain work, where it might intelligently use one model+harness for one part of the plan and another for a different part.
This might be the saving grace for SaaS. While Cursor appears to be the best for coding (and will stay that way unless they lose focus), there’s the rest of white-collar work that needs their versions of Cursor for the thousands of different use cases and verticals.
And then robotics will need the same for the thousands of different real world applications, which feels endless. For example, farming along would have thousands of different unique use cases.
While AI has turned the SaaS model upside down, if they can leverage their existing moat/customer base/expertise to create the leading harness for their vertical using existing models with workflows/integrations, that could be a new high-margin business and continue to grow.
