[bushido]

It's an intriguing take, but as others have pointed out, the truth will be somewhere in the middle. I don't believe that AI will replace the entire SaaS interface. And I also don't think it will need as many services and APIs of yester-years.

This writeup seems to be authored by a senior designer at Salesforce and I can see the motivation from the their perspective. Their challenges are different than what a new SaaS product will encounter.

Like all the incumbents of their time they are a core-ish database that depended on a plethora of point solutions from vendors and partners to fill in the gaps their product left in constructing workflows. If they don't take an approach like being discussed here – or in the linked OpenAI/Softbank video – they will risk alienating their vendors/partners or worse see them becoming competitors in their own right.

Disclaimer – I'm biased too, I'm building one of the upstarts that aims to compete with Salesforce.