Benchmarkit @Benchmarkitai

The 2026 SaaS benchmark story isn’t growth. It’s divergence. A few findings from our latest B2B SaaS & AI-Native Metrics Benchmark Report: • CAC Payback improved by 11% • Median ARR per employee reached $175K (+17% YoY) • Rule of 40 jumped from 15% to 25% • GRR fell from 88% to 84% • Usage pricing delivered 108% NRR vs 98% for seat-based models The biggest takeaway: The distance between top-quartile and bottom-quartile performance is widening faster than most companies can close in a single planning cycle. AI productivity, pricing architecture, retention quality, and capital efficiency are becoming structural advantages rather than operational improvements. The median is no longer safe. Full report and interactive benchmarks: benchmarkit.ai/2026-saas-ai-n… #SaaS #AI #Benchmarking #B2BSoftware #Metrics #Growth

@SpaceX's reported $1.75T IPO valuation raises one big question: Is this a space company valuation… or an AI valuation? Our latest AI to ROI analysis found: 🚀 Launch Services dominates global commercial launches. 🛰️ @Starlink generated an estimated $10B in revenue in 2025. 🤖 xAI reportedly burned billions while still trailing frontier AI leaders. The bull case requires several things happening simultaneously: • Starship successfully scaling commercial operations • Starlink continuing double-digit growth • @grok becoming a major enterprise AI platform • Orbital data centers moving from vision to reality Possible? Yes. Guaranteed? Far from it. The article breaks down both the upside and the risks behind what could become the largest IPO in history. Read more: ai2roi.substack.com/p/ai-to-roi-bi… #AI #SpaceX #IPO #EnterpriseAI #Investing

AI vendors are moving toward credits, tokens, usage pricing, and outcome-based models. Buyers? Not so fast. Our latest study with 296 software buyers found a growing gap between how AI companies want to sell and how enterprises want to buy. The biggest issue: 📉 Buyers value predictability. 📈 Vendors prefer consumption. The future of AI pricing may depend less on technology and more on trust. Download the report: benchmarkit.ai/widget/ai-pric… #AI #SaaS #Pricing #FinOps

Most SaaS companies are ignoring their most valuable GTM asset: Product telemetry. Every click, API call, and feature interaction is a signal for churn risk, expansion opportunity, and AI cost optimization. In our latest #AItoROI episode with Dan Harmeson, we discuss: 📉 Why GRR fell to 84% 🎯 How AI predicts churn with 90%+ accuracy 📈 Using telemetry to increase NRR 💰 Why token spend management is the next frontier Listen here: rss.art19.com/episodes/14728… #SaaS #AI #NRR #CustomerSuccess #RevenueOps

Emergence Capital (@emergencecap) has 7 AI-native services companies in their portfolio. General Partner Jake Saper just shared the playbook on AI to ROI. The biggest lessons: 👉 Revenue growth from humans = false product-market fit 👉 Hire a PM before you think you need one. Their sole KPI: productize the service. 👉 Revenue per FTE not improving QoQ? Your AI isn't compounding. 👉 Moat = brand trust + proprietary data. Not the model. 👉 Outcome-based pricing is inevitable. Migrate slowly with a hybrid model. "If delivery is primarily human, you have a services company with VC financing and no AI leverage." 🎧 rss.art19.com/episodes/7f24c… #AI #AINative #AItoROI

Most enterprises have deployed AI broadly. Far fewer know what they're getting from it. Russ Fradin, CEO of @Larridin (a16z + Google-backed), on the AI to ROI podcast: 👉 AI spend is heading toward #1 or #2 enterprise OpEx driver 👉 Utilization ≠ proficiency ≠ business impact. All need separate measurement. 👉 1,800 heavy users at 30,000 people is NOT a success story 👉 Token spend turns every employee into a cost endpoint 👉 The CFO is now in this conversation "Companies have committed to a fitness journey but haven't bought a scale." 🎧 content.production.cdn.art19.com/validation=178… #AI #EnterpriseAI #CFO #AItoROI

The AI market is racing toward consumption-based pricing. Buyers aren't ready for it. Benchmarkit + Pricing I/O surveyed 296 software buyers. Here's what they found: ⚠️ 89% exceeded their AI budget 📊 68% rank predictable cost as top priority (lowest entry price ranked last) 💳 55% say credit/token pricing is harder to evaluate for AI than SaaS 📉 Pure outcome-based: lowest preference of any model (-19 net) 🛡️ 62% want soft caps + alerts. Not hard cutoffs. Buyer sentiment is not aligned with where the market is going. 🔗 Full report: benchmarkit.ai/widget/ai-pric… #AI #SaaS #Pricing #Benchmarkit

The 2026 SaaS & AI-Native Performance Metrics Benchmark Report is live. Data from 342 SaaS & AI-native companies shows: 📈 CAC Payback improved 11% 📈 Rule of 40 posted its biggest gain in 5 years 📉 GRR fell from 88% → 84% 📉 Median growth dropped from 30% (2022) → 20% (2025) 📊 Usage-based pricing delivered 108% NRR vs 98% for seat-based models The best companies aren't just spending less—they're redesigning their operating models around AI, efficiency, retention, and expansion. Get the full report + interactive benchmarks: benchmarkit.ai/2026-saas-ai-n… #SaaS #AI #B2B #Benchmarking

Your product telemetry is generating trillions of signals. Most GTM teams aren't reading any of them. Dan Harmeson, co-CEO of @quadsciai on the AI to ROI podcast: 👉 Median GRR dropped 4pts to 84% (2026 Benchmarkit data) 👉 At $100M+ ARR, 95% of revenue is renewals + expansion 👉 A 2pt GRR drop can't be offset by new logos in 12 months 👉 QuadSci runs retrospective predictions first — 90%+ accuracy before you trust the forward signals 👉 Same approach applies to governing AI token costs Product data is the answer. Most companies just aren't using it. 🎧 rss.art19.com/episodes/14728… #SaaS #GRR #NRR #AItoROI

The 2026 SaaS & AI-Native Performance Metrics Benchmark Report is live. 342 companies. 111 slides. The 5 findings that define this year: ✅ CAC Payback down 11% — largest gain in 4 years ✅ Rule of 40 best single-year gain in 5 years ⚠️ Median GRR: 88% → 84%. Structural, not cyclical. ⚠️ Growth rate declining 4 years straight: 30% → 20% 💰 Usage-based NRR: 108%. Seat-based: 98%. That gap compounds. Top performers aren't just cutting costs. They're redesigning how they operate. 🔗 benchmarkit.ai/2026-saas-ai-n… #SaaS #Benchmarks #Benchmarkit #NRR

@OnlyCFO CFOs putting people on a "token fasting" program. Only start using at noon and stop using by 6!!!

Big AI week. Speed run: 📊 Snowflake +30% after hours. Salesforce -3%. Same AI wave, different boats. 💸 Uber burned its full AI budget in 4 months. ServiceNow and others in the same boat. ⚔️ Anthropic bought Stainless (OpenAI's SDK generator) for $300M+ and shut it down. Deadline: Sept 1. 📈 SK Hynix and Micron both crossed $1T market cap in the same week. Memory crunch lasts until 2030. 🛒 Amazon selling its AI shopping tech to third-party retailers via AWS. 🔐 Critical 'BadHost' vuln hits most Python AI backends. Upgrade to Starlette 1.0.1 now. First time an AI company used infrastructure M&A as a competitive weapon. Won't be the last. 🔗 ai2roi.substack.com/p/ai-to-roi-ne… #AI #Anthropic #SaaS #AItoROI

@salesforce introduced the Agentic Work Unit (AWU): "one discrete task accomplished by an AI agent." Is it a real pricing breakthrough or just the latest in a long history of metrics nobody asked for? Dave "CAC" Kellogg and Ray "Growth" Rike break it down: 👉 Tokens = compute. Not outcomes. Not board metrics. 👉 AWU is directionally right — but it's activity, not value. 👉 Customers say they want value-based pricing until a vendor tries to take a cut. 👉 Verticals with countable outputs (support cases, insurance claims) don't need it. NRR took a decade to standardize. AWU has a long way to go. 🎧 rss.art19.com/episodes/dac10… #SaaS #AI #Pricing #MetricsBrothers #AWU #AgenticWorkUnit

@OpenAI: $25B ARR. 910M weekly users. Also: 33% gross margins. $14B projected loss. CFO reportedly demoted for saying it's not IPO-ready. Ray Rike and Peter Buchanan break it down: 👉 ChatGPT enterprise share: 80% → 60%. Growing at 4% vs Claude's 14%. 👉 OpenAI told partners it plans to replace Salesforce, Workday, and Adobe. Those are also partners. 👉 73% of first-time enterprise buyers prefer Anthropic. The closing question: if you had $1M to put in one LLM company? Peter: Google. Ray: Anthropic. Both agree: OpenAI is the defining company of this generation. But Netscape was a category leader too. 🎧 rss.art19.com/episodes/2867c… #OpenAI #AI #AItoROI

Most companies bolt AI onto their product. @gorgiasio tore theirs down and rebuilt from scratch. CFO Kunal Agarwal on the AI to ROI podcast: 👉 Rebuilt around agents, not bolted on 👉 North Star: resolution rate, not deflection (60–80% for enterprise) 👉 Charges per resolution only — paid when AI delivers 👉 LLM inference = 55–60% of cost per interaction 👉 CFO owns AI ROI measurement. Not product. Not engineering. "Denying that AI agent margins are lower than SaaS is living in an alternate reality." 🎧 rss.art19.com/episodes/807c9… #SaaS #AI #CFO #AItoROI

Big AI week. Speed run: 🚀 SpaceX S-1 dropped. $4.9B net loss. June 12 IPO. S-1 literally says "no one has previously operated orbital AI compute." 🤖 Google I/O: Gemini + Search merged. 24/7 background AI agent. "Biggest search upgrade in 25 years." 💰 NVIDIA: $81.6B revenue. +85% YoY. 14th straight beat. Stock still fell 2%. 📈 Anthropic: $10.9B Q2 revenue + first ever operating profit. 1,000%+ growth in 2025. 📋 OpenAI: targeting $1T valuation, September IPO. S-1 filing week of May 25. 🏛️ AI executive order killed the night before signing. Musk + Zuckerberg called Trump. The race has never been faster. 🔗 ai2roi.substack.com/p/ai-to-roi-ne… #AI #Anthropic #OpenAI #NVIDIA #SpaceX #AItoROI

Professional services firms have sold time for 200 years. AI-native companies are selling outcomes instead. The markets being disrupted: • Legal: $350B+ • Audit: $230B unmet demand gap by 2030 • Healthcare admin: $1.5T annually Four companies leading the way: ⚖️ EvenUp: 10K cases/week. 69% better settlement rates. 📋 Fieldguide: Half of top 100 US accounting firms. $700M valuation. 🏥 Abridge: 150+ health systems. $5.3B valuation. 🛡️ Harper: Insurance in 24hrs vs. 5-7 day standard. The moat isn't the model. It's the proprietary data. 🔗 ai2roi.substack.com/p/ai-to-roi-bi… #AI #AINative #AItoROI

The 2026 B2B Marketing Budget & Performance Benchmark Report is live. 173 B2B tech companies. Real data. What stood out: • Top growers invest 12% of revenue in marketing. Median: 9%. • 46% of their pipeline comes from inbound. • AI marketing spend: 2% → 5%. Most going to productivity tools, not execution. • 70% of companies now track CAC. The execution gap is the opportunity. 🔗 Full report + interactive benchmarks: benchmarkit.ai/2026-b2b-marke… #B2BSaaS #Marketing #Benchmarkit

Big week in AI. Speed run: 📊 Anthropic beats OpenAI in business revenue for the first time (34.4% vs 32.3% per Ramp) 🛒 Amazon's Alexa can now complete purchases, not just suggest them 🔐 Anthropic's Mythos model can take over entire networks. Unreleased. Congress alarmed. 🏣 SAP launches Autonomous Enterprise with Claude at its core 💊 Isomorphic Labs raises $2.1B. First AI drug trials by end of 2026. 🤝 OpenAI launches a $4B enterprise AI consulting company backed by 19 PE firms 🛡️ OpenAI's Daybreak cybersecurity platform is live. AI zero-day exploits now documented in the wild. 🚀 Google + SpaceX exploring orbital data centers The distribution war has shifted from models to implementation. 🔗 ai2roi.substack.com/p/ai-to-roi-ne… #AI #Anthropic #OpenAI #AItoROI

Global software market: $1.4 trillion. Global labor market: $28 trillion. AI isn't improving software. It's making a run at the labor budget. Early proof points: • Harvey AI: $200M ARR, 50 top law firms • Sierra: $15B valuation, outcomes-only model • ServiceNow: 13x entitlement expansion at renewal But the path isn't linear: 👉 Data not agent-ready 👉 Error rates too high for mission-critical work 👉 Token subsidies ending — budgets will be shocked Winning in the $28T labor market doesn't come for free. 🔗 ai2roi.substack.com/p/ai-to-roi-bi… #AI #WaaS #EnterpriseAI #AItoROI