Software incumbents Workday and Adobe gained as market sentiment shifted, favoring established platforms with deep data moats over the immediate threat of rapid AI-driven obsolescence.
Workday and Adobe shares climbed 2.5% to 3% on September 14 as investors recalibrated the threat of AI disruption. A cooling pace in frontier model development suggests incumbent software platforms may have more time to monetize AI features within existing workflows.
Investors are betting that a slower pace of frontier AI development gives established software companies more time to integrate AI into their existing products rather than being replaced by new, disruptive models.