What Happened?

A number of stocks jumped in the afternoon session after shares of enterprise software and SaaS companies rallied broadly as investors rotated capital out of semiconductor and AI-hardware stocks following calls for an artificial intelligence development slowdown. 

According to Reuters, while chipmakers and hardware providers faced steep sell-offs after leaders from Anthropic and OpenAI urged a pause in frontier AI advancement, software stocks bucked the broader tech trend and climbed higher in early trading. Market participants viewed the potential deceleration in AI infrastructure spending as a catalyst to rotate back into traditional enterprise software names like ServiceNow, Salesforce, and Adobe. 

Investors have increasingly feared that unchecked AI progress could yield autonomous agents capable of bypassing traditional software interfaces entirely. A development freeze limits that threat. It also gives incumbent platforms breathing room to package AI as a feature within their own ecosystems, preserving their recurring revenue without the immediate risk of frontier models rendering their core software obsolete. 

Broadly, these SaaS companies are perceived as less vulnerable to a sudden halt in hyperscaler capital expenditures; instead, they offer steady recurring revenue streams and are positioned to benefit from a more deliberate, measured integration of existing AI tools into corporate workflows rather than a frantic, capital-intensive race for raw compute power.

The stock market overreacts to news, and big price drops can present good opportunities to buy high-quality stocks.

Among others, the following stocks were impacted:

• E-commerce Software company Wix (NASDAQ: WIX) jumped 10%. Is now the time to buy Wix? Access our full analysis report here, it’s free.
• Tax Software company BlackLine (NASDAQ: BL) jumped 5.5%. Is now the time to buy BlackLine? Access our full analysis report here, it’s free.
• Data Analytics company Amplitude (NASDAQ: AMPL) jumped 7.5%. Is now the time to buy Amplitude? Access our full analysis report here, it’s free.
• Hospitality & Restaurant Software company Toast (NYSE: TOST) jumped 4.6%. Is now the time to buy Toast? Access our full analysis report here, it’s free.
• Customer Experience Software company Sprinklr (NYSE: CXM) jumped 5%. Is now the time to buy Sprinklr? Access our full analysis report here, it’s free.

Zooming In On Wix (WIX)

Wix’s shares are extremely volatile and have had 44 moves greater than 5% over the last year. But moves this big are rare even for Wix and indicate this news significantly impacted the market’s perception of the business.

The previous big move we wrote about was 18 days ago when the stock gained 4.9% on the news that quarterly earnings and upbeat corporate commentary signaled that artificial intelligence is driving growth across enterprise software rather than threatening legacy business models. Shares across the enterprise software and software-as-a-service (SaaS) space advanced significantly following stronger-than-expected quarterly results from major technology firms. The sector-wide surge eased long-standing investor fears that artificial intelligence could disrupt traditional software platforms. Instead, quarterly reports and executive remarks highlighted that generative AI is acting as a catalyst for software adoption, allowing enterprise platforms to expand product capabilities and drive tangible monetization. This dynamic was vividly illustrated by recent results from Salesforce, CrowdStrike, and Okta. At Salesforce, AI-powered Agentforce and Slack offerings saw rapid growth, with Agentforce annual recurring revenue (ARR) reaching $1.5 billion. Furthermore, Slackbot, the company's AI assistant, became the fastest-adopted AI product in company history, surpassing 1 million active users just five months after launch. In the cybersecurity space, AI is simultaneously creating new threat vectors and driving urgent defense spending. CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz attributed recent momentum to “the world’s adoption of AI rapidly expanding the attack surface,” which has intensified the need for advanced security solutions and driven increased uptake of AI security modules. Similarly, Okta reported that its new AI-focused identity offerings drove approximately 30% of new bookings during the quarter and increased average contract values by roughly 40% when included in deals. The broader rally, highlighted by a 20% surge in Salesforce, underscores growing market confidence that established enterprise software vendors are well-positioned to capture massive economic value from the ongoing deployment of AI technologies.

Wix is down 16.5% since the beginning of the year, and at $84.33 per share, it is trading 54.2% below its 52-week high of $184.24 from September 2025. Investors who bought $1,000 worth of Wix’s shares 5 years ago would now be looking at only $392.62.

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