Latest updates for ANZ sales professionals
Every major software company has printed lower growth rates each year since 2021. Salesforce went from 25% to 8%, Snowflake from 106% to 24%. The culprit is not AI replacing software yet. It is simpler: CIOs are reallocating finite budgets to foundation model providers, and traditional software vendors are taking the hit.
Amazon leads 2026 tech layoffs with 16,000 cuts attributed to AI efficiency. Reality check: Goldman Sachs data shows AI threatens 2.5% of US jobs, and workers in AI-exposed roles show no higher job loss rates yet. The automation narrative is running ahead of the evidence.
Australia's financial regulator surveyed 1,227 18-28 year olds. Two-thirds use social media for investment decisions, one in five rely on AI tools, and 52% trust finfluencers. ASIC Commissioner Alan Kirkland warns algorithms prioritise clicks over accuracy, putting young investors at risk.
Most B2B software companies are slowing down. Cloudflare just posted its best quarter since 2021: $614.5M revenue, up 34% year over year, with new ACV growing nearly 50%. The numbers point to aggressive sales hiring and territory expansion ahead.
New research from Anthropic tracks actual AI usage at work, not theoretical capability. Sales operations and research roles show higher exposure than client-facing positions. The data reveals which sales functions are already being automated versus which remain human-dependent.
Sydney's Canva ranks third for monthly AI web users behind ChatGPT and Gemini, according to A16Z analysis. The design platform outranks Claude, Perplexity, and Deepseek after expanding AI features through Magic Studio. Worth noting: this counts web visits, not revenue or enterprise adoption.
CrowdStrike posted its largest quarter ever: $331M net new ARR, 115% NRR at scale, $1.69B from Falcon Flex alone. Stock still traded down. The market is not impressed by strong growth anymore. It wants to see acceleration in the Age of AI, and CrowdStrike is guiding for more of the same.
Three major companies cut 6,300 jobs in one week, all citing AI as the reason. WiseTech CEO says manual coding is over. Block CEO says smaller teams with AI tools do more. Stock prices rose. This is not a blip, it is a signal.
Canva pushed back on reports that its Leonardo AI integration would trigger job losses. The company says it is not exploring redundancies as it folds the 150-person Sydney team into its AI roadmap. Worth noting: this comes as tech layoffs continue across ANZ, with AI integration often cited as the reason.
Afterpay parent Block is cutting 40% of its workforce, around 4,000 roles, citing AI productivity gains. CEO Jack Dorsey says most companies will follow. Shares surged 23% despite strong revenue growth. The move signals what could hit sales orgs across tech.
AI-native B2B startups are achieving $700k ARR per employee versus $610k for mature SaaS companies, driven by fundamentally different sales models. Traditional B2B vendors are loading up on CSMs while AI-natives deploy Forward Deployed Engineers. The gap is not just revenue efficiency: it is how these companies structure, scale, and compensate their go-to-market teams.
Stripe's 2026 annual letter reveals new startups are scaling dramatically faster, with companies hitting $10M ARR in 3 months doubling year over year. For sales teams, the competitive clock just reset: the startup founded 6 months ago might already match your ARR.