How AI is Really Changing SaaS From the CEO of Procore, co-CEO of Monday and Chair of HubSpot

"With AI, Procore is poised to help its customers do more with fewer resources. “There just aren’t enough people who know how to build data centers, bridges, and skyscrapers"

So recently we’ve done deep dives on the SaaStr pod with several of the top leading SaaS founders — and of course, asked their perspective on just where we are with AI in B2B SaaS today.

A few learnings:

#1. Tooey Courtemanche, Founder CEO of Procore, The $12B+ Leader in Construction SaaS: “AI Will Radically Change the Construction Industry. There Just Aren’t Enough People.”

Tooey believes that while AI is just being rolled out at Procore, it will quickly change the industry. He’s even hacking with DeepSeek himself now, pulling out his Python skills for first time in years.

The construction industry is infamous for being labor-constrained. With AI, Procore is poised to help its customers do more with fewer resources. “There just aren’t enough people who know how to build data centers, bridges, and skyscrapers,” Tooey explains. AI can help by automating repetitive tasks and improving decision-making through predictive analytics.

Procore isn’t looking to monetize AI separately—at least, not yet. “Our industry will unlock more budget for AI-driven insights once they see the impact on their bottom line.”

#2. Brian Halligan, Chair and Co-Founder of $40B HubSpot: “Both The Big Guys and The Startups Will Win.”

Brian is also a partner at Sequoia Capital now and sees the best of the best in AI start-ups. There’s no arguing with the disruption there. He just sees the best of both start-ups and Big Cos winning. He notes HubSpot like other leaders has the massive amount of customer data that makes much of B2B AI really work. As long as they continue to innovate, they should win as well.

Per Brian, on the AI revolution in B2B software, it’s the age-old ‘startups are innovating and racing to get distribution, and the bigger companies have distribution and are racing to innovate.’ The twist this time is the data is very hard for startups to acquire or accumulate. So it’s not just the innovation piece, but you need a proprietary data set to do something more meaningful with AI. Brian believes incumbent players like HubSpot and Salesforce have some key advantages:

1. Proprietary data access: “We’ve got the zoom data, the calling data, the email data…If you’re a startup breaking in and you want to do some amazing AI work, it’s tricky.”

2. Engineering resources: With thousands of engineers, companies like HubSpot can make substantial AI investments when they choose to

3. Existing distribution channels: While startups are racing to build distribution, incumbents already have it

However, the business model disruption around AI pricing remains a challenge for larger players to navigate.

#3. Eran Zinman, Co-CEO Monday: “Unlocking Unstructured Data is a Big AI Win Today”

Monday has begun to roll out AI across its customer base and has already seen 17,000,000 actions. The top use cases today? Reviewing 1000s of resumes. And being able to analyze large amounts of unstructured data, from invoices to PDFs and more. The nuts and bolts of B2B. That without AI, are almost impossible to query and analyze.

What All Three Think on Pricing for AI in SaaS

It’s early for all 3:

• Procore isn’t charging for AI yet

• Monday is including a basic amout of AI actions, but charging per use thereafter

• HubSpot is still experimenting:

There’s Just So Much Change

As Eran Zinmanco-CEO of Monday pointed out: “There’s just so much change today in AI. It’s so fast. And there’s still a lot of noise in B2B.”

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And come here from the best of the best on AI in B2B including the CEO of HubSpot, the CCO of Monday, the CEOs of Snowflake and Dropbox and CXOs of OpenAI, Databricks and so much more at 2025 SaaStr Annual, May 13-15 in SF Bay!