Fears of AI disruption recede, with US software stocks hitting new highs in 2026AI 颠覆担忧消退，美国软件股创 2026 年阶段新高

IT House, Oct. 7 (Xinhua) -- U.S. software stocks are hitting new highs in 2026, driven by a sharp increase in earnings expectations, according to Reuters; according to several analysts, fears that artificial intelligence will disrupt the entire software industry have been largely exaggerated. IT House noted that the S&P 500 Software and Services Index rose 1.3% on Tuesday, hitting its highest level since November 2025. Prior to that, the index recorded its largest quarterly gain since the second quarter of 2020 in the July-September quarter. Software companies such as Salesforce, ServiceNow, and Accenture have delivered strong financial results, and companies have reached various cooperation with AI laboratories, which has boosted the recovery of the sector since late June. Individual stocks in the cybersecurity sector performed particularly well. Shares of Crowdstrike, Fortinet, and Palo Alto Networks all gained triple-digit percentages this year; businesses have continued to invest heavily in cybersecurity since entering the AI era. “For many software companies, AI is more of an enabler than a disruptor,” said Adam Turnquist, chief cross-asset strategist at LPL Finance. We are now witnessing a trend shift: the software sector regaining its market-leading position. We believe that there is an opportunity for the software sector to outperform the semiconductor sector for some time to come. "The software sector index has risen 5% this year; and the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index, which brings together many US chip makers, has risen as high as 87.5% in 2026, although the current index has declined significantly from its previous high. According to data from LSEG, the software industry's expected annual revenue growth rate for 2026 has climbed to 20.6% from 13.8% at the end of March. From late January to the lowest point in April, the software sector had a cumulative retracement of more than 26%. At that time, there was a sell-off in the market, which was called“ SaaSpocalypse ”by the industry; investors were worried that enterprises could use artificial intelligence to develop applications in-house in the future, and no longer need to purchase external SaaS software. Now analysts say there is no actual evidence to back up the panic. Rebecca Wettemann, chief executive of Valoir, a technology research firm, said: “The collapse of the so-called SaaS industry has not arrived as quickly as some on Wall Street had previously imagined." She added that as AI moves from the pilot phase to implementation, software vendors' feedback to customers' purchasing needs continue to grow. Nonetheless, this new, high-speed, iterative technology is reshaping business models, and industry risk has not completely disappeared. Brian Mulberry, chief market strategist at Zacks Investment Management, believes that the real test of software stocks may come in the second half of 2027, when more data center computing power is put into production, and AI code generation tools may have a stronger impact on traditional software vendors.