SaaSletter - Best Software + AI Content Of H1 2026
With New Content from Exponential View, Benedict Evans, Coatue, and Benchmarkit
Our past curations of the best content (see 2025, 2H 2024, 1H 2024) have proven popular, so here are our selections for 1H 2026:
“State of AI” Reports - Best Of 1H2026
[NEW COVERAGE] “The state of the AI economy” - from Azeem Azhar + the Exponential View team. Released June 25, their 66 slides comprehensively cover AI while adding real insights + viewpoints.
[NEW] “AI eats the world” - from Benedict Evans (79 slides) with our 7 key excerpts here.
ICONIQ (h/t Vivian Guo and team) published their “State of AI: Bi-Annual Snapshot” report (44 slides, ungated). Their granular cost structure data led us to speculate:
Key message: There seem to be too few fixed costs to generate software economics.
Battery Ventures (h/t Dharmesh Thakker, Danel Dayan + co.) published their “State of AI” report (36 slides here). The report included important Battery frameworks for the impact of AI on business + financial models. For our newsletter audience, especially these pre → post AI GTM metrics:
AE Quota: $1.0-$1.2m → $1.2m-$1.5m
Conversion Rates: 20%-30% → 40%-50%
Attainment: 70% → 80%
OpenAI released their own “The State of Enterprise AI” (24 pages). The strong growth across Healthcare, Manufacturing, and Finance could serve as a counterargument to AI as being overly dependent on the Technology sector adoption.
Mayfield released a report on “Enterprise Agentic AI” (n=266, h/t Gamiel Gran)
Beyond report formats, we will call out these AI articles:
Jaya Gupta and Ashu Garg of Foundation Capital’s “AI’s trillion-dollar opportunity: Context graphs” may raise some solutions to the poor success rates covered in our “Is AI An Abject Disaster?”
“The Brute-Force Era of AI (and What Comes After)” - Dave Kellogg
“The Race to Own the Agentic Future” - Dave Yuan from Tidemark
"How AI Search is Rewiring B2B Software Buying" - from G2 / Tim Sanders + co (n=1,076 B2B decision makers)
Stratechery on “Agents Over Bubbles”
Beyond AI “State of _” Reports - Best Of 1H2026
Reports (a bit) less explicitly AI-oriented included:
[NEW COVERAGE] “Public Markets Update - May 2026” - 32 slides from Coatue
Redpoint (h/t Logan Bartlett, Adil Bhatia, and Lydia Day) released their annual “Market Update” (69 slides, our 13 key slide excerpts).
Avenir (h/t Jared Sleeper + Hannah Bao + co) published their excellent “Future of SaaS”- our excerpts here
a16z (h/t David George + co) released their “State of the Markets” - our excerpts here
Benchmark Reports - Best Of 1H 2026
[NEW COVERAGE] Ray Rike + Benchmarkit released their flagship benchmark report (n=342). Our overall take: “fits with "maturing growth industry" theme, with signs of greater efficiency... but concerning retention trends for "legacy" vendors in an AI-world” - and slide excerpts here.
Related: Emergence Capital also released their “Beyond Benchmarks” report that builds upon their work with Benchmarkit
A staple of our reading and coverage: Fullcast x Pavilion 2026 GTM Benchmarks (n = $78 billion of sales opportunities), which warranted a newsletter edition AND a podcast with Guy Rubin of Fullcast:
FULL EPISODE: VIDEO | AUDIO: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | All Platforms
More GTM resources:
Scale Venture Partners (h/t Mark Gustaferro + Craig Rosenberg), in partnership with Ray Rike and Benchmarkit, released their GTM Benchmark interactive database.
We further analyzed their data to examine points of separation, meaning where the “best of the best” differentiate themselves from the median company. More in this edition, including a 7-page downloadable GTM benchmarking resource:
We covered ICONIQ’s "2026 State of GTM" in this newsletter edition - TL,DR: largely positive trends:
Zylo (h/t Ben Pippenger + co) released their 2026 SaaS Management Index, covering $75b+ of SaaS spend (= massive read through on industry):
Our 1H 2026 Cloud Ratings Podcasts
Beyond our 2026 GTM benchmark episode with Guy Rubin, we were privileged to host:
“The AI Answer” - Tim Sanders - G2
SPOTIFY | APPLE | OTHER PODCAST PLATFORMS| VIDEO
“Where Vertical AI Wins” - Patrick McGovern - Bowery Capital
SPOTIFY | APPLE | OTHER PODCAST PLATFORMS| VIDEO
“Engineering Management in the Age of AI” - Karim Fanous
SPOTIFY | APPLE | OTHER PODCAST PLATFORMS| VIDEO
About Cloud Ratings
In mid-2024, we announced a research partnership with G2 - more here:
with this slide showing how our G2-enhanced Quadrants (like our recent Sales Compensation Software) release, this business of software newsletter you are reading, our podcasts, and our True ROI practice area all fit within our modern analyst firm:
