Asana faces one of the biggest existential questions facing the software industry: Will generative AI make traditional SaaS tools obsolete?
Investors increasingly think the answer may be yes. Shares of work management companies have fallen more than 50% this year amid concerns that AI agents and chat interfaces could completely replace software applications like Asana.
Asana CEO Dan Rogers doesn’t rule out disruption, but argues that it ultimately gives the company an advantage.
“Using AI or AI agents does not solve the coordination problem; in fact, it magnifies the problem exponentially,” Rogers told me in a recent interview.
“Agentpalooza”
His suggestion: As companies deploy more AI agents, the need to coordinate work between humans and machines will become more complex, not less. Rogers described the potential future of AgentPalooza, where thousands of AI agents run amok within organizations. Without a system to manage these things, he argues, work becomes even more chaotic.
Asana’s answer is to reposition itself not as a traditional SaaS application, but as what Rogers calls an “orchestration layer” of humans and AI agents. The company’s core “work graph,” a data model that maps tasks, workflows, and responsibilities, is being reimagined as the infrastructure for this new hybrid human-AI workforce.
Arnab Bose, chief product officer at Asana, said that the early impact of AI within the enterprise actually increased workload complexity rather than reducing it.
“People are having to review longer and more complex documents,” he said, noting that AI-generated output requires more oversight.
Challenge to business model
Still, the business models that underpin SaaS are clearly changing. An early March memo from RBC Capital Markets highlights that pressure. Analysts maintained an “underperform” rating on Asana stock, citing slowing growth, intense competition and uncertainty around how AI will impact the business.
To accommodate this, Asana is moving away from seat-based pricing to a hybrid model that includes consumption-based fees tied to AI usage.
Rogers said Asana customers want two things: predictability and, where possible, to pay for the value generated and outcomes delivered.
“These two things can contradict each other,” he added. “But our objective is to meet our customers where they are on that continuum.”
The traditional human-based seat business model, where companies pay a monthly fee based on the number of employees using a SaaS product, is very predictable for customers and providers.
“What’s not great is that it’s a little hard to connect that with the value that’s being delivered,” Rogers said. “So, in reality, the world will probably be in a hybrid state for some time.”
The CEO explained that this will incorporate some of the “awareness” aspects of seat-based pricing, combined with a new structure that takes into account customers’ usage of AI tokens and the outcomes achieved by new AI-powered software services.
The new products, AI Teammates and AI Studio, are at least partially monetized in this way and are growing rapidly, with the AI products expected to contribute approximately 15% of Asana’s annual recurring revenue in fiscal 2027.
But Rogers acknowledged the industry-wide impact, saying, “AI-native companies tend to have lower gross margins,” hinting at structural changes that could weigh on SaaS profitability.
“I’m not scared.”
At the same time, Asana takes an open approach to its AI ecosystem. Rather than block the platform, the company is encouraging third-party agents, including competitors, to integrate into its systems.
How much of a risk is this, I asked, given that Anthropic’s commercial AI offerings have seemed to scare software investors a lot in recent months?
“I’m not scared at all,” Bose replied.
As customers use Anthropic and its Cowork service with Asana, Asana’s platform becomes even more useful over time. This is because it becomes the central system where work is tracked and coordinated, whether it’s by humans or tasks performed by fellow AI agents.
“This will make Asana easier to use and basically make it more ingrained into future workflows,” Bose added.
This strategy amounts to a bet that AI will reshape SaaS, rather than replace it.
persuade investors
So far, investors remain unconvinced. They are concerned that growth will slow, while some analysts question the size of the market and the company’s competitiveness.
Rogers argues that the market is simply in a “risk-off” phase as investors struggle to distinguish AI winners and losers across the software industry.
He added that while the future of software is highly uncertain due to the promise of AI models, investors are likely to broadly avoid the SaaS sector.
“I think it’s up to each company individually to explain how AI is a headwind or a tailwind,” he added. “And my belief is that over time, people will understand us as a coordinating layer for humans and agents to work together, and I hope that helps provide some clarity.”
The message may be starting to get through. RBC analysts upgraded Asana to “market perform” on Tuesday after meeting with company executives. “Management emphasized that Asana’s positioning as a coordinating rail for agents and workflows, whether first-party or third-party, differentiates it from other companies,” analysts wrote in a note to investors.
Sign up for BI’s Tech Memo newsletter here. Please contact us by email. abarr@businessinsider.com.