“SaaS is dead” isn’t what you’d expect to hear from an Australian venture capitalist, given the country’s VC scene built its reputation on SaaS investments, spinning out successful software companies for years.
Yet King River Capital partner Zeb Rice says exactly that.
With three decades of venture capital and entrepreneurship experience across the United States and Australia, Rice sees AI-driven “vibe coding” beginning to displace entire categories of software products and the specialist teams that built them.
But according to Rice, despite the death of SaaS, Australia remains competitive in the AI cycle due to its engineering talent, more grounded pricing, and the faster-than-expected spillover of AI activity from the United States.
The transmission from Silicon Valley is now nearly instantaneous, he told Capital Brief. Australian companies are building at comparable speeds, with more reasonable valuations.