Today, two very different stories played out on opposite sides of the world — and they're telling the same thing.
In Doha, Web Summit Qatar closed its third and most successful edition. Over four days, 30,274 participants from 127 countries gathered to talk about the future of technology. Nearly 1,000 investors showed up — a 27% increase over last year. More than 1,637 startups pitched, 38% of them founded by women. Seventy-seven memorandums of understanding were signed between Qatari entities and global technology companies. And startups present at the summit collectively raised $205 million in recent funding, with $125 million of that in AI and machine learning alone.
In New York, the S&P 500 software and services index fell for its sixth straight session. Software stocks have shed roughly $830 billion in market value since January 28. Bloomberg called it the biggest AI-driven selloff since ChatGPT launched three years ago. Reuters reported investors calling it "software-mageddon." HubSpot is down 39% this year. Figma has dropped 40%. Salesforce and ServiceNow have each lost about a quarter of their value.
These aren't contradictory signals. They're complementary ones. The capital is flowing toward AI infrastructure, AI-native companies, and enterprises that are integrating AI into how they work. It's flowing away from businesses that haven't yet answered a fundamental question: how does AI change what we do?
Why the Selloff Isn't About Fear — It's About Clarity
The narrative on Wall Street has been dramatic. Headlines describe panic, capitulation, investors telling their brokers to "get me out." But underneath the volatility, something more interesting is happening: the market is sorting enterprises into two categories.
The first category includes companies that are embedding AI into their products, their workflows, and their customer experience. Box CEO Aaron Levie — whose company has fallen 17% this year despite strong fundamentals — described this as "the most exciting moment we've ever had" in the company's 20-year history. ServiceNow CEO Bill McDermott, after reporting healthy quarterly results, said his platform serves as the "semantic layer that makes AI ubiquitous in the enterprise." These leaders see AI as an amplifier, not a threat.
The second category includes companies where AI is seen as something that happens to them — an external disruption they need to defend against rather than an internal capability they're building. The market is punishing this posture, sometimes fairly and sometimes excessively. JPMorgan noted that many of these companies have been "sentenced before trial," with valuations compressed before any actual revenue impact has materialized.
For enterprise leaders outside the software industry, the lesson is clear: it doesn't matter what sector you operate in. The market — and increasingly, your customers and partners — will start sorting every business by the same criteria. Is AI something you're integrating, or something you're watching?
What the Smartest Companies Are Doing Right Now
Across the conversations we had at Web Summit Qatar this week, and across our own client engagements, a consistent pattern is emerging among enterprises that are using AI effectively. It comes down to three moves.
1. They're Starting With Workflows, Not Technology
The most successful AI implementations don't begin with a model selection or a platform evaluation. They begin with a specific question: which workflows consume the most time, produce the most errors, and deliver the least strategic value?
For one of our financial services clients, the answer was document processing — thousands of invoices, contracts, and compliance forms handled manually each month across three languages. For a logistics company, it was customer communication — hundreds of calls per day that required emotional nuance and real-time decision-making. In both cases, the AI solution was shaped by the workflow, not the other way around.
This approach works because it keeps the focus on measurable outcomes. When you automate a specific process, you can quantify the time saved, the errors eliminated, and the cost reduced. When you deploy "AI" as a general initiative, you end up with pilots that don't scale and investments that are difficult to justify.
2. They're Building Integration, Not Replacement
One of the key insights from this week's selloff is that AI doesn't need to replace existing software to transform how enterprises operate. Constellation Research noted that the selloff reflects concerns about profit compression rather than wholesale replacement. Analyst Rolf Bulk at Futurum Group pointed out that companies running mission-critical enterprise workloads still have what he called a sustained "right to earn" — their data and workflow integration are too deep to simply swap out.
The enterprises getting the most value from AI right now are the ones connecting AI capabilities to their existing systems through integration layers like MCP — not ripping and replacing their software stack. They're adding intelligent document processing on top of their existing ERP. They're deploying voice AI that connects to their existing CRM. They're building agentic workflows that operate within their current security and governance frameworks.
This is where the real advantage compounds. Every integration creates data that makes the next integration smarter. Every automated workflow frees capacity for work that requires human judgment. The enterprises building this integration layer now will have structural advantages that are increasingly difficult for competitors to replicate.
3. They're Making Adoption the Product
The most overlooked factor in enterprise AI is adoption. Gartner has estimated that up to 85% of AI projects fail to deliver intended results, and the primary reason isn't technology — it's that teams don't use the tools effectively.
The companies winning at AI integration treat adoption as a first-class problem. They invest in hands-on training. They build clear documentation. They provide ongoing support that evolves as the AI capabilities mature. They understand that a perfectly deployed AI system that nobody uses is worth exactly zero.
At Web Summit Qatar, this theme came through repeatedly — from startups building AI solutions tailored for Arab audiences to enterprise leaders discussing how they're embedding AI literacy into their organizational culture. The technology is available. The question is whether your team can use it.
"The trillion-dollar selloff isn't a signal that AI is dangerous. It's a signal that AI integration has become the defining competitive advantage — and the market is finally pricing that in."
What Web Summit Qatar Told Us About What's Next
The closing day of Web Summit Qatar was all about startups — and the quality of what's being built in this region is remarkable. The PITCH competition featured AI-powered solutions, sustainable agriculture technology, and innovations in consumer products. Plantaform, a Canadian agri-tech company, took the top prize.
But the bigger signal was in the numbers. The 77 MoUs signed during the summit represent real commitments between Qatari institutions and global technology companies. The 300+ companies registered through the Qatar Financial Centre represent new businesses being established in the Gulf. The 10-year residency program for entrepreneurs and executives, announced by Qatar's Prime Minister at the summit opening, represents a structural incentive for talent to build here.
For enterprises in the region, this means the ecosystem around you is maturing rapidly. The AI partners, the infrastructure, the talent, and the regulatory frameworks are coming together in real time. The companies that engage with this ecosystem now — that build their AI integration layer while the partnerships are forming and the infrastructure is going live — will be positioned to move faster than anyone who waits.
The Practical Takeaway
The software selloff will stabilize. Markets always overshoot in both directions, and many of the companies being sold off today have fundamentals that don't justify the decline. But the underlying shift won't reverse.
AI integration is no longer a "nice to have" or a "future initiative." It's the capability that determines whether your enterprise is in the category of companies building the future or the category of companies being disrupted by it.
The good news: you don't need to transform everything at once. Pick one workflow. Automate it end-to-end. Measure the results. Build from there.
The enterprises that start today — even with a single process — will have a compounding advantage over every competitor that's still waiting for the perfect moment to begin.
That moment is now.