Katie Dayton

Thanks for listening.

Welcome to Tech News Briefing.

It's Tuesday, January 27th.

I'm Katie Dayton for The Wall Street Journal.

Today, after a long run as a Wall Street darling, software stocks are no longer flying as high as they once were.

And unsurprisingly, AI has a lot to do with it.

We find out what the future holds for the likes of Salesforce and ServiceNow.

Then, prediction market companies like Kalshi and Polymarket are using a legal loophole to allow wagering on sports outcomes everywhere, which has them going toe-to-toe with more traditional sports betting platforms.

We'll be taking a look at what this very modern heated rivalry means for the future of gambling.

But first, when artificial intelligence emerged as a force to alter the way business is done, many thought software companies would be some of the biggest beneficiaries of the tech.

But for investors, the vibe seems to have shifted.

Software stocks, including Salesforce, Adobe, and ServiceNow, have dropped by at least 30% since the beginning of last year.

Increasingly, investors are concerned about how the sector could be upended by AI companies.

WSJ reporter Sam Goldfarb has been keeping an eye on this trend and is here to tell us what's going on.

So, Sam, in a world where every company at some point said it was a software company, who are we talking about here?

Which stocks are appearing as some of the biggest losers in this software slump?

And how rapidly has this decline in interest taken place?

Has there been anything else going on in the economy or in the tech industry at large that might also have rocked software?

Where do analysts think the industry will go from here?

Are they predicting the end of software's reign as we know it?