Language Model UIs Threaten to Disintermediate Apps

Public software suppliers and private asset firms such as Blue Owl or Ares Capital now face investor turbulence caused by concerns about the impact of language models on enterprise software. 

The enterprise software segment of the market has lost about 30 percent of its value over the past three months or so, for example. And private investment firms that have moved into software as a service find investors questioning the stability of dividends that typically fuel buying of such assets. 

For decades, software value was exemplified by the Graphical User Interface humans used to interact with data.

As language models  become the "front-end" of the enterprise, they threaten to hollow out traditional apps,  as the AI query box becomes the primary interface where work actually happens, with the value of the traditional apps shifting to the the backend database functions. 

When a user can type, "Find all overdue accounts in the Northeast and draft personalized follow-up emails," they bypass the customer relationship management app. 

That same substitution arguably challenges many other enterprise app functions, in at least some instances and for some use cases. 

Traditional App Category	Legacy UI Workflow	LLM/Agentic Substitution
Business Intelligence (BI)	Navigating complex filters, SQL queries, and static dashboards.	Conversational Analytics: "Show me a chart of Q3 churn by region compared to last year."
CRM / Sales Tools	Manual data entry, lead scoring menus, and email template selection.	Autonomous Sales Ops: "Draft a follow-up for the ACME lead based on our call notes yesterday."
HRIS / Onboarding	Employee portals with nested forms for benefits and documentation.	Employee Concierge: "I need to update my 401k and check my remaining PTO."
IT Service Mgmt (ITSM)	Filing tickets, selecting categories, and waiting for manual routing.	Self-Healing Desk: "My VPN is down; run the standard reset and let me know when I can reconnect."
Project Management	Moving cards on a board, manual status updates, and Gantt chart shifts.	Project Orchestrator: "Update the project timeline based on the delay in the design phase."
ERP / Finance	Reconciling line items across spreadsheets and procurement modules.	Agentic Finance: "Match these 50 invoices to their purchase orders and flag any discrepancies."

Some might argue that the application software suppliers most affected include vendors whose apps primarily add a user interface to someone else's model.

When the underlying "infrastructure" (the model) begins to support app-layer functions, the value of apps that merely "pass through" that intelligence drops close to zero.

Writing and grammar tools were among the first to be hit. Grammarly, Jasper, Copy.ai, and specialized "AI essay or email" writers are in this category.

When your operating system can proofread, rewrite, and change the tone of an email directly in the text box, why do you need a third-party tool?

So basic creative writing and editing are no longer "premium" products; they are "hygiene features" of the operating system.

The second category at risk are "aggregation" layer suppliers including traditional travel aggregators such as Expedia and Booking.com; basic SEO-driven content sites, and "Search-as-a-Service" tools.

These companies built business moats based on human-centric search friction. When an AI agent can be a substitute, the value of a user-friendly "comparison portal" evaporates.

Headshot generators, stock photo sites, and simple "background remover" apps likewise are being replaced by features integrated directly into messaging and design suites as well as language models. 

So which firms and apps are more safe? Those which have access to private sources of key data; apps that “own” customer data and apps offering key regulatory compliance features. 

Defensibility Pillar	Description	Example of a "Safe" Company
The Data Loop	Do they have data that only they can access (and that isn't on the public web)?	Glean (internal corporate knowledge graphs) or Bloomberg (proprietary financial data).
The System of Record	Is the company where the "final truth" of a business resides?	Salesforce (Agentforce). They own the customer data; an AI model is useless without being "grounded" in that specific record.
Regulatory Moats	Does the app operate in a space where "safety" and "compliance" are harder than the "intelligence"?	Veeva (Life Sciences) or specialized legal AI platforms that handle chain-of-custody and HIPAA compliance.

The threat is often not so much outright and full replacement, but a diminution of sales volume. If an AI agent can perform the work of five junior analysts using a specific tool, the enterprise requires fewer "seats" or licenses.

The “brand value” implications also exist. When the user never logs into the actual app, but only uses the query box, the app loses its "stickiness." 

Also, as AI automates code generation, enterprises are able to build custom, lightweight "wrappers" over their own data.