>that companies would rather pay someone to solve their problems than solve them themselves.

Are they not able to just engage AI to solve those problems now? E.g. this morning I saw an app that did something interesting to me for $20 a month. 20 minutes in Gemini and I had a functional app that replicated the behavior. SaaS are more complex but give me a small team and a couple months and we could replicate most any of them.

Equity markets both private and public are mangled today, for a wide range of reasons which I wont get into.

Financial performance e.g. revenue is what counts right now as any hard-evidence.