Nvidia CEO Huang Dismisses Software Doomsday Fears as 'Illogical'

"AI replacing software? That's the most illogical idea."

Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia, made this remark at the recent Cisco AI Summit in San Francisco, directly rebutting concerns about the demise of the software industry.

"Whether human or robot, if asked whether to use tools or reinvent them, the answer is obviously to use them," Huang said. "AI innovation is focused on using tools, not inventing them, because those tools are already clearly designed."

His point: AI is not displacing software but driving greater adoption of well-built software products.

Markets, however, told a different story. When AI agents recently demonstrated capabilities in coding, document processing, and legal consulting, fears spread rapidly that software might become obsolete. Some declared it "an apocalyptic scenario for software companies." Share prices of even well-performing companies slid, as investors grew concerned about potential structural upheaval across the industry. The term "SaaSpocalypse" emerged to describe the panic.

The anxiety intensified after Anthropic unveiled "Claude Cowork." The AI tool demonstrated abilities ranging from organizing transaction statements into Excel spreadsheets and graphs to summarizing policy documents into presentations and comparing terms of service against regulations to suggest revisions. It appeared that a single AI tool could replace functions previously handled by legal, research, and document management software.

On screen, watching AI write code makes it look like a substitute.

But reality operates differently. Deploying a single AI model as a service requires data pipelines, model frameworks, computational optimization, and inference and deployment systems—more software, not less. Code volume is increasing, not shrinking.

"Even within Nvidia, adopting AI tools has freed up time for employees to focus on core competencies like semiconductor and computer system design," Huang said. AI operates on top of existing software tools rather than replacing them, he explained.

Moreover, AI has not eliminated jobs but reduced repetitive tasks, allowing workers to spend time on more important work. For companies, this means using software more extensively and deeply, not less.

Other executives share this view. Arm CEO Rene Haas called the software stock selloff "micro-hysteria." Michael Arougheti, CEO of Ares Management, said "the software sectors facing structural threats from AI are more limited than people think." Corporate AI adoption remains in early stages, and it is premature to view coding as a use case that dominates the global economy, they argued.

Huang's perspective is not that software is disappearing but that it will be used more deeply. AI is not a technology that completely replaces software—it is one that expands its utilization.