OpenAI's COO says if you're bullish on AI, you can be bullish on legacy software too

• Brad Lightcap said legacy software companies are working swiftly to adopt AI
• He added that these tech companies are moving as quickly as startups.
• His comments follow a brutal February sell-off of software stocks — or the "software apocalypse."

Legacy software makers are not sleeping behind the AI wheel, says OpenAI's chief operating officer.

On an episode of the "Uncapped" podcast released on Wednesday, Brad Lightcap said that the software sell-off may have been unwarranted because software companies are working hard to incorporate AI.

"A is: All of these companies are kind of as motivated and moving as quickly as any startup," he said. "B is: They've got amazing customer relationships."

Lightcap joined OpenAI in 2018 as its chief financial officer and transitioned to becoming the COO of the frontier lab in 2022.

On Wednesday's podcast, he said that, in OpenAI's experience working with these companies, he sees them rethinking the entire customer journey and exploring how they can serve additional markets with AI. He added that he would be concerned if this segment of companies, which includes giants like Salesforce, Microsoft, and Oracle, were "asleep."

"You've got everyone trying to run at the same speed, and I think that's exciting," he said. "I would say if you're kind of long AI, and long, startups, then it might even make sense, maybe, as a contrarian opinion, to be long legacy software, too."

Lightcap's comments follow a brutal sell-off of software stocks, dubbed the "software apocalypse." The sell-off started in early February, when already-wary investors panicked about Anthropic's new AI tool, which can perform a range of clerical tasks for people working in the legal industry.

Shares of firms including Salesforce, Snowflake, and Microsoft are down between 24% to 30% so far this year on concerns that companies can now use AI to build their own tools.

The OpenAI COO isn't the only one staying bullish on legacy players.

Dan Rogers, the CEO of work-management company Asana, which was punished especially hard in the sell-off, said that AI agents only make his company's software more attractive.

"With AI and AI agents, the coordination problem doesn't go away. It actually expands exponentially," Rogers told Business Insider's Alistair Barr. He added that work management systems need to be in place for humans and thousands of AI agents to work together.

Other tech leaders have weighed in on the potential savings from using AI or vibe coding your own software.

In a February podcast, Andressen Horowitz general partner Anish Acharya said that using AI to build resource planning or payroll tools would only save about 10% of costs.

"You have this innovation bazooka with these models. Why would you point it at rebuilding payroll or ERP or CRM," Acharya said, referring to enterprise resource planning and customer relationship management software.

At a February event, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang dismissed the sell-off.

"There's this notion that the tool industry is in decline and will be replaced by AI," Huang said, explaining how AI will use the tools software offers and not reinvent its own.

He added, "It is the most illogical thing in the world, and time will prove itself."