Traditional Software Disrupted? Nvidia's Jensen Huang Discusses "Lobster" Industry Impact

Ask AI · OpenClaw compared to Linux and HTML, how will the software industry reshape?

On March 17, Beijing time, by midday, the Shanghai Composite Index fell 0.04%, the Shenzhen Component Index dropped 0.4%, and the ChiNext Index declined 0.58%. According to Wind data, the SaaS Index (8841493.WI) decreased by 0.37% at noon. Among the constituents, Hangyun Technology (300209.SZ) fell 5.83%, Capital Online (300846.SZ) dropped 3.25%, and Digital China (000555.SZ) declined 2.84%.

In terms of news, today at NVIDIA’s annual GTC conference, Jensen Huang mentioned that OpenClaw’s impact on the software industry is comparable to Linux and HTML—fundamental building blocks of the next-generation internet and software.

He believes that OpenClaw not only enables AI Agents to call tools, decompose tasks, and act autonomously but also signifies a reshaping of software architecture. Just as Linux supported servers and HTML powered web pages, the new architecture represented by OpenClaw will support the Agent ecosystem.

An attendee posted that it’s incredible that OpenClaw only launched last November, yet by March, it had its own dedicated segment in Huang’s keynote speech.

Huang Huang believes every company in the world needs an OpenClaw strategy, an Agent system strategy, because this is the new computing paradigm. Traditional SaaS will evolve into “Agentic as a Service (AaaS),” where the main difference is—SaaS sells tools, and employees operate functions through software; AaaS sells results, with AI Agents directly completing tasks using Agentic capabilities.

The ongoing debate about whether SaaS and the traditional software industry are “dead” has not stopped since Anthropic released related products in January, causing panic selling. Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale stated in an interview this month that low-end SaaS has no future—low-cost, high sales revenue relative to engineering investment, and no real moat—such SaaS companies will all be “eaten up.” Many software companies acquired by PE firms have very low technical barriers but spend far more on sales than R&D, and are now facing significant trouble.

In the domestic market, CITIC Securities’ research suggests that with the technological revolution brought by AI, future users may shift from buying tools to buying results. The business models of software companies may gradually evolve around charging based on “results” or “Token call volume.” Compared to the mature SaaS market in the U.S., most domestic software companies have historically relied on a basic standardized plus some customized business model. In the AI era, domestic software application companies can create value by developing native AI applications (AI-Native), which may also directly upgrade to result-based payment models.

Regardless of the specific technological path for upgrading traditional SaaS, security remains a fundamental requirement. At this GTC conference, NVIDIA introduced NemoClaw, a reference design that combines OpenClaw’s capabilities with NVIDIA’s Nemotron AI model to ensure enterprise application security and controllability.

OpenClaw developer Pete Sternberg stated that through collaboration with NVIDIA and the broader ecosystem, OpenClaw is building safeguards that allow anyone to create powerful and secure AI assistants.

(This article is from First Financial)