Sitecore CEO: AI Must Be Embedded in Marketing Software, Not Sold Separately
Sitecore has shifted its focus from generative AI to what executives call the "agentic web," where AI agents plan, execute, and optimize marketing tasks across channels. CEO Eric Stine said the company's product strategy hinges on one principle: AI is not an add-on.
"Our product isn't a product without AI in it," Stine said. The company abandoned its seat-based pricing model a year ago in favor of consumption-based pricing tied to content interactions - whether those interactions come from humans or machines.
Where Marketers See Real Returns
Sitecore customers are finding measurable ROI in three areas: discovery, connection, and conversion. The shift stems from how consumer behavior itself has changed. Shoppers now compare products in AI summaries rather than sponsored search results. They use ChatGPT and Perplexity to evaluate financial products and healthcare providers. B2B buyers generate and vet RFPs with Claude.
Marketers must adapt by ensuring customers land on relevant content that supports the decision already being made inside an AI system. This requires orchestrating localization, translation, account-based marketing, and context-aware content at scale.
"The internet is being rewritten for machines," Stine said. "Machines will interpret it, but humans will still experience it - so the last mile still belongs to the marketer."
The SaaS Doomsday Narrative Misses the Mark
Industry observers have predicted that AI will kill traditional software-as-a-service companies. Stine disagrees. He points to history: when SaaS replaced on-premises software 12 to 14 years ago, the software industry didn't disappear - it transformed.
Enterprise software companies that survive will be those with deep domain expertise. They'll embed AI into workflows rather than pretend generic AI models can replace specialized processes.
"I don't think that marketers, CIOs or anybody else in your business wants to vibe-code an edge case for account-based marketing any more than they want to vibe-code an edge case around employee relations, supply chain management or finance," Stine said.
He cited Bain & Company data showing that enterprise software sales capacity grew 11% to 23% annually for nearly a decade. Three years ago, that growth stopped - not slowed, but stopped. The industry had built enough products to meet demand.
Now comes the opportunity for reinvention. "We rewrote the world from hardware to software. We rewrote the world from software to SaaS, and now we're rewriting the software for AI," Stine said.
AI Is Disruptive, But Not Uniquely So
When asked whether AI represents a bigger disruption than cloud computing or SaaS, Stine said no. AI is part of a longer continuum that includes the factory, the airplane, the car, the television, the personal computer, and the internet.
Adoption is happening faster - one financial services leader told Stine that AI adoption is occurring at five times the pace of SaaS adoption. But speed doesn't change the fundamental pattern.
"Disruption is cyclical," Stine said. "You have to move with the times, but you also have to recognize that disruption is cyclical."
That recognition doesn't mean ignoring the technology. It means building the next generation of solutions on it rather than betting on legacy approaches.
Pricing Follows Value, Not Seats
Sitecore's move away from seat-based licensing reflects a broader shift in how the company measures value. If a marketer creates content that both humans and machines want to read and act on, Sitecore considers that value delivered.
The consumption-based model aligns the vendor's incentive with the customer's success. More relevant content retrieval means more value to the customer and more revenue for Sitecore.
For marketers looking to adopt AI for Marketing, understanding how AI Agents & Automation fit into existing workflows matters more than chasing the latest tool.
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