API tooling companies are going to have a harder time squeezing every ounce of profit out of their products. With AI, it’s now very feasible to build your own API testing harnesses, documentation generators, or compliance/standards tools. The bar for “good enough” internal tooling has dropped significantly.
AI makes it harder for vendors to enshitify products by adding bloat, gating features, or inflating enterprise pricing, without losing customers. Teams can spin up internal alternatives quickly.
I’d argue this extends beyond API tooling. In our organization, we considered FinOps tools like Vantage or ProsperOps to manage cloud costs. They can get expensive. Instead, we piloted having Claude build a focused internal tool that delivers similar outputs but only includes the features we actually need. It turned out to be surprisingly effective. Not identical, but good enough without the enshitified enterprise price tag.
AI is shifting buy vs. build decisions. Vendors with real differentiation will be fine. Those relying on pricing complexity or inertia may struggle. They’ll need to treat their customers better instead of focusing solely on short term profit if they want to exist more than a few years.
API tooling companies are going to have a harder time squeezing every ounce of profit out of their products. With AI, it’s now very feasible to build your own API testing harnesses, documentation generators, or compliance/standards tools. The bar for “good enough” internal tooling has dropped significantly.
AI makes it harder for vendors to enshitify products by adding bloat, gating features, or inflating enterprise pricing, without losing customers. Teams can spin up internal alternatives quickly.
I’d argue this extends beyond API tooling. In our organization, we considered FinOps tools like Vantage or ProsperOps to manage cloud costs. They can get expensive. Instead, we piloted having Claude build a focused internal tool that delivers similar outputs but only includes the features we actually need. It turned out to be surprisingly effective. Not identical, but good enough without the enshitified enterprise price tag.
AI is shifting buy vs. build decisions. Vendors with real differentiation will be fine. Those relying on pricing complexity or inertia may struggle. They’ll need to treat their customers better instead of focusing solely on short term profit if they want to exist more than a few years.