Investing.com — A new survey-based report headed by TD Cowen analyst Derrick Wood suggests artificial intelligence monetization is approaching an inflection point, with incumbent software vendors poised to benefit more than markets currently reflect.
The firm’s third report on the Productivity Suite market, based on a survey of 689 U.S. purchasing decision-makers, found GenAI adoption already widespread.
According to Wood, 92% of respondents use at least one of the top three vendors, Microsoft Copilot (70%), Google Gemini (55%) and OpenAI’s ChatGPT (53%), while companies deploy an average of 2.6 AI agent vendors each.
Despite high adoption, monetization remains low. But TD Cowen sees that changing, with 75% of respondents citing a positive ROI from AI agents, and 79% of Microsoft 365 users and 80% of Google Workspace users said they are somewhat or very likely to upgrade their suite subscriptions within the next 12 to 18 months.
The report is particularly constructive on enterprise SaaS vendors. Wood wrote that the data “paints a more favorable AI monetization picture than what’s being priced into stocks today, especially with Enterprise SaaS vendors.”
TD Cowen flagged Salesforce, ServiceNow and SAP as key beneficiaries, noting that horizontal AI agents, despite the lowest current adoption, carry the highest perceived ROI, with 58% of users citing a 3x or greater return.
Autonomous AI adoption is also set to accelerate sharply, with TD Cowen projecting deployment to more than double from 34% today to 77% by the second half of 2027.
On Microsoft specifically, TD Cowen raised its Microsoft 365 Commercial revenue CAGR forecast from approximately 13.5% to 15% through fiscal year 2030, now projecting $105.6 billion in revenue.
Related articles
TDCowen’s GenAI adoption survey is bullish for these stocks
These 2 stocks are best positioned to benefit from higher uranium prices: analyst
Wolfe Research outlines eight risks that could spark stock declines in 2026
