The B2B software program world is altering quick, and AI is on the heart of all of it. It’s reshaping how companies function, how software program is purchased and bought, and the way all of us get work performed.
At G2, we’re seeing this firsthand with an explosion of AI classes, distributors, merchandise, and options in our market. In actual fact, we’ve added over 2,000 AI merchandise over the previous yr alone!
AI has disrupted the shopping for journey — beginning with analysis and discovery
However AI isn’t simply affecting innovation. It’s disrupting each stage of the software program shopping for journey, together with the way in which companies go to market to adapt to new shopping for behaviors and preferences. Findings from our G2’s 2025 Purchaser Conduct Report, based mostly on survey responses from over 1,000 software program consumers globally, underscore this shift.
Take, for instance, how AI has modified the way in which consumers conduct analysis. As of April 2025, practically 8 in 10 respondents stated AI search has modified how they conduct analysis, with 29% noting they now begin analysis via giant language fashions (LLMs) extra typically than Google. I think these percentages have grown since then and can proceed to rise.
Nevertheless, AI search isn’t solely related for the analysis section. We additionally see it taking part in an important function in influencing brief lists and buying selections. GenAI chatbots and peer assessment websites are among the many most influential sources, rating above market analysis companies and vendor web sites.
5 keys to profitable within the age of AI
So, what does it take to win on this AI-first world? Based mostly on what we’re observing out there and the way AI is quickly evolving, I see 5 key areas the place companies must focus.
Corporations prioritizing these 5 core areas will thrive within the age of AI.
1. Guarantee your product is discoverable for consumers by way of conventional search engine optimisation and now GEO (AI-driven discovery)
As talked about earlier, consumers’ search strategies have modified. Along with displaying up with conventional search engine optimisation techniques, it’s essential to additionally optimize for Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) to point out up within the LLMs consumers are more and more beginning their searches on. We’re making this a precedence at G2, too – rating among the many prime 10 sources on each ChatGPT and Perplexity, in keeping with a current Profound examine.
2. Allow purchaser self-service with AI assistants
We’ve lengthy seen the shift to the self-serve shopping for journey, the place consumers conduct analysis on their very own accord and arrive at a call earlier than they’ve even engaged a salesman. Whereas distributors ought to already be enabling this via customer-voice-led content material on assessment websites like G2, they will take it a step additional with AI. Automating components of the client journey can foster a extra streamlined expertise, whereas creating efficiencies on your prospects and your group.
3. Embed AI to streamline US and workflows throughout your product suites
Our analysis exhibits that half of enterprise consumers switched to software program with higher AI. With the rise of AI-first startups, consumers have extra choices than ever and can churn for higher AI performance. This implies extra competitors and a better threat of buyer churn for present distributors. It additionally means there’s an enormous alternative to infuse AI into your options — enhancing present merchandise by making them quicker, extra real-time, and extra environment friendly.
4. Ship quicker ROI with AI help
AI isn’t only for innovating your merchandise, it can be leveraged for buyer onboarding, assist, and success. By optimizing, and higher but, automating these essential processes, you may speed up the worth prospects get out of your software program. With rising competitors and the necessity to ship worth and ROI as rapidly as potential, inserting AI into these buyer processes to remove friction is a no brainer.
5. Embrace utilization and outcome-based pricing for AI
Generative and agentic AI are reshaping pricing fashions, difficult the normal SaaS paradigm of seat and module-based annual subscriptions. As consumers count on AI to drive automation and brokers exchange human labor, prospects need extra versatile fashions aligned with their ROI based mostly on their precise utilization and enterprise outcomes.
In response to our 2025 Purchaser Conduct Report findings, multiple in three consumers now favor variable pricing fashions. Some pay based mostly on API calls, others are billed by agentic actions, and a rising phase opts to pay strictly for measurable outcomes.
How G2 is main the way in which
Because the world’s largest software program market, G2 goals to be probably the most trusted knowledge supply within the age of AI for informing software program shopping for selections and go-to-market methods. Let’s discover a few of our AI-powered improvements serving to us notice this imaginative and prescient.
With the introduction of G2.ai, consumers can start their software program search with a pure language immediate and uncover the very best match via an AI prompt-driven trade. This method accelerates the customarily tedious and complicated analysis course of, facilitating straightforward collaboration amongst colleagues.
Following our acquisition of unSurvey, we launched a brand new AI-powered conversational assessment assortment technique, making leaving a assessment as straightforward as any voice-to-text expertise — with an AI moderator guiding customers alongside the way in which to share their genuine suggestions. For consumers, this implies entry to deeper, extra significant insights to tell buying selections. For sellers, this implies better insights to enhance their product choices and expertise.
Additionally stemming from our unSurvey acquisition, AI-led customized market analysis will assist corporations acquire actionable insights via conversational AI-led interviews tailor-made to their particular wants, trade, purchaser persona, and extra. With this resolution, corporations can entry tailor-made, human-like insights in days—not months—with unique entry to respondent swimming pools of tens of millions of G2 customers and exterior panels.
Our new AI-assisted assessment assortment by way of buyer calls and conferences allows distributors to show buyer dialog transcripts into high-quality, pre-filled G2 critiques which are prepared for assessment, approval, and publication. This functionality eliminates the necessity for handbook reviewer outreach whereas decreasing the time required to submit a assessment, all whereas sustaining assessment high quality and bettering submission charges and pace.
As AI reshapes the B2B software program panorama, G2 is dedicated to empowering all the know-how ecosystem with the info and data required to realize strategic success and sustainable development. We’ll do that by providing a wealth of consumer insights and real-time knowledge that not solely deal with the wants of right now’s consumers, sellers, traders, and consultants but in addition anticipate the calls for of tomorrow.
Embracing what’s subsequent
For my part, the long run is one the place we’ve got shopping for brokers speaking to promoting brokers. Maybe sooner or later, even a fancy course of like selecting the right enterprise software program for your online business, and shopping for it, might be performed by brokers, virtually in actual time.
AI is really reshaping operational foundations, erasing deep-seated limits which have constrained development and impression for lots of of years. The way forward for software program is right here, and it’s powered by AI.
