Software & App Development Trends: AI Pricing, Agent-Driven Dev & the Low-Code Wave
AI is no longer a feature bolted onto products — it's becoming the pricing model, the development workflow, and the investment thesis all at once.
Software buyers and builders are both navigating a fast-moving shift right now: AI is no longer a feature bolted onto products, it's becoming the pricing model, the development workflow, and the investment thesis all at once. Here are five developments from this week that matter if you're building, buying, or investing in software.
AI Is Now the Pricing Lever for Enterprise Software
Microsoft's new commercial Microsoft 365 pricing took effect July 1, bundling AI, security, and management capabilities directly into core tiers. It's a preview of where enterprise software pricing is headed broadly: vendors are using AI features as leverage to justify higher recurring costs, and buyers are being forced to evaluate which AI add-ons are actually worth paying for versus which are just markup.
AI Agents Are Becoming Standard Development Infrastructure
Gartner projects that 40% of enterprise applications will integrate task-specific AI agents by the end of 2026, up from under 5% today. Notably, most companies' first serious generative AI investment has gone straight into the coding workflow itself — meaning agent-driven development isn't an experimental trend anymore, it's fast becoming table stakes for competitive dev teams.
Investors Are Betting Big on AI Coding Tools
Anysphere, the company behind AI coding tool Cursor, has reached a $9.9 billion valuation on more than $500 million in annual recurring revenue. Cognition AI's revenue run rate grew from $37 million to $492 million in just twelve months following a $1 billion-plus raise — a 13x increase in a single year. These numbers are a strong signal of how much value the market now places on AI-accelerated software development.
Low-Code Is Eating a Growing Share of Custom Development
Gartner's widely cited projection holds that low-code tools will account for 75% of new application development by 2026, with 87% of enterprise developers already using low-code platforms in some capacity. For founders and product teams, the real question is no longer "should we consider low-code" but "which parts of our roadmap genuinely need custom-built software, and which don't."
Mobile App Revenue Keeps Climbing
Global mobile app revenue is projected to exceed $600 billion in 2026, and cross-platform frameworks like Flutter, React Native, and Kotlin Multiplatform have become the default choice for serious teams building for both iOS and Android. The economics continue to reward teams that can ship a consistent experience across platforms without doubling their engineering costs.
What This Means for You
Whether you're a founder deciding how to scope your next build, or a software company rethinking your pricing model around AI, the common thread is the same: the teams that win are the ones making deliberate, well-informed decisions rather than reacting to hype. If you're weighing build-vs-buy, custom-vs-low-code, or how to price AI into your own product, the decisions you make now will compound.
Dandora is a growth and execution partner for teams shipping software — strategy, brand, and engineering under one roof. We help you scope what actually needs custom code, choose the right stack for AI-assisted delivery, and ship products that hold up beyond the demo. Not another dev shop bolting on AI buzzwords: a partner that plans it, builds it, and ships it with you.