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The conversation around AI-native services.

The essays, theses, and reporting shaping the category — outcome pricing, AI in delivery, and the firms rewriting what professional services looks like. Curated by the Ferris team.

Thesis · Mar 2026

Why AI-Native Services, and Why Now

The category manifesto: why AINS will be a defining business model of the AI era, and why the window is open now.

Emergence Capital

Playbook · Mar 2026

The AI-Native Services Playbook

The 9-part operational guide — pricing, delivery, Mirage PMF, and the north-star metrics that separate AI-native from AI-adjacent.

Emergence Capital

Essay · Apr 2024

The Death of Deloitte

The origin essay that named the opportunity — and earned a cease-and-desist from Deloitte for the trouble.

Emergence Capital

Thesis · 2025

Services: The New Software

Sequoia's landmark argument that the next trillion-dollar company may be a services firm run on AI.

Sequoia Capital

Thesis · 2024

Service-as-Software

The $4.6 trillion framing: AI companies leading the transition from software-as-a-service to service-as-software.

Foundation Capital

Essay · Aug 2024

Input Coffee, Output Code

"Software becomes labor." Why the economic prize moves from IT budgets to labor budgets — many trillions a year.

a16z

Analysis · Sep 2025

AI Is Changing the Structure of Consulting Firms

HBR on the shift from the leverage pyramid to smaller, AI-native 'obelisk' teams inside consulting.

Harvard Business Review

Essay · Mar 2026

Investing in Treeline

The thesis for AI-native IT services: 40,000+ legacy MSPs in a $6T market, ripe for AI-native delivery.

a16z

Article · Ongoing

The Lean AI Leaderboard

Revenue per employee at AI-native product companies — the sibling metric this leaderboard adapts for services.

Lean AI

Found something we missed? Send it to data@ferrisai.com and we'll consider it for the list.