AI isn’t just ‘another transition’ for software: Nextdoor CEO

Yahoo Finance Video and Brian Sozzi

Sun, February 22, 2026 at 4:00 AM GMT+9

In this video:

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As software developers rebound from AI fears that rippled through the industry and sparked a stock sell-off earlier this month, Nextdoor CEO Nirav Tolia joins Yahoo Finance Executive Editor Brian Sozzi to talk about the sector’s broad reaction to what has been dubbed the “SaaS-pocalypse” and how software companies are motivating employees to become more “AI [fluent].”

Catch Yahoo Finance’s full interview with Nirav Tolia.

To watch more expert insights and analysis on the latest market action, check out more Opening Bid.

Video Transcript

00:00 Speaker A

As an OG in in software, I’ve been doing this for uh, you’ve been doing this for a hot minute. What do you think about this software stock sell off and how fast, I mean AI is developing very fast and a lot of these software companies, I’m not including you in here, but a lot of these big name software companies are trading at valuations they haven’t traded at in eons and there’s just an expectation that AI is going to be like a rolling thunder through all these companies, they’re not going to exist in 10 years. I mean, I don’t subscribe to that, but like what’s your sense of it?

00:36 Speaker B

I was at dinner with some fellow CEOs last night in Silicon Valley and we were talking about exactly this topic and we called it SAS Apocalypse or SAS Mcgeddon, right? That’s what people are talking about because it’s true, these stocks have been hit really hard and everyone is wondering what will be the impact of AI? Not just on the SAS stocks, but on the industry in general. From my perspective, the impact is going to be huge. I don’t think AI is just another transition for our industry. I think it’s an absolutely revolutionary set of technologies that will change everything about our industry.

01:21 Speaker B

Who’s going to survive? I think the reason you’re seeing so many stocks get hit is because we don’t know yet who’s going to survive. And so it’s kind of an index of everyone is going to be hit and then we’ll slowly see who the winners are and then when they emerge, people will start buying those stocks. I’m very bullish about nextdoor’s chances because we have our own content, we have a proprietary network, we have a neighborhood graph of validated, verified users and you need those things in an AI-centric world. It’s unclear who will survive, but I think next door will certainly be one of them.

01:57 Speaker A

How is your CE CEO community implementing AI into their into their businesses? Are they using these tools? I talked to Bach and Lamb CEO. They sell contact lenses. I talked to him yesterday. For his employees to get their bonus, they have to get AI training. I mean is that starting to become more prevalent when you talk to folks?

02:22 Speaker B

My personal opinion is that AI fluency is the number one skill that every CEO needs to be thinking about today. And what I mean by fluency is you need to be using it yourself. You don’t know what the potential of AI is unless you use it. You don’t know how to best use AI unless you use it. So my big piece of advice to everyone out there who’s thinking about AI and wondering about how it’s going to impact their business is, you have to be using it. And I’m talking about not minutes a day, but hours a day. And when you start to use it, you start to understand its potential. And then I think you’ll probably end up in the same place I am, which is it is truly transformative.

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