Twilio , a provider of cloud-based communications software, and Atlassian , which sells collaboration tools, each saw pops of well over 20% on Friday after reporting quarterly results. "There was a misplaced thesis over the past 6 months that somehow agents would be bad for certain software categories. RBC's Hedberg said sentiment was so bad in the first quarter that clients didn't even want to discuss software. "They just didn't feel like it was worth their time to meet with software companies back then, and that was even high-quality companies." That attitude has become a big problem for venture-backed software companies that raised money at hefty valuations in the pre-AI era and are now trying to figure out what's next for them.