Intercom wiped out $60M in revenue to rebuild around AI — and it's working

In early 2026, Intercom quietly crossed a major milestone: more than $400 million in annual recurring revenue. But the number itself wasn’t the real story. According to CEO Eoghan McCabeDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, the surprising part was the company’s sudden return to rapid growth — something increasingly rare among mature SaaS firms.

Just three years earlier, Intercom’s trajectory looked very different. Growth was slowing sharply as the easy-money era faded and many software companies struggled to justify their traditional subscription models. Around the same time, the release of ChatGPT forced the industry to confront a new possibility: if AI could generate code and handle workflows autonomously, much of the software built over the past two decades might become less valuable.

McCabe concluded that incremental change would not be enough. Instead, Intercom chose a far more radical strategy — what he describes as “creative destruction.” Rather than protecting its existing helpdesk and workflow products, the company began aggressively replacing them with AI agents. The centerpiece of that effort was Fin, an automated service agent launched in 2023 that can resolve customer support requests without human intervention.

The shift was sweeping. Intercom redirected most of its research and development resources toward Fin, expanded its AI team from a handful of engineers to dozens of researchers, and even changed how it priced its software. Instead of charging mainly for seats or software access, the company introduced outcome-based pricing tied to what the AI agents actually resolved. The move intentionally cannibalized parts of its existing business, wiping out roughly $60 million in revenue as customers transitioned to the new model.

For now, the gamble appears to be working. Fin is approaching $100 million in revenue and is growing several times faster than the rest of the company. Combined with Intercom’s legacy products, the new AI business has pushed overall growth rates sharply higher at a time when many established SaaS companies are slowing.

McCabe argues that the lesson extends far beyond Intercom. In a world where AI agents can perform tasks once handled by traditional software tools, he believes many SaaS companies will face the same choice: disrupt their own businesses before someone else does. The companies that survive, he suggests, will be the ones willing to dismantle the products and strategies that made them successful in the first place.

Source:
Fin/ideas

A.M.