Curative dropped a $600K-a-year Salesforce contract for an AI-built CRM made in two months

Curative is a US health insurance startup that uses AI agents, including one for negotiating contracts with doctors and other providers.

AI-built internal software is now good enough and cheap enough to replace paid SaaS, so Curative cancels vendors and spends the money on AI agents instead.

On the 20VC with Harry Stebbings podcast, CEO Fred Turner was asked whether he believed software-as-a-service was dying and said yes, citing the contracts Curative was cancelling. He said it had recently cancelled its Salesforce contract because it had an internal CRM that was vibecoded.

Turner said the Salesforce bill was $600,000 a year, the replacement took two months to build, and Curative plans to cut about 80% of its SaaS spending this year, spending on AI instead. He said Anthropic costs had risen about 6x every month for six or seven months from a base of tens of thousands of dollars to millions a month, and that maintaining self-built tools is one of the hardest parts. A Curative spokesperson said it still uses Slack.

Per Turner, the agent Gwen costs about $70 per provider contract against $1,500-2,000 before AI, so Curative plans to do 10 times as many contracts this year and then try 20 times. Salesforce told Business Insider 150,000 companies still use its platforms and highlighted its healthcare compliance features.

Turner believes AI coding tools let companies replace SaaS they once bought, and says he sees the contracts Curative is cancelling.

The CRM replacement cost two months of build time against a recurring $600,000 annual bill.

Turner says AI agent economics hold even if Anthropic quintupled its prices, because contract negotiation costs drop from $1,500-2,000 to about $70.

Cheaper contracts let Curative plan 10 times as many this year, so volume rather than headcount drives its scale.

Replacing a vendor with an in-house AI-built tool changes the cost line from licences to AI usage and maintenance; the saving only holds if that new bill is watched.

As of 2026-07-21 Curative has cancelled its Salesforce CRM, plans to cut about 80% of SaaS spend this year and says its Anthropic spend is in the millions a month. Turner said maintenance of in-house tools is hard. Salesforce disputes the broader SaaS-decline thesis; all Curative figures come from its CEO.