Staggering Data: New AI-SaaS generates far more Revenue per Employee than Trad-SaaS
Above Image: The new wave of AI and Agentic Startups are hyper productive: Generating over $1M revenue per employee, from Lean AI Native Leaderboard
We’re on a path to seeing a solo-employee startup reach a $1B valuation, and companies generating over $100M in revenue per employee. This week, Saastr conference in San Mateo is happening, and we should compare and contrast the old way (Trad-SaaS) vs new (AI-SaaS).
Using my background as a former Industry Analyst, let’s review history and then do a current market analysis comparison of Trad Saas vs AI SaaS
Technology Eras:
I’ve been in tech through several major waves. Here’s what I’ve experienced:
DotCom Era
- Sky-high valuations with few having business models
- Lots of employees.
Web2 Era
- Valuations driven by user adoption, but revenue models came years later.
- Lots of employees.
Sharing / On-Demand Economy Era - Real revenue, but reliant on contractors and marketplaces.
- Lots of employees and contractors/affiliates
GenAI Era - Real revenue.
- Ultra-lean teams. In fact, many “employees” are AI agents.
These new AI-native startups follow “AI-First” principles: use AI before hiring humans, and maximize efficiency from day one. In fact, many of the “employees” are AI Agents —not humans. I was recently quoted in Fast Company on this very topic: AI coding tools could bring us the ‘one-employee unicorn’
Comparison: Revenue Per Employee (RPE) In Thousands of Dollars
AI Productivity Metric: Revenue Per Employee
Revenue Per Employee (RPE) is a key metric for evaluating a company’s productivity—and in the age of AI, it’s more important than ever. You can contrast traditional companies that are only now adopting GenAI with the newest AI-native startups. These startups not only build AI products but embed AI into their culture from day one, treating it as the first resource —before hiring additional humans.
Traditional SaaS in Revenue Per Employee in Thousands of Dollars per year
Note: It’s challenging to get accurate data in this ratio.
- $200K: Average traditional SaaS company, RPE
- $318K: HubSpot
- $479K: Salesforce
- $700K: Adobe
- $200K: Box
vs
New AI Startups “AI-SaaS” in Revenue Per Employee in Thousands of Dollars per year
- $12,500K: Midjourney, that’s $12.5M Revenue Per Employee
- $5,000K: Anysphere (who makes Cursor)
- $3,000K: Cal AI
- $2,500K: Mercor
- $2,500K: Chai Research
- $2,000K: Eleven Labs
- $2,000K: Stackblitz
- $1,818K: Fal AI
- $1,786K: Gamma
- $1,667K: Lovable
Analysis of Top 10 Lean AI Native Startups:
- A mere 24 employees on average across those ten AI-native startups.
- The top 10 AI companies have an average Revenue Per Employee (RPE) of $3.48M—significantly higher than the traditional SaaS average of $200K.
- Even with the outlier removed (Midjourney), the average RPE for companies #2 through #10 is still $2.47M—an order of magnitude greater than the traditional SaaS benchmark of $200K RPE.
Trad SaaS
$610,668 – Revenue Per Employee (RPE) average of the top 10 traditional SaaS companies. Data from Salesforce, Adobe, ServiceNow, Workday, Atlassian, Intuit, Shopify, and others. We excluded tech companies with a significant hardware component. On average, they have 21,000 employees.
Top 10 AI Startups
$3,477,056 – Revenue Per Employee (RPE) average of the top 10 Lean AI startups. This includes Midjourney and 9 others, with an average team size of just 24 employees.
9 Top AI Startups, Outlier Removed
$2,474,507 – Average Revenue Per Employee (RPE) across 9 Lean AI startups (so startups 2-9 excluding Midjourney). Average team size: 22.7 employees.
Comparative Analysis:
-Lean AI startups are dramatically outperforming traditional SaaS companies in terms of revenue efficiency.
-The top 10 AI startups average $3.48 million in revenue per employee—approximately 5.7× higher than the $610,668 average among leading SaaS firms.
-Even when excluding Midjourney, the most extreme outlier, the remaining AI startups still average $2.47 million per employee—about 4.1× higher.
Trad SaaS CEOs to employees: “We must shift to be an AI-first company”
We’re seeing a clear signal from tech leadership: AI isn’t a side project—it’s the core strategy. CEOs from Box, Shopify, Duolingo, and others have issued public mandates to make their companies “AI-First.” This means more than adopting tools—it’s a cultural and operational shift. Teams are expected to rethink workflows, products, and even org design around AI capabilities. The message is simple: adapt fast, or fall behind.
Learn more about the Lean AI Native Companies
Check out to the Top Lean AI Native Companies Leaderboard. Thanks to Henry Shi for curating it.
Hey, what about Apple, Microsoft, Google, Nvidia, or Amazon? That would be an apples-to-oranges comparison, as these companies have hardware businesses, sometimes operate retail divisions, rely on low-cost contractors for hardware production, and often obscure true headcount through extensive use of contracting firms. For now, we’re keeping the comparison SaaS to SaaS.
