Curative CEO says AI-built CRM replaced $600K-a-year Salesforce contract

Curative CEO and founder Fred Turner said the company canceled its Salesforce contract because it now has an internal CRM that was “vibecoded.” He said the Salesforce contract cost Curative $600,000 a year and that the replacement was built in two months.

Turner framed the decision as part of a broader shift: Curative plans to cut about 80% of its SaaS spending this year and spend on AI instead. Curative did not respond to Business Insider’s request for comment.

The move speaks directly to the “SaaSpocalypse” concern: as AI coding agents improve, some companies may try to build bespoke tools rather than keep paying for software-as-a-service contracts. Business Insider reported that software providers including Salesforce, Asana, DocuSign, ServiceNow, Adobe, and Workday saw stocks drop by 20% to 50% amid those concerns.

For leaders watching the trend, the takeaway is not simply “replace SaaS.” It is to evaluate where custom AI-built tools can genuinely lower costs, improve volume, or fit workflows better than a vendor platform.

Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff has argued that demand remains strong and said Anthropic, the AI lab behind Claude, still uses Salesforce services. A Salesforce spokesperson told Business Insider that 150,000 companies still use its platforms and highlighted the company’s ability to handle complex healthcare patient regulations such as HIPAA.

The spokesperson also said Salesforce’s platform is built with “trust and governance at its core.” That response points to a key risk for companies building their own tools: cost savings must be weighed against governance, compliance, maintenance, and reliability.

Turner acknowledged that maintaining custom-built systems is “definitely one of the most challenging pieces.” He also said Curative’s Anthropic costs had risen sharply as the company found more uses for AI, growing 6x every month over six or seven months from tens of thousands of dollars to millions of dollars a month.

Still, Turner said Curative’s economics work in at least one case: Gwen, a bespoke AI agent used to negotiate contracts with doctors and other healthcare providers. He said contracts that previously cost an average of $1,500 to $2,000 now cost about $70 with Gwen, allowing Curative to pursue far more contract volume.