CRM, MSFT Are Already Weathering The 'SaaSpocalypse' — Now Jack Dorsey's Block Is Buzzing In With A New AI Rival

• Block recently launched Buzz, a free, open-source workspace collaboration tool for users and AI agents.
• Block shares have largely traded within a range for the past three years, though they have climbed notably since March this year.
• BMO Capital and Cantor Fitzgerald raised their price targets on XYZ stock earlier this week.

Jack Dorsey’s fintech firm Block, Inc. has entered a turf dominated by Microsoft and Salesforce with the launch of a new enterprise messaging and collaboration tool called Buzz earlier this week. 

The timing is not the most opportune. Notwithstanding a moderate rebound this month, software stocks have been under intense pressure since the start of this year over fears that AI would eat into demand for niche software.

Microsoft’s Teams and Salesforce’s Slack dominate the enterprise communications market, and investors are watching to see whether Block can gain traction with Buzz, beginning with adoption among its own enterprise customers.

Block shares have declined 3% so far this week, while Microsoft and Salesforce’s stocks are down 1% and 4.6% respectively. 

Block released Buzz on Tuesday. The platform is described as a free, open-source workspace meant to give users and AI agents a Slack-like service for collaboration.

What Is Buzz And How Is It Different From Slack, Teams?

In a blog post on X, Dorsey wrote that Buzz is a collaboration platform that combines chat, code, AI agents and workflows into a single workspace. Block said it is already using Buzz internally and plans to make it the foundation of the company’s future AI-powered development workflow.

Late Wednesday, Dorsey wrote an X article, describing Buzz as “an open source workspace that puts people, agents, conversations, and code on the same level, behind one cryptographic identity system.”

“We built it to reduce our dependency on slack and github, and we're sharing it so anyone can do the same,” he wrote.

Buzz is built on Nostr, the decentralized messaging protocol best known as a censorship-resistant alternative to Twitter and backed by Dorsey. 

At first, Buzz looks a lot like Slack or Discord, with channels, threads, direct messages, voice, media sharing, and code repositories. But the difference here is that it treats agents as full participants in these conversations, tech news site The New Stack wrote in its analysis, which also quoted Bradley Axen, Block’s head of AI capabilities. 

Buzz can work with any model and any popular agent harness, so teams can plug in Claude Code, Codex, goose (which came out of Block), or bring their own.

Block’s Stock Momentum

The move comes amid a growth period for Block, which operates the Square merchant payments platform, the Cash App consumer finance service, and offers services like buy-now-pay-later, music streaming, and Bitcoin products.

Shares have largely traded within a range for the past three years, though they have climbed notably since March this year. In recent months, Block has sharpened its focus on profitability and AI, announced sweeping workforce reductions in February, and raised its full-year gross profit outlook after reporting stronger-than-expected first-quarter results in May.

Block’s stock is up 19% year to date. On the other hand, Microsoft’s and Salesforce’s shares are down 19% and 38%, respectively.

XYZ Stock: What Analysts, Retail Traders Think 

Earlier this week, BMO Capital raised its price target on XYZ to $85 from $78 and Cantor Fitzgerald bumped it to $95 from $88. The stock last closed at $77.46.

Block is the best-performing name in the firm's coverage year-to-date, as investor confidence has improved following the Q1 beat-and-raise and workforce restructuring, BMO Capital said in a research note to investors.

On Stocktwits, the retail sentiment for XYZ shifted to ‘neutral’ from ‘bullish’ on Thursday, even though traders acknowledged the recent strength in shares. “$XYZ Looks bullish oddly enough,” said one.

For updates and corrections, email newsroom[at]stocktwits[dot]com.

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