The battle for a billion users: Besides programming, Excel is the real "killer" application scenario for AI.

Top Silicon Valley tech investment fund Altimeter Capital partner Freda Duan recently pointed out that, although programming has to date been the strongest vertical application for AI, with a user base in the billions, Excel (spreadsheets) holds equivalent explosive potential and is poised to become the next true “super vertical” for AI.

This trend has already triggered substantial moves by industry giants. Public information shows that OpenAI and Anthropic are actively expanding into the spreadsheet and productivity workflow sectors. Market analysts believe that spreadsheets not only have a much larger potential market size (TAM) than programming, their role as an “encapsulation layer” for application software gives them the potential to reshape the entire software industry.

Investors are closely watching to see if this logic repeats. For example, in programming, four companies have already reached over $1 billion in annual recurring revenue (ARR), with at least seven more rapidly surpassing $100 million ARR. If Excel can replicate the “product-led growth” model seen in programming, its revaluation impact on the SaaS and application software market would be disruptive.

At the core of this investment logic, spreadsheets are not only an end market, but also a strategic penetration point into finance, CRM, and internal tool development, with a user base and commercial path that closely mirror programming.

Lessons from Programming: Product-led Efficient Expansion

Programming has become the strongest AI vertical to date because it possesses three unique characteristics: a massive $2 trillion potential market (according to ChatGPT data), a natural adjacency to other use cases, and a product-driven market entry strategy (GTM, Go-to-Market) that requires no traditional sales or marketing involvement.

Structurally, the programming market is unlike industries such as healthcare, real estate, or finance which require complex enterprise procurement processes. Developers rapidly identify quality tools and have direct approval or reimbursement influence. So long as a tool improves efficiency, companies are generally insensitive to the incremental cost from an individual developer. This “bottom-up” diffusion enables strong products to quickly scale at very low sales cost.

Beyond Programming: The Billion-user Spreadsheet Market

Excel exhibits very similar vertical characteristics to programming, but at bigger scale. According to Google Workspace’s 2025 release, paid customers have exceeded 11 million and total user base is over 3 billion. Kingsoft/WPS Office’s December 2024 report shows there are 632 million monthly active devices worldwide, and Microsoft has previously disclosed about 1.2 billion Office users. Putting this together, global monthly active spreadsheet users are estimated at around 1.5 to 1.6 billion.

This huge user base signals a massive potential market. Of the roughly $1 trillion global software industry, application software accounts for about 50%, and a significant portion—including CRM, Airtable, Smartsheet, plus financial, operations, and analytics tools—can in essence be viewed as huge “Excel encapsulation layers.” If native AI enables Excel to become programmable, its opportunities would surpass just Microsoft Office or Google Workspace, and the competitive boundary would expand to building applications themselves.

Finance: A Natural High-value Entry Point

In terms of commercialization, finance is considered the logical starting point for this vertical, which is also the main investment direction for Anthropic and OpenAI. The finance industry has extremely high per capita profits and a strong willingness to pay for productivity tools, and analysts typically have direct budgetary control similar to developers, with clear ROI making the products essentially self-selling.

In terms of user density, the US financial services and insurance sectors employ over 6.7 million people, while worldwide there are about 150 million professionals in broad financial roles—FP&A, accounting, auditing, treasury management, etc. This means around 10% of the 1.55 billion spreadsheet users belong to this high-value, easily monetized segment, providing a superb initial entry point for AI-enabled Excel tools. Just as programming has demonstrated, an self-service, workflow-native tool with massive surface area can scale faster than nearly any other category of software.

Risk Warning and DisclaimerThe market has risks, and investments should be made with caution. This article does not constitute personal investment advice, nor does it consider individual users’ specific investment goals, financial situations, or needs. Users should consider whether any opinions, viewpoints, or conclusions in this article are suitable for their particular circumstances. Any investment based on this is at your own risk.