Concern that artificial intelligence will devastate software companies’ businesses are unfounded, William Blair says, arguing that there are multiple opportunities for the sector to bounce back.

Software stocks have taken a beating from selling linked to those fears. Over the past 12 months, shares of Salesforce have fallen 26%, ServiceNow has tumbled 37%, Adobe has dropped 29%, and Monday.com has declined 43%.

Tuesday was a particularly bad day for software stocks: The AI start-up Anthropic announced a new agent called Cowork, which can help organize desktop files in response to receiving instructions from a user. It was another reminder to Wall Street that AI has the ability to replace certain software functions.

The Cowork announcement is “the latest Boogeyman in software,” William Blair analyst Arjun Bhatia wrote in a research note on Thursday, saying the selloff “seems overdone.”

“In our view, Claude Cowork adds yet another sentiment headwind to public software stocks, but not a fundamental headwind,” Bhatia wrote. “While we believe AI labs like Anthropic and OpenAI will play a critical role in bringing AI into the enterprise, we believe the fears of broad disruption to software vendors are largely overstated.”

Bhatia said tools like Cowork and OpenAI’s ChatGPT are great for research, personal productivity gains, and general search functions. But they aren’t likely to replace enterprise software systems that are already woven into companies workflows.

There are a couple of ways that software stocks can get their groove back, Bhatia wrote. One way would be to double down on their own AI products, improving what they can offer and making more money in that area.

He also said that while it isn’t surprising that investors are moving their money into companies that benefit from the current wave of spending on AI data centers—think semiconductor, energy, and networking stocks—that trend could change.

A peaking, or a slowdown, in AI infrastructure spending would drive money back into software stocks, Bhatia said. Even slower growth than expected could do the trick, he said.