In 2026, the marketing technology landscape expanded by only 0.7%, moving from 15,384 to 15,505 solutions. At a superficial level, it looks like growth has plateaued. Yet that single figure masks the real story underneath: almost 1,500 new tools entered the market, while more than 1,300 vanished. This isn’t stagnation. It’s renewal. Source: State of Martech 2026 report, Scott Brinker & Frans Riemersma For years, we’ve looked to the martech landscape less for the final tally (even though that’s what grabs the headlines) and more to track the subtle but profound shifts unfolding in plain sight. It provides a distinctive vantage point. And what it reveals now is unmistakable. Peak Martech is an illusion. Martech is moving into its Darwinian phase. The landscape is being refreshed. Value is increasing. That is the real transformation. And it has immediate implications for your stack. The age of endlessly adding tools is being replaced by an age of swapping them out. At the heart of this evolution is a fundamental change in how value is generated. SaaS platforms are no longer where differentiation primarily lives. They are turning into infrastructure: systems of record, workflow backbones, and integration layers that deliver reliability and structure. The real value is shifting to what sits on top of that base. AI is emerging as the value layer. While SaaS runs on rules and fixed logic, AI runs on language, context, and probability. It doesn’t merely carry out workflows. It interprets, chooses, and adjusts. It’s as if AI added sound to…