There is strong demand for AI agents that actually run regulated services like tax accounting and medical billing instead of selling software to those firms

A clear market shift is forming around AI-native firms that deliver the service outcome itself in regulated, recurring-revenue domains (insurance, accounting, tax, audit, compliance, healthcare administration) rather than selling tooling to the brokers and accountants. The economic pull is that service companies trade at 1 to 2 times revenue while software trades at 8 to 12 times, so an AI-run service can capture software-margin economics. The concrete job an AI agent must do varies by vertical (file the tax return, run the medical billing cycle, manage payer credentialing) but always end to end under the firm's liability. Demand is anchored by a real builder pain thread on HN where a 20-year SaaS PM at a system-of-record giant (103 points) details why AI is eroding their moat, plus YC's Summer 2026 RFS explicitly naming these verticals. Treat the RFS as a trend signal only; the buildable gap is one vertical done deeply with compliance, not a generic agent.