San Francisco-based founder claims Anthropic’s Claude update crushed her startup

A San Francisco-based entrepreneur claims that Anthropic’s recent update to Claude “killed” her startup. Once scaling as a fast-growing venture with hundreds of clients, saw its sudden close rate drop from 70% to 20% within hours, Bodnar claims. 

The startup, popularly known as Ryze, offers a tool that helps users create, track, optimise, and manage digital advertising campaigns across Google and Meta Ads platforms. Ira Bodnar, founder of Ryze, shared a detailed post on X (formerly Twitter) talking about how Claude and Manus ' features directly compete with Ira’s startup. 

Bodnar on the post said, “I woke up today, and Claude killed my startup.” She revealed that the latest features released by Claude and Manus let AI systems connect directly to Meta Ads accounts, allowing companies to analyse advertising data automatically. It simply means Claude’s new built-in automation features can now perform the tasks that Ryze’s product was specifically designed for.

However, she says, “Claude still can't make changes in ad accounts — it can only do analysis, and it has no access to Google Ads. But give it a few months, and it will. So building here feels pointless.”

While Bodnar believes that her startup will survive, as they have predicted the signs before the technology could do more damage. “Our current business will be fine anyway. We knew what was coming and started actively pivoting a few weeks ago,” she said

Ryze now focuses on building complex AI workflows for advertising agencies that work with fewer staff. Ira Bodnar remains optimistic, suggesting that while AI makes building products easier, human “taste” and distribution strategy are the new competitive moats. Bodnar continues to remain optimistic; she believes AI handles the 'how' of building, but human 'taste' and the ability to reach an audience remains

However, it reignites the debate of “SaaSapocalypse,” which says that software companies may soon be replaced by artificial intelligence (AI) as it becomes more agentic. Bodnar also predicts that nearly 98% of videos will be AI-generated on platforms like TikTok and Instagram and will be marketed artificially. She believes that in the near future, success may not be driven by creativity, but will be solely based on understanding algorithms.