All 11 AI SaaS listings on an M&A site reported zero monthly revenue
Of 11 AI-related SaaS listings pulled from an M&A site, every monthly revenue figure the seller disclosed was zero. Asking prices at listing time ran from ¥80,000 to ¥10,000,000. No listing disclosed a record of recurring charges.
This is not a set of closed prices, and it is not a statistic for the whole AI SaaS market. What can be checked is that, in a non-random sample of listings, “it uses AI” and “development money was spent” were not, by themselves, a basis for revenue.
I am building Shoryaku AI ( https://shoryaku.net ), a marketing-support SaaS, as an indie developer. I counted listings on an M&A site to see how a service like mine might be valued later.
Scope
The set is the “web services and apps” category on ラッコM&A.
| Item | What it covers |
|---|---|
| Population | 33 pages, about 730 listings |
| Pages collected | 8 pages (pages 1–6, 15, and 25) |
| Listings collected | About 180 |
| After removing duplicates | About 160 |
| Share of the population | About 22% |
| As of | August 24, 2026 |
The pages were not chosen at random. The listing text is the seller’s statement. The wider study, including the revenue distribution, is in Asking prices are not enough to know what an indie SaaS sells for.
What the 11 AI SaaS listings said
These are the 11 listings classified as AI-related SaaS in the study notes.
| Listing | Asking price at listing | Seller-reported monthly revenue |
|---|---|---|
| AI meeting-notes SaaS | ¥250,000 | ¥0 |
| AI knowledge-bot SaaS | ¥250,000 | ¥0 |
| AI contract-review SaaS | ¥200,000 | ¥0 |
| AI video-caption SaaS | ¥250,000 | ¥0 |
| AI sales-proposal SaaS | ¥160,000 | ¥0 |
| AI chatbot SaaS | ¥400,000 | ¥0 |
| LLM visibility platform | ¥500,000 | ¥0 |
| AI article generator | ¥80,000 | ¥0 |
| AI skills e-learning | ¥990,000 | ¥0 |
| Sales-support AI | ¥1,250,000 | ¥0 |
| Instagram analytics tool | ¥10,000,000 | ¥0 (monthly profit was minus ¥80,000) |
The first four were listed by the same seller, and the asking prices sit in a band of ¥200,000 to ¥250,000. Those four cannot be counted as independent market signals. A count has to include that skew.
It cannot be called a fire sale
When this article was first published, the title said zero-revenue AI SaaS products were being dumped. That wording was too strong.
- The table is asking prices, not closed prices
- All 11 were not followed to see whether they sat unsold, were marked down, or closed
- Using AI cannot be judged as the cause of zero revenue
- The study is about 22% of all listings, and it is not a random sample
So what can be said is that these 11 were listed with monthly revenue at zero. A low price is not, by itself, a fire sale, and “it is AI” is not, by itself, why it does not sell.
What was still useful for a decision
The listings described the development spend and the features in detail. The monthly-revenue field was still zero. In the same study, listings that disclosed recurring charges included the following.
| Listing | Recurring-charge information that was disclosed |
|---|---|
| Management SaaS for small companies | 100 companies, 2,123 users |
| LINE booking SaaS | 47 paying companies |
| Web production plus maintenance | 20 companies on a monthly fee, 7 on an annual contract |
This comparison does not show that buyers evaluate only the customer count. What it does show is that the more concrete basis a seller could put next to a price was customers who keep paying, rather than development cost.
My own order of work changed from “add features” to “get one company that pays.” The number of models or screens does not fill a field that says monthly revenue is zero.
Choosing a time-limited trial instead of a free plan was not decided by this study alone. It did connect to not postponing a state where willingness to pay can be seen (Why there is no free plan, and a 14-day trial instead).
Summary
- Seller-reported monthly revenue was zero for all 11 AI-related SaaS listings
- The prices are asking prices, not closed prices, from ¥80,000 to ¥10,000,000
- 4 of the 11 were the same seller, and the wider study is a non-random sample of about 22%
- This result alone cannot say “AI SaaS does not sell” or “it is a fire sale”
- At least, AI features and development cost did not stand in for a record of recurring charges