Are exact-match keywords losing importance in SEO now?

I have been testing a few pages recently, and something interesting came up. Some of my content that's not heavily optimized around exact-match keywords is performing better than pages that are. It feels like Google is getting much better at understanding topics, context, and intent instead of just matching keywords. I'm still seeing rankings move, but not always in the way I'd expect from traditional SEO. Curious if anyone else is noticing this lately. Are you focusing less on exact keywords and more on covering the topic deeply, or are exact-match terms still working well for you?