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📘 Marktkapitalisierung
📈 Was ist das?
Die Marktkapitalisierung zeigt, wie viel ein Unternehmen laut Börse aktuell wert ist.
🧮 Wie wird es berechnet?
🏛️ Wofür ist es wichtig?
Sie hilft Unternehmen in Größenklassen (Large, Mid, Small Cap) einzuordnen und gibt Hinweise auf Marktmacht und Stabilität.
🧮 Berechnung
🎯 Was bedeutet das für Anleger?
- Große Unternehmen gelten als stabiler, zahlen oft Dividenden, wachsen aber langsamer.
- Kleine Firmen können stärker wachsen, sind aber schwankungsanfälliger.
- Die Marktkapitalisierung ist ein guter Indikator für Unternehmensgröße, aber kein Maß für Unter- oder Überbewertung.
📘 Enterprise Value (Unternehmenswert)
📈 Was ist das?
Der Enterprise Value (EV) zeigt, was ein Unternehmen tatsächlich kostet, wenn man es komplett übernehmen würde – inklusive Schulden und abzüglich Cash.
🧮 Wie wird es berechnet?
(= Marktkapitalisierung + Nettoverschuldung)
🏛️ Wofür ist es wichtig?
Der EV ist eine realistischere Bewertungsbasis als die Marktkapitalisierung, da er die Kapitalstruktur berücksichtigt. Er ist Grundlage für Kennzahlen wie EV/FCF oder EV/Sales.
🧮 Berechnung
🎯 Was bedeutet das für Anleger?
- Der Enterprise Value zeigt, was ein Unternehmen tatsächlich wert ist – unabhängig davon, wie es finanziert ist.
- Er ist besonders wichtig für professionelle Investoren, da er eine objektivere Grundlage für Bewertungsvergleiche bietet als die Marktkapitalisierung allein.
- Ein Unternehmen mit hoher Verschuldung erscheint im EV teurer, eines mit viel Cash günstiger – auch wenn sie an der Börse gleich viel wert sind.
📘 Nettoverschuldung
📈 Was ist das?
Die Nettoverschuldung zeigt, wie viele Schulden nach Abzug des verfügbaren Cashs tatsächlich verbleiben.
🧮 Wie wird es berechnet?
🏛️ Wofür ist es wichtig?
Sie zeigt, wie stark ein Unternehmen von Fremdkapital abhängig ist – und wie gut es in der Lage ist, seine Schulden kurzfristig zu bedienen.
🧮 Berechnung
🎯 Was bedeutet das für Anleger?
- Eine niedrige oder negative Nettoverschuldung bedeutet hohe finanzielle Stabilität.
- Unternehmen mit viel Cash und geringer Verschuldung sind besser gerüstet für Krisen.
- Eine hohe Nettoverschuldung erhöht das Risiko – besonders bei steigenden Zinsen oder konjunkturellen Schwächen.
📘 Cash
📈 Was ist das?
Der Cashbestand zeigt, wie viele liquide Mittel einem Unternehmen sofort zur Verfügung stehen.
🧮 Wie wird es berechnet?
🏛️ Wofür ist es wichtig?
Er gibt Auskunft über die finanzielle Flexibilität: Ein hoher Cashbestand ermöglicht Investitionen, Rückkäufe oder Krisenresistenz.
🧮 Berechnung
🎯 Was bedeutet das für Anleger?
- Ein hoher Cashbestand zeigt finanzielle Stärke und Handlungsspielraum.
- Cash kann für Investitionen, Schuldentilgung oder Aktienrückkäufe genutzt werden.
- Allerdings: Zu viel ungenutztes Kapital kann auch auf mangelnde Investitionsideen hinweisen.
📘 Anzahl ausstehender Aktien
📈 Was ist das?
Die Anzahl ausstehender Aktien gibt an, wie viele Aktien eines Unternehmens aktuell im Umlauf sind und von Investoren gehalten werden.
🧮 Wie wird es berechnet?
🏛️ Wofür ist es wichtig?
Sie ist die Grundlage für viele Kennzahlen wie Gewinn je Aktie (EPS), Marktkapitalisierung oder KGV.
🧮 Berechnung
🎯 Was bedeutet das für Anleger?
- Je weniger Aktien im Umlauf sind, desto höher fällt z. B. der Gewinn je Aktie aus – wichtig für Bewertung und Dividendenrendite.
- Aktienrückkäufe verringern die Anzahl ausstehender Aktien – und steigern den Wert je Aktie.
- Kapitalerhöhungen haben den gegenteiligen Effekt: mehr Aktien → Verwässerung der bestehenden Anteile.
📘 Kurs-Gewinn-Verhältnis (KGV)
📈 Was ist das?
Das KGV zeigt, wie oft der Gewinn pro Aktie im aktuellen Aktienkurs enthalten ist – also wie „teuer“ eine Aktie im Verhältnis zum Gewinn ist.
🧮 Wie wird es berechnet?
🏛️ Wofür ist es wichtig?
Das KGV gehört zu den bekanntesten Bewertungskennzahlen. Es hilft Anlegern einzuschätzen, ob eine Aktie im Vergleich zu ihrem Gewinn eher günstig oder teuer erscheint.
🧮 Berechnung
📊 KGV (TTM) = bezogen auf den Gewinn der letzten 12 Monate (Trailing Twelve Months):🎯 Was bedeutet das für Anleger?
- Ein niedriges KGV kann auf eine günstige Bewertung hindeuten – oder auf Probleme im Geschäftsmodell.
- Ein hohes KGV kann Wachstumserwartungen widerspiegeln – oder eine überbewertete Aktie.
📘 Kurs-Umsatz-Verhältnis (KUV)
📈 Was ist das?
Das KUV zeigt, wie viel Anleger für 1 € Umsatz eines Unternehmens zahlen – unabhängig vom Gewinn.
🧮 Wie wird es berechnet?
🏛️ Wofür ist es wichtig?
Das KUV ist besonders bei wachstumsstarken oder noch nicht profitablen Unternehmen hilfreich. Es zeigt, wie hoch der Umsatz an der Börse bewertet wird.
🧮 Berechnung
Marktkapitalisierung = 109,65 Mrd. $ | Umsatz (TTM) = 13,96 Mrd. $
Marktkapitalisierung = 109,65 Mrd. $ | Umsatz erwartet = 16,34 Mrd. $
🎯 Was bedeutet das für Anleger?
- Ein niedriges KUV kann auf Unterbewertung hindeuten – oder auf schwache Margen.
- Ein hohes KUV kann hohe Erwartungen widerspiegeln – oder übermäßigen Optimismus.
- Besonders sinnvoll bei Wachstumsunternehmen, bei denen der Gewinn oder Free Cashflow (noch) keine Aussagekraft hat.
📘 Unternehmenswert zu Umsatz (EV/Sales)
📈 Was ist das?
EV/Sales zeigt, wie viel Anleger für 1 € Umsatz eines Unternehmens zahlen, wenn man auch Schulden und Cash berücksichtigt – es ist eine kapitalstrukturbereinigte Version des KUV.
🧮 Wie wird es berechnet?
🏛️ Wofür ist es wichtig?
Diese Kennzahl eignet sich besonders für den Vergleich von Unternehmen mit unterschiedlicher Verschuldung – sie zeigt, wie teuer ein Unternehmen tatsächlich im Verhältnis zum Umsatz ist.
🧮 Berechnung
Enterprise Value = 105,96 Mrd. $ | Umsatz (TTM) = 13,96 Mrd. $
Enterprise Value = 105,96 Mrd. $ | Umsatz erwartet = 16,34 Mrd. $
🎯 Was bedeutet das für Anleger?
- EV/Sales ist neutral gegenüber der Kapitalstruktur und eignet sich gut für Unternehmensvergleiche.
- Ein niedriges Verhältnis kann auf eine günstig bewertete Aktie hindeuten – ein hohes Verhältnis auf hohe Erwartungen oder Überbewertung.
- Besonders nützlich bei wachstumsstarken, noch nicht profitablen Firmen.
📘 Unternehmenswert zu Free Cashflow (EV/FCF)
📈 Was ist das?
EV/FCF zeigt, wie viele Jahre es dauern würde, bis ein Unternehmen seinen Unternehmenswert durch freien Cashflow „zurückverdient”.
🧮 Wie wird es berechnet?
🏛️ Wofür ist es wichtig?
Diese Kennzahl hilft, Unternehmen auf Basis ihrer tatsächlichen Cash-Erträge zu bewerten – unabhängig von Bilanzierungsregeln oder buchhalterischem Gewinn.
🧮 Berechnung
🎯 Was bedeutet das für Anleger?
- Ein niedriges EV/FCF deutet auf eine günstige Bewertung bei starker Cashgenerierung hin.
- Ein hohes EV/FCF kann entweder auf Optimismus oder auf temporär schwachen Cashflow hindeuten.
- Besonders hilfreich bei reifen, profitablen Unternehmen mit stabilen Cashflows.
📘 Kurs-Buchwert-Verhältnis (KBV)
📈 Was ist das?
Das KBV zeigt, wie hoch der Marktwert eines Unternehmens im Verhältnis zu seinem bilanziellen Eigenkapital ist.
🧮 Wie wird es berechnet?
🏛️ Wofür ist es wichtig?
Das KBV ist besonders bei Substanzwerten (z. B. Banken, Industrie) relevant. Es hilft Anlegern zu erkennen, ob ein Unternehmen unter oder über seinem buchhalterischen Vermögen bewertet ist.
🧮 Berechnung
🎯 Was bedeutet das für Anleger?
- Ein KBV unter 1 kann auf Unterbewertung oder schwache Rentabilität hindeuten.
- Ein KBV über 1 zeigt, dass der Markt dem Unternehmen Mehrwert über den Buchwert hinaus zuschreibt (z. B. Marken, Patente, Wachstum).
- Das KBV eignet sich besonders gut für Unternehmen mit stabilen, materiellen Vermögenswerten.
📘 Eigenkapitalquote
📈 Was ist das?
Die Eigenkapitalquote zeigt, wie hoch der Anteil des Eigenkapitals an der Bilanzsumme eines Unternehmens ist – also wie stark es sich aus eigenen Mitteln finanziert.
🧮 Wie wird es berechnet?
🏛️ Wofür ist es wichtig?
Eine hohe Eigenkapitalquote steht für finanzielle Stabilität, Krisenfestigkeit und gute Bonität. Sie ist besonders relevant bei der Beurteilung der Verschuldung.
🧮 Berechnung
🎯 Was bedeutet das für Anleger?
- Eine hohe Eigenkapitalquote signalisiert finanzielle Stabilität – besonders in Krisenzeiten.
- Ein niedriger Wert kann auf ein höheres Risiko oder eine aggressive Verschuldung hinweisen.
- Wichtig: Die Eigenkapitalquote sollte immer gemeinsam mit der Eigenkapitalrendite betrachtet werden. Nur so lässt sich beurteilen, ob ein Unternehmen nicht nur solide, sondern auch effizient wirtschaftet.
📘 Eigenkapitalrendite (ROE)
📈 Was ist das?
Die Eigenkapitalrendite zeigt, wie effizient ein Unternehmen mit dem Kapital seiner Aktionäre arbeitet – also wie viel Gewinn es pro Euro Eigenkapital erwirtschaftet.
🧮 Wie wird es berechnet?
🏛️ Wofür ist es wichtig?
Die Eigenkapitalrendite ist eine zentrale Rentabilitätskennzahl. Sie hilft Anlegern zu erkennen, ob das Unternehmen eine attraktive Verzinsung auf das eingesetzte Eigenkapital erwirtschaftet.
🧮 Berechnung
🎯 Was bedeutet das für Anleger?
- Eine hohe Eigenkapitalrendite spricht für ein starkes, effizientes Geschäftsmodell.
- Besonders interessant ist sie bei kapitalintensiven Firmen oder solchen mit hoher Eigenkapitalquote.
- Wichtig: Ein sehr hoher ROE kann auch auf hohe Schulden hinweisen – daher sollte sie immer im Kontext mit der Eigenkapitalquote betrachtet werden.
📘 Return on Capital Employed (ROCE)
📈 Was ist das?
ROCE misst die Gesamtrentabilität eines Unternehmens – also wie effizient es das eingesetzte Kapital (Eigen- und Fremdkapital) zur Gewinnerzielung nutzt.
🧮 Wie wird es berechnet?
Das eingesetzte Kapital ist das gesamte betriebsnotwendige Kapital, unabhängig von der Finanzierungsquelle.
🏛️ Wofür ist es wichtig?
ROCE eignet sich besonders gut für den Vergleich unterschiedlich finanzierter Unternehmen. Es zeigt, wie effektiv ein Unternehmen Kapital investiert – unabhängig von der Kapitalstruktur.
🧮 Berechnung
🎯 Was bedeutet das für Anleger?
- Ein hoher ROCE zeigt, dass ein Unternehmen sein Kapital effizient einsetzt – unabhängig davon, ob es durch Eigen- oder Fremdkapital finanziert ist.
- Je höher der ROCE im Vergleich zu ähnlichen Unternehmen, desto mehr Wert schafft das Unternehmen mit seinem investierten Kapital.
- Besonders wichtig ist der ROCE bei Firmen mit hohen Investitionen – z. B. in Industrie, Energie oder Infrastruktur.
📘 Return on Invested Capital (ROIC)
📈 Was ist das?
ROIC zeigt, wie effizient ein Unternehmen das Kapital investiert, das langfristig im operativen Geschäft gebunden ist – unabhängig davon, ob es aus Eigen- oder Fremdkapital stammt.
🧮 Wie wird es berechnet?
- NOPAT = „Net Operating Profit After Taxes“
- Investiertes Kapital = operatives Vermögen abzüglich nicht-verzinster Schulden
🏛️ Wofür ist es wichtig?
ROIC ist eine der präzisesten Kennzahlen zur Bewertung der Kapitalrendite – besonders im Vergleich zur Eigenkapitalrendite, weil es Verzerrungen durch Schulden vermeidet. Er zeigt, ob ein Unternehmen Mehrwert für alle Kapitalgeber schafft.
🧮 Berechnung
🎯 Was bedeutet das für Anleger?
- Ein hoher ROIC zeigt, wie gut ein Unternehmen mit dem tatsächlich investierten (betriebsnotwendigen) Kapital wirtschaftet.
- Im Unterschied zu ROCE wird nur Kapital betrachtet, das wirklich zur Finanzierung operativer Aktivitäten dient – und verzinst werden muss.
- Besonders hilfreich, um die Kapitalrendite von Unternehmen mit viel „überschüssigem“ Kapital oder zinsfreien Verbindlichkeiten realistisch zu vergleichen.
📘 Verschuldungsgrad (Leverage Ratio)
📈 Was ist das?
Der Verschuldungsgrad zeigt, wie stark ein Unternehmen durch verzinsliche Schulden (z. B. Kredite und Anleihen) im Verhältnis zum Eigenkapital finanziert ist.
🧮 Wie wird es berechnet?
🏛️ Wofür ist es wichtig?
Die Kennzahl hilft, das finanzielle Risiko und die Abhängigkeit von Fremdkapital zu beurteilen. Ein hoher Verschuldungsgrad kann die Eigenkapitalrendite steigern – birgt aber auch erhöhte Risiken bei Zinsanstiegen oder Liquiditätsengpässen.
🧮 Berechnung
🎯 Was bedeutet das für Anleger?
- Ein niedriger Verschuldungsgrad steht für finanzielle Stabilität und Unabhängigkeit.
- Ein hoher Wert kann auf erhöhte Risiken hinweisen – insbesondere bei schwankenden Zinsen oder konjunkturellen Schwächen.
- Wichtig: Immer im Kontext zur Branche und Kapitalintensität bewerten.
📘 Umsatz
📈 Was ist das?
Der Umsatz zeigt, wie viel ein Unternehmen insgesamt mit seinen Produkten und Dienstleistungen verdient – also den Bruttoerlös vor Abzug von Kosten.
🧮 Wie wird es berechnet?
🏛️ Wofür ist es wichtig?
Der Umsatz ist eine der zentralen Kennzahlen zur Einschätzung der Unternehmensgröße, Marktstellung und Wachstumskraft.
🧮 Berechnung
🎯 Was bedeutet das für Anleger?
- Ein wachsender Umsatz zeigt eine steigende Nachfrage und kann ein guter Frühindikator für Gewinnsteigerungen sein.
- Vergleiche von aktuellem und erwartetem Umsatz geben Hinweise auf das Marktumfeld und Analystenerwartungen.
- Wichtig: Starker Umsatz allein genügt nicht – auch Margen und Profitabilität zählen.
📘 EBITDA
📈 Was ist das?
EBITDA steht für „Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation and Amortization“ – also Gewinn vor Zinsen, Steuern und Abschreibungen. Es zeigt das operative Ergebnis eines Unternehmens, bereinigt um bilanztechnische und finanzierungsbedingte Effekte.
🧮 Wie wird es berechnet?
🏛️ Wofür ist es wichtig?
EBITDA ist eine verbreitete Kennzahl zur Beurteilung der operativen Leistungsfähigkeit – insbesondere bei kapitalintensiven Unternehmen oder im internationalen Vergleich.
🧮 Berechnung
🎯 Was bedeutet das für Anleger?
- Ein hohes oder wachsendes EBITDA spricht für starke operative Erträge – unabhängig von Bilanzierung oder Steuerlast.
- EBITDA ist besonders nützlich, um Unternehmen branchenübergreifend zu vergleichen.
- Wichtig: EBITDA ist keine offizielle Gewinnkennzahl – Abschreibungen und Finanzierungskosten werden ausgeklammert.
📘 EBIT
📈 Was ist das?
EBIT steht für „Earnings Before Interest and Taxes“ – also Gewinn vor Zinsen und Steuern. Es zeigt das operative Ergebnis eines Unternehmens nach Abschreibungen, aber vor Finanzierungs- und Steueraufwand.
🧮 Wie wird es berechnet?
🏛️ Wofür ist es wichtig?
EBIT ist eine zentrale Kennzahl zur Beurteilung der Profitabilität aus dem Kerngeschäft – unabhängig von Kapitalstruktur oder Steuersystem.
🧮 Berechnung
🎯 Was bedeutet das für Anleger?
- Ein hohes EBIT deutet auf ein profitables Kerngeschäft hin – vor Zinslasten oder steuerlichen Effekten.
- Es erlaubt objektivere Vergleiche zwischen Unternehmen mit unterschiedlicher Finanzierung.
- Im Vergleich mit EBITDA zeigt EBIT bereits den Einfluss von Abschreibungen auf das operative Ergebnis.
📘 Nettogewinn
📈 Was ist das?
Der Nettogewinn ist der verbleibende Jahresüberschuss (oder -fehlbetrag) eines Unternehmens – nach Abzug aller Kosten, Steuern, Zinsen und Abschreibungen
🧮 Wie wird es berechnet?
🏛️ Wofür ist es wichtig?
Der Nettogewinn ist die zentrale Erfolgskennzahl – er zeigt, wie profitabel ein Unternehmen nach allen Kosten tatsächlich arbeitet.
🧮 Berechnung
🎯 Was bedeutet das für Anleger?
- Ein steigender Nettogewinn zeigt, dass das Unternehmen effizient wirtschaftet – trotz aller Kosten.
- Die Entwicklung des Gewinns beeinflusst z. B. direkt das KGV und weitere Kennzahlen.
- Im Zeitverlauf lässt sich ablesen, wie stabil und profitabel ein Geschäftsmodell wirklich ist.
📘 Free Cashflow (FCF)
📈 Was ist das?
Der Free Cashflow gibt Aufschluss über die echte finanzielle Stärke eines Unternehmens – unabhängig von Bilanzierungsregeln. Er zeigt, wie viel Spielraum für Dividenden, Aktienrückkäufe oder Schuldenabbau besteht.
🧮 Wie wird es berechnet?
🏛️ Wofür ist es wichtig?
FCF reflects a company’s real financial strength – regardless of accounting profits. It shows how much flexibility a company has for dividends, share buybacks, or debt reduction.
🧮 Berechnung
🎯 Was bedeutet das für Anleger?
- Ein hoher Free Cashflow bedeutet, dass ein Unternehmen echte Finanzkraft besitzt – unabhängig vom bilanzierten Gewinn.
- Er ist oft die solideste Grundlage für nachhaltige Dividenden und Aktienrückkäufe.
- Sinkender FCF kann ein Warnsignal sein – auch wenn der Gewinn stabil aussieht.
📘 Umsatzwachstum
📈 Was ist das?
Das Umsatzwachstum zeigt, wie stark sich die Erlöse eines Unternehmens im Vergleich zum Vorjahr verändert haben – tatsächlich (TTM) und auf Prognosebasis (erwartet).
🧮 Wie wird es berechnet?
Erwartet = (Umsatz erwartet ÷ Umsatz Vorjahr − 1) × 100
Erwartetes Wachstum basiert auf Analystenschätzungen für das laufende Geschäftsjahr.
🏛️ Wofür ist es wichtig?
Ein wachsender Umsatz ist ein zentrales Signal für steigende Nachfrage, Geschäftsausweitung und Marktanteilsgewinne – besonders bei Wachstumsunternehmen.
🧮 Berechnung
🎯 Was bedeutet das für Anleger?
- Wachstum ist der Motor langfristiger Wertsteigerung – besonders bei Technologie- und Wachstumsaktien.
- Wichtig ist nicht nur das aktuelle Wachstum, sondern auch dessen Nachhaltigkeit.
- Prognosen zeigen, ob Analysten weiteres Potenzial erwarten – oder eine Verlangsamung.
📘 EBITDA-Wachstum
📈 Was ist das?
Das EBITDA-Wachstum zeigt, wie stark das operative Ergebnis eines Unternehmens vor Zinsen, Steuern und Abschreibungen im Vergleich zum Vorjahr gestiegen oder gesunken ist.
🧮 Wie wird es berechnet?
Erwartet = (erwartetes EBITDA ÷ EBITDA Vorjahr − 1) × 100
Erwartetes Wachstum basiert auf Analystenschätzungen für das laufende Geschäftsjahr.
🏛️ Wofür ist es wichtig?
Ein steigendes EBITDA ist ein Zeichen für verbesserte operative Ertragskraft – unabhängig von Finanzierungsstruktur oder Abschreibungen.
🧮 Berechnung
🎯 Was bedeutet das für Anleger?
- Starkes EBITDA-Wachstum signalisiert operative Effizienz und Skalierung – besonders relevant in Wachstumsphasen.
- EBITDA-Wachstum ist ein Frühindikator für Margen- und Gewinnentwicklung – sollte aber stets im Zusammenhang mit Umsatz und EBIT betrachtet werden.
📘 EBIT Wachstum
📈 Was ist das?
Das EBIT-Wachstum zeigt, wie stark das operative Ergebnis eines Unternehmens (nach Abschreibungen, aber vor Zinsen und Steuern) im Vergleich zum Vorjahr gewachsen ist.
🧮 Wie wird es berechnet?
Erwartet = (erwartetes EBIT ÷ EBIT Vorjahr − 1) × 100
Erwartetes Wachstum basiert auf Analystenschätzungen für das laufende Geschäftsjahr.
🏛️ Wofür ist es wichtig?
Das EBIT-Wachstum ist ein direkter Indikator für die wirtschaftliche Entwicklung des operativen Geschäfts – unter Berücksichtigung der Kapitalintensität (Abschreibungen).
🧮 Berechnung
🎯 Was bedeutet das für Anleger?
- Steigendes EBIT signalisiert wachsende operative Rentabilität – auch unter Berücksichtigung von Abschreibungen.
- Das EBIT-Wachstum ist ein wichtiges Maß zur Beurteilung von Geschäftsmodellen mit hohen Investitionskosten.
- Im Zusammenspiel mit Umsatz- und EBITDA-Wachstum ergibt sich ein umfassendes Bild zur operativen Entwicklung.
📘 Nettogewinn-Wachstum
📈 Was ist das?
Das Nettogewinn-Wachstum zeigt, wie stark der Jahresüberschuss eines Unternehmens gegenüber dem Vorjahr gestiegen oder gesunken ist – sowohl tatsächlich (TTM) als auch auf Basis von Prognosen (erwartet).
🧮 Wie wird es berechnet?
Erwartet = (erwarteter Nettogewinn ÷ Nettogewinn Vorjahr − 1) × 100
Der erwartete Wert basiert auf Analystenschätzungen für das laufende Geschäftsjahr.
🏛️ Wofür ist es wichtig?
Der Gewinn ist die entscheidende Ergebnisgröße für ein Unternehmen. Ein wachsender Nettogewinn deutet auf steigende Effizienz, stabile Kostenkontrolle und nachhaltige Ertragskraft hin.
🧮 Berechnung
🎯 Was bedeutet das für Anleger?
- Wachsender Nettogewinn stärkt die Bewertung, Dividendenfähigkeit und Kursfantasie.
- Stagnierender oder rückläufiger Gewinn trotz Umsatzwachstum kann auf Margendruck hinweisen.
📘 Free Cashflow-Wachstum
📈 Was ist das?
Das Free-Cashflow-Wachstum zeigt, wie sich der freie Mittelzufluss eines Unternehmens im Vergleich zum Vorjahr verändert hat – also der Betrag, der nach allen operativen Ausgaben und Investitionen übrig bleibt.
🧮 Wie wird es berechnet?
🏛️ Wofür ist es wichtig?
Free Cashflow ist der echte, verfügbare Geldzufluss. Wachstum in diesem Bereich ist ein Zeichen für finanzielle Stärke und steigende Flexibilität bei Dividenden, Rückkäufen oder Investitionen.
🧮 Berechnung
🎯 Was bedeutet das für Anleger?
- Sinkender Free Cashflow kann auf steigende Investitionen, höhere Kosten oder stagnierende operative Erträge hindeuten.
- Besonders bei Dividendenwerten ist das FCF-Wachstum wichtig – denn Dividenden werden letztlich aus dem verfügbaren Cash gezahlt.
- Ein negativer Trend sollte genauer analysiert werden – er ist nicht zwangsläufig schlecht, aber potenziell ein Warnsignal.
📘 Bruttomarge
📈 Was ist das?
Die Bruttomarge zeigt, wie viel vom Umsatz nach Abzug der direkten Herstellungskosten (Material, Produktion) als Bruttogewinn übrig bleibt – also der „Rohgewinn“ eines Unternehmens.
🧮 Wie wird es berechnet?
Auch: Bruttomarge = Bruttogewinn ÷ Umsatz × 100
🏛️ Wofür ist es wichtig?
Die Bruttomarge gibt Aufschluss über die Profitabilität eines Produkts oder Geschäftsmodells vor Fixkosten, Steuern und Zinsen. Sie zeigt, wie effizient ein Unternehmen produzieren oder einkaufen kann.
🧮 Berechnung
🎯 Was bedeutet das für Anleger?
- Eine hohe Bruttomarge deutet auf starke Preissetzungsmacht und effiziente Herstellung hin.
- Sinkende Bruttomargen können auf Kostensteigerungen oder Preisdruck hindeuten.
- Besonders im Vergleich zu Wettbewerbern liefert die Bruttomarge wertvolle Einblicke in die Geschäftsqualität.
📘 EBITDA-Marge
📈 Was ist das?
Die EBITDA-Marge zeigt, wie viel vom Umsatz als operativer Gewinn vor Zinsen, Steuern und Abschreibungen (EBITDA) übrig bleibt. Sie misst die operative Effizienz – ohne Verzerrungen durch Finanzierung oder Buchwerte.
🧮 Wie wird es berechnet?
🏛️ Wofür ist es wichtig?
Die EBITDA-Marge hilft zu verstehen, wie viel operativer Gewinn ein Unternehmen aus jedem Euro Umsatz erzielt – unabhängig von Kapitalstruktur oder steuerlichem Umfeld.
🧮 Berechnung
🎯 Was bedeutet das für Anleger?
- Eine hohe EBITDA-Marge zeigt starke operative Ertragskraft – unabhängig von Bilanzierungseffekten.
- Die Marge ermöglicht gute Vergleiche zwischen Unternehmen und Branchen.
- Ein stabiler oder wachsender Wert kann auf effiziente Kostenkontrolle und Skalierbarkeit hindeuten.
📘 EBIT-Marge
📈 Was ist das?
Die EBIT-Marge zeigt, wie viel Prozent des Umsatzes als operativer Gewinn nach Abschreibungen, aber vor Zinsen und Steuern übrig bleiben.
🧮 Wie wird es berechnet?
🏛️ Wofür ist es wichtig?
Die EBIT-Marge misst die operative Ertragskraft eines Unternehmens unter Berücksichtigung der Kapitalintensität (z. B. Maschinen, Anlagen). Sie eignet sich gut zum Vergleich von Geschäftsmodellen mit unterschiedlich hohen Abschreibungen.
🧮 Berechnung
🎯 Was bedeutet das für Anleger?
- Eine hohe EBIT-Marge zeigt, dass ein Unternehmen auch nach Abschreibungen effizient arbeitet.
- Sie ist besonders relevant in kapitalintensiven Branchen.
- Langfristig stabile oder steigende Margen sind ein Zeichen wirtschaftlicher Stärke und Preissetzungsmacht.
📘 Nettomarge
📈 Was ist das?
Die Nettomarge zeigt, wie viel vom Umsatz am Ende als „Reingewinn“ übrig bleibt – also nach Abzug aller Kosten, Zinsen, Steuern und Abschreibungen.
🧮 Wie wird es berechnet?
🏛️ Wofür ist es wichtig?
Die Nettomarge gibt an, wie effizient ein Unternehmen über alle Stufen hinweg wirtschaftet. Sie zeigt, wie viel Gewinn tatsächlich je Euro Umsatz übrig bleibt.
🧮 Berechnung
🎯 Was bedeutet das für Anleger?
- Eine hohe Nettomarge zeigt, dass ein Unternehmen nicht nur operativ stark ist, sondern auch seine Finanzierung und Steuerbelastung im Griff hat.
- Vergleiche mit Wettbewerbern geben Einblicke in die wirtschaftliche Qualität.
- Sinkende Nettomargen trotz Umsatzwachstum können ein Warnsignal sein – etwa für steigende Kosten oder sinkende Effizienz.
📘 Free Cashflow Marge
📈 Was ist das?
Die Free-Cashflow-Marge zeigt, wie viel vom Umsatz nach Abzug aller operativen Ausgaben und Investitionen tatsächlich als freier Mittelzufluss übrig bleibt.
🧮 Wie wird es berechnet?
🏛️ Wofür ist es wichtig?
Diese Marge misst die echte Liquidität, die ein Unternehmen erwirtschaftet – unabhängig von Bilanzierungsregeln oder Abschreibungen. Sie ist besonders relevant für Dividenden, Rückkäufe und Investitionen.
🧮 Berechnung
🎯 Was bedeutet das für Anleger?
- Eine hohe Free-Cashflow-Marge zeigt, dass ein Unternehmen nachhaltig liquide Mittel erwirtschaftet.
- Sie ist ein starkes Signal für finanzielle Stabilität und Ausschüttungspotenzial.
- Wichtig ist der langfristige Trend – sinkende Werte können auf steigende Investitionen oder rückläufige operative Effizienz hindeuten.
📘 Ergebnis je Aktie (EPS)
📈 Was ist das?
Das Ergebnis je Aktie (EPS) zeigt, wie viel Gewinn auf eine einzelne Aktie entfällt – und ist eine der wichtigsten Kennzahlen zur Bewertung von Unternehmen.
🧮 Wie wird es berechnet?
Die verwässerte Aktienanzahl berücksichtigt auch potenzielle neue Aktien, etwa durch Optionen, Wandelanleihen oder andere Umtauschrechte.
🏛️ Wofür ist es wichtig?
EPS bildet die Basis für viele Bewertungskennzahlen wie KGV, PEG oder Payout Ratio. Es macht den Gewinn für Aktionäre vergleichbar – unabhängig von der Unternehmensgröße.
🧮 Berechnung
🎯 Was bedeutet das für Anleger?
- EPS hilft, die Profitabilität pro Aktie zu erfassen – und ist besonders wichtig im Zeitvergleich oder im Vergleich mit Analystenschätzungen.
- Steigendes EPS kann ein Zeichen für stabiles Wachstum oder Aktienrückkäufe sein.
- Wichtig: Verwende verwässertes EPS für realistische Bewertungen – besonders bei stark aktienbasierten Vergütungssystemen.
📘 Free Cashflow je Aktie (FCF je Aktie)
📈 Was ist das?
Der Free Cashflow je Aktie zeigt, wie viel freier Mittelzufluss einem Unternehmen pro Aktie zur Verfügung steht – nach Investitionen, aber vor Dividenden oder Schuldentilgung.
🧮 Wie wird es berechnet?
🏛️ Wofür ist es wichtig?
Der FCF je Aktie zeigt, wie viel liquide Mittel pro Aktie tatsächlich im Unternehmen verbleiben – wichtig für Dividenden, Aktienrückkäufe oder Schuldentilgung. Im Gegensatz zum Gewinn ist er schwerer manipulierbar und daher besonders aussagekräftig.
🧮 Berechnung
🎯 Was bedeutet das für Anleger?
- Ein hoher Free Cashflow je Aktie ist ein Zeichen für hohe finanzielle Flexibilität.
- Er zeigt, wie viel Kapital ein Unternehmen effektiv einsetzen oder ausschütten kann.
- Besonders relevant für dividendenstarke Unternehmen oder solche mit starker Kapitalrendite.
📘 Short Interest
📈 Was ist das?
Short Interest zeigt, wie viele Aktien eines Unternehmens aktuell leerverkauft wurden – also von Investoren geliehen und verkauft, in der Erwartung fallender Kurse.
🧮 Wie wird es berechnet?
Der Wert zeigt den Anteil der Aktien, der aktuell auf fallende Kurse spekuliert wird.
🏛️ Wofür ist es wichtig?
Short Interest dient als Stimmungsindikator: Ein hoher Wert deutet auf Skepsis oder negative Erwartungen gegenüber dem Unternehmen hin – kann aber auch zu einem „Short Squeeze“ führen, wenn der Kurs plötzlich steigt.
🧮 Berechnung
🎯 Was bedeutet das für Anleger?
- Ein niedriger Short Interest deutet auf Vertrauen in das Unternehmen hin.
- Ein hoher Wert kann ein Warnsignal sein – oder eine Chance, wenn sich die Stimmung dreht.
- Besonders spannend in volatilen Märkten oder vor wichtigen Quartalszahlen.
📘 Employees
📈 Was ist das?
Die Mitarbeiteranzahl zeigt, wie viele Personen ein Unternehmen weltweit beschäftigt – ein Indikator für Größe, Struktur und Geschäftsmodell.
🧮 Wie wird es berechnet?
🏛️ Wofür ist es wichtig?
Sie hilft bei der Einschätzung von Skaleneffekten, Effizienz und Personalkosten. Zusammen mit Umsatz und Gewinn lassen sich Kennzahlen wie Produktivität je Mitarbeiter ableiten.
🧮 Berechnung
🎯 Was bedeutet das für Anleger?
- Viele Mitarbeiter bedeuten große operative Komplexität – aber auch hohes Umsatzpotenzial.
- Produktivität je Mitarbeiter ist ein wichtiger Indikator für Effizienz.
- Besonders spannend bei stark wachsenden Tech- oder Industrieunternehmen.
📘 Umsatz je Mitarbeiter
📈 Was ist das?
Der Umsatz je Mitarbeiter zeigt, wie viel Erlös ein Unternehmen durchschnittlich pro Beschäftigtem erwirtschaftet – eine Kennzahl für Effizienz und Produktivität.
🧮 Wie wird es berechnet?
Die Mitarbeiterzahl stammt in der Regel aus dem letzten verfügbaren Jahresbericht.
🏛️ Wofür ist es wichtig?
Diese Kennzahl hilft, Geschäftsmodelle zu vergleichen – insbesondere zwischen arbeitsintensiven und technologiegetriebenen Unternehmen. Ein hoher Wert deutet auf Automatisierung, Effizienz oder hohen Wertschöpfungsanteil hin.
🧮 Berechnung
🎯 Was bedeutet das für Anleger?
- Ein hoher Umsatz je Mitarbeiter spricht für ein skalierbares und margenstarkes Geschäftsmodell.
- Ein niedriger Wert kann auf arbeitsintensive Prozesse oder geringere Wertschöpfung hinweisen.
- Besonders hilfreich beim Vergleich von Tech- vs. Industrieunternehmen.
ServiceNow, Inc. Aktie Analyse
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ServiceNow, Inc. — 2026 Evercore Global TMT Conference
1. Question Answer
Thanks, everybody, for joining us. Kirk Materne with Evercore ISI. We're really excited to have ServiceNow with us this afternoon, Gaurav Rewari, who's the EVP of Global Marketing, Data and Analytics. So thanks very much for being here.
Just for some background for everybody, can you just talk about sort of your responsibilities at ServiceNow and then the elements of the Data and Analytics platform? Because I think it's something that's obviously up and coming at the company, but maybe not as familiar to everybody. So I'll let you kick off with that.
No, happy to provide some context, and thanks for having us. So yes, I'm Gaurav Rewari, I'm EVP and GM, General Manager, of the Data and Analytics business.
Relatively new business for us at ServiceNow. And we've done things in data and analytics before. We had embedded reporting, we had data integration products, but it was fairly scattered and it wasn't sort of a serious area of focus. And so Bill and Amit reached out to me to join and to stand up our next multibillion dollar business. So that was sort of the problem statement.
And I think the motivation was, on their part, was twofold. One was what they were hearing from customers, which is, look, "We'd love for you to take data seriously." And the second is just its incredible relevance to our AI success, right? And you've all probably read the reports, right, the very sobering statistics, around 95% of projects fail, the MIT study, and the other things from Gartner that are equally sobering.
And if you actually read that report, it tells you that, in most cases, the reason for that are data issues, right? So this is -- I often -- the data is all siloed, I don't know where what is. Even if I find it, I don't know what it means. There are 5 different versions of the truth. The quality of the data is suspect. If I can clean it up, how do I keep it clean? Then I derive insights from the data, but you've got one version of a definition for return on invested capital, Andrew has got another one. Which one do I believe? And on and on and on, right?
So these kinds of issues, we like to joke, it seems like the path to agentic AI heaven goes through some form of data hell, right? And so we said, okay, we looked at ourselves in the mirror and we said, look, if we are serious about driving business transformation through agentic AI, we've also got to be serious about being in the data and analytics space, and making sure that our customers have the tools and the support that they need to get their data estate to be AI-ready.
And I'm just delighted to share that sort of the product line that we've built to support that has met with a very strong reception. And we're on track to break $1 billion plus in ARR in just a few quarters here.
That's great. Very fast ramp. Can you just remind people the products involved in the data and analytics side? Obviously, RaptorDB is a big one. But what else falls within your sort of purview?
Good question. Yes. No, look, the framework with which we think about the scope of data and analytics in the new world of AI, which is fundamentally different, we believe, from yesteryear, are what we call the 4 Cs.
Your first order of business is just to connect all your data. And it's really important that you provide connections to all systems of record, all data platforms, et cetera, right? So that these AI agents can learn what they need to learn so that they can do what we want them to do, right? And they can't just be ServiceNow data. So that connect layer is hugely important.
The second layer is, okay, I've connected it, but like it's not enough to just connect the data. I need to be confident that it's trustworthy. So I need to have -- clean the data and you need to do that on an ongoing basis. So there's governance that's required. So that's the second C.
The third is you can connect your data, you can keep it clean, but you can still really not know what it means and what ties to the other. So that's context. That's a big investment area for us. That's the third C.
And then the fourth is, just think about it for a second, right? AI isn't just about assist and copilot type of -- initial copilot kind of capabilities, right? It's about actually taking action. That's where AI is today. And so how can we have a world or how can we have an architecture and an infrastructure where like the system of where you get insights is completely distinct from the system where you actually take action? You've got to bring those together. And that's the fourth C, converge.
And so our products map into that. Workflow Data Fabric is connect and control. We have a new analytics product line that we've just announced that helps with the context and the context engine. And finally, the converge is Raptor.
Okay. Out of curiosity, when Bill came up to you and offered this opportunity, why was it exciting to go to ServiceNow data? Meaning data, there's a lot of companies that are involved in data. What did you see at ServiceNow that gave you sort of -- or gives you permission to win in this area and help customers with this? I was kind of curious, because it's not a trivial task to try to build a data business. It's hard. There's a lot of companies that are trying to do this.
Yes, yes. Look, I'll just sort of speak very frankly here, I wasn't initially intending to go to ServiceNow. I've sort of, deliberately, I think, chosen in my career to alternate between big companies like Oracle, and then startups, just to sort of stay nimble. And so I was actually headed to a startup, and I spoke with Bill. And I suppose he did the old Jedi mind trick on me or whatever. But like I was so fired up at the end of that call, I got to tell you, that I basically said yes on the call and I hadn't spoken to my wife before doing that. So there was an interesting conversation that evening. Of course, she was very, very supportive.
But I'll tell you, there were 3 reasons that just compelled me like to say yes. One is I've always had a soft corner for this company, because from the Fred Luddy days, they always go back to first principles and think about how is it that we can architect our product to win, right? So we have a structural advantage.
So we're -- even when we are in the age of AI, that notion of a single codebase, a single platform, with a single security model, single user experience, the painful discipline required to just invest in that gives you leverage, right? And what did Archimedes say? "Give me a lever long enough, I will lift the moon." That's what architectural purity gives you. So I've had a soft corner for that.
And then secondly is it's a very collegial place. It's somehow managed to keep a very sort of startuppy innovative environment going even at scale. So those are the things. Plus the old Jedi mind trick, I suppose.
Yes. He's known as a pretty good [ talker ]. So you're not the first, I'm sure there's many of us. Talk to us about, as you obviously have a great customer base that has used you and trust you for managing a lot of workflow, how does the discussion about getting these data products, getting them to view the data products as something that they want to expand with you? Just walk me through maybe an example of a customer where that sort of conversation starts and what it ultimately ends up looking like as they say, "Hey, look, I like your strategy. Let's go."
Great question, and I think that gives me an opportunity to make a really important point, is I think that we are on our way to becoming a data and analytics juggernaut by, initially, and even in the midterm I would say, never really selling directly to data and analytics teams. And the way we do that is by saying, "Hey, Dear ServiceNow Platform Owner, Dear Line of Business Head, that uses ServiceNow for workflow orchestration across the board, would you like to have your operational workflows and your analytics run 10x faster?" Right? "And if you do, we'll run a POC for you. We'll show you the results. Sign up." And we would have sold RaptorDB Pro. No conversation about speeds and feeds, no conversation about columnstore indexing, no conversation about parallel processing. It is the value and the outcome that we sell.
Then the next port of call is, "Okay, so now you're embarking with us on this journey for agentic workflows, would you like to make sure that your AI agents have, for their training, right, data from not just ServiceNow, but related data, from Workday, from Snowflake, from Databricks, et cetera? If so, we've got the right thing for you. It's Workflow Data Fabric with its connect and contextualized layer," right?
And so, and lastly, we've gotten into analytics now, we are not going and saying, okay, let's talk to you about -- because I used to be at Oracle, at MicroStrategy, et cetera, I ran products for those companies, right? We're not going to have a conversation about, hey, let's talk about slowly changing dimension and ragged hierarchies, which is the DI speak. We're going to say, "You put changes into your production systems. Do you want us to help you predict which changes are likely to fail and where the incident volume is likely to spike and which businesses are likely to be impacted?" And why we can do that is because we're going to take our analytics product and bottle it up into workflow-based solution.
So fundamentally, we are actually selling solutions with data and analytics products underneath the hood. And then the phase 2 of our journey is to say, well, we've earned the right then at some moment in time to go directly to the data and analytics office.
Okay. That makes sense. RaptorDB Pro, it's positioned to run both transactional and analytical queries on the same data set. How much of an advantage is that for customers in terms of just price performance? And that alone, does that get you in the door to have the conversation, I guess, in terms of...
100%. Look, I would say that RaptorDB Pro in its first innings, and we've got a few lined up, is largely about saying, initially, was largely about, hey, if you have a certain volume of transactions that you're running, a certain number of workflows that you're orchestrating across your system, we will speed those up without you knowing, right? Like that's what RaptorDB Pro brought to the table in the initial innings.
But then this notion, as you call out, about a converged infrastructure, is profoundly important. You see most of enterprise software's history has been about saying, you have these what I call OLTP systems, online transactional processing systems, think ERP, CRM, HCM, that execute transactions and get work done. And then you have, if you have questions, you need answering, business intelligence, analytics, you would typically forklift that data out into a data warehouse or a data mart and then analyze it over there, right?
Okay. But now imagine a world where you have not thousands, but millions, if not billions, of AI agents acting and thinking on your behalf, right? How can you have a situation where they're going to be acting on stale data and stale insights? Because moving that data over introduces what's called latency. So if you can have the same workhorse database perform both operational tasks and analytical tasks, you give them real-time insights, not insights that have that latency.
So it's fundamentally that value proposition that we find that our customers are -- love. And what we have chosen to do, and this is once again how ServiceNow is distinctly different, is we've said, yes, we have an analytics tool. But if you want to point your favorite analytics tool, Tableau, Power BI, et cetera, directly against RaptorDB, we'll let you do that too. It's okay. We'll embrace the choices you've made just as we've embraced the choices they've made on the systems-of-record layer as well.
And when you think about Workflow Data Fabric, how much of the sort of early demand for that is people just trying to get ready for agentic? Meaning, I kind of wonder it's always sort of the chicken or egg, are they trying it out and then realizing the data doesn't work so they got to go back and deal with it after the fact? Like, is it just the central discussion around an agentic enterprise driving more, I guess, understanding of the need for a technology like that, that can help centralize data and basically inform the agents in a much better way?
And you're saying versus the more traditional like I want to upgrade my analytical infrastructure...
Yes.
Yes, good question. I'd say that certainly, the need to get your data estate-ready for AI is the why-now motivator. I mean I've been going to this Gartner Data & Analytics conference they have for longer than I care to admit. I had a full head of hair when I started, right? And I got to tell you, the sessions that used to be the most packed were the ones on analytics and dashboards. That's where you got the whistles from the gallery, right? No one went to data quality, master data management, like those are not sexy at all. Last 2 years, standing room only. Same people, same problem really, and they're standing room only because their CIOs and CEOs are telling them, "Listen, clean this up yesterday," right?
So that urgency is definitely tied to getting your data ready for AI. But in so doing, I honestly do feel you're solving a lot of the problems you need to solve anyway to get a more robust, semantically richer analytical infrastructure in place.
And you mentioned earlier the ServiceNow customer base, they're trying to figure out how to get to that agentic layer. When they think about sort of spending on RaptorDB Pro, does it come more from sort of the -- is it just a broader view of workflow, and so this is sort of almost a new budget for them? Or are the data people getting involved sort of after the fact? They're like, oh, ServiceNow has got a lot to go here. I'm just kind of curious who the buying audience ultimately ends up being at the end of it. It might be all of the above.
It is all of the above. But principally, I would say it's the ServiceNow platform owner and our existing e-buyer that sponsors the project around. "Okay, I have like 5,000 reports I'm running and they can run 10x as fast if I have RaptorDB Pro under the hood." So that's sort of the land motion for RaptorDB.
But we have just announced some additional capabilities, like the one I alluded to, which is, hey, what if I have Power BI or Tableau in house and I want to point it directly against RaptorDB? What does that mean? That means you don't necessarily anymore have to take out your data from Raptor, put it in Snowflake, put it in Oracle, put it in BigQuery, et cetera. So the cost of defining and maintaining those data pipelines goes away. So it self-funds itself. And guess what? Because you're hitting Raptor directly, you get live, real-time analytics, not with that latency.
We've done the same with something called Live Archive, where what we're saying is, if within Raptor you want to offload some data to lower cost storage, we'll let you do that, right? And then we'll let you actually query both the hot and cold data seamlessly. Today a lot of companies take the data out and put it in a backup and archival system. But once again, the cost of doing that goes away if you go with the Raptor option. It self-funds.
And I guess when -- you guys obviously have a lot of products like Now Assist and others that are agentic in nature. Is the data discussion fundamental in those as well now? I mean, is that when people are thinking about that? Is it sort of like, yes, if you really want to get to sort of more autonomous agentic, you're going to need to make sure that the data is set up? So are you getting pulled into those discussions essentially?
100%, and increasingly so. I mean I'll be perfectly candid, in the early days when the story was largely around connectivity of data, quality of data, governance of data, it was like, "Yes, yes, I got to do it." It's like washing my hands 5 times a day. I get it. I got to do it. But everything has changed with this context thing, where demonstrably you can show that the quality of your AI agents, reducing hallucinations and bias, is tied to how rich the context is that you can give to your AI agents. Then collect -- 3 Cs, connecting the data, controlling it and then contextualizing it, becomes crucially important. That's all large part -- in large part done through Workflow Data Fabric. So suddenly, it's like, okay, I got to know this too as a prereq.
And our vision, I would say, on context engine is quite unique. Because a lot of people may not know that like ServiceNow's initial special sauce was the CMDB and this whole Knowledge Graph that was built that powered the CMDB. And so we've been in this business forever, which is mapping the smallest IT software hardware component all the way up to a business service, right? And understanding the lineage, the impact analysis, et cetera.
And so to that, we've added context from your data platforms, like Snowflake and Databricks. We've added context from identity and about users through our Veza acquisition, about assets from our Armis acquisition. So suddenly, you've got something that is it's the graph of graphs. That's what our context graph is.
That's really interesting. If there are any questions, I got a ton more, but I'm happy to make it interactive as well. All right, I'll keep going.
The data.world acquisition, can you just talk about what you guys are doing on that front in terms of the data catalog, governance capabilities? I think it fits into what you said about the 4 Cs, obviously, but how is it for you?
Yes. No, happy to spend a minute or 2 on that. Look, I think that was the first move we made, inorganic move that we made. And it was a Knowledge Graph based company for data cataloging, which was unique. We looked at all the other companies out there in the startup venture ecosystem. And we just fell in love with this one because of the way it was architected. And it's wall-to-wall deployments at places like McKinsey, WPI, et cetera. So we spoke to a lot of customers.
Fundamentally, what we said was we need a way to organize the data or catalog it. So we understand, where did this field come from? Can it be trusted? What was the last time it was modified? What is its lineage? And ultimately, bless it. And so from that, we create data products that are really metadata and that tells any user, including an AI agent, this set of things are on this topic and can be trusted, right? So we knew that it was a seminal piece. We had not built that, so we made an inorganic move there. Happy to report, we've just fully integrated it into the ServiceNow platform and rolled it out at Knowledge in May.
So that's the sort of the big piece of the puzzle. But that's the first step in a longer journey. And that longer journey is about saying we're not just going to get your data estate AI-ready on day 1, we're going to keep it AI-ready. So data quality, data observability, MDM, data harmonization, data enrichment are all things that we will both build and partner with. So we have this notion called Workflow Data Network, which says, "Look, if you want to use ServiceNow's data quality product down the road, great. If not, if you've got your favorite data quality product, you can plug it in."
So that is once again a very different approach relative to the other players. And so that's what -- and we call it, we've given a fancy name, Autonomous Data Governance. But really, that's what it is.
Okay. And you mentioned sort of you guys have zero copy partnerships with some of the other data providers like Snowflake, Databricks. How should we think about those relationships in general? Is it all just about openness? If someone has -- most, Snowflake to be their core data repository, maybe they have you all, sort of just running under the ServiceNow stack, for example, I guess, how do you think about that from a -- there's, I'm sure, some coopetition to some degree, especially as you get into analytics. But how should an investor kind of frame your position in data versus the ones that are maybe more centralized around that area?
That's a very nice question. And I think that, honestly, it harkens back to one of the reasons I shared with you I felt compelled to join ServiceNow, which is going back to first principles and figuring out how to architect this for today's needs. And in so doing, I believe our position is unique in the market, right? We don't say you have to move all your data into our data cloud or into Raptor for the magic to happen. If you'd like to, we love it. Thank you very much. We'll be flattered. But you don't have to.
So if you want to leave your data in SAP, the ERP systems, or if you want to leave it in Snowflake, Databricks, Google BigQuery, Oracle Database, we've got all of those. You can leave it in place. You don't need to move it. We will logically represent it in Raptor. And at the moment of the question, we'll push down the query -- federate the query and push it down to these underlying data warehouses and data lakes.
They're happy because we continue to drive data processing consumption there. We are happy for another reason. It's because we say to our customers, just like we are the platform of platforms, as Bill likes to say, for system of action, we're also the platform of platforms for insights. And AI agents need insight and action.
It is our position in the stack that allows us to do what we do. And what that meant was basically looking at where the industry was. Everyone, you might remember, was talking about data gravity, data gravity. Don't play in AI if you can't get data gravity. And our position was, that's nice, but it's not necessary. What matters to us more is knowledge gravity. And we believe we can do that even if we're sitting atop the data warehouses, data lakes, the systems of record.
So that's why Zero Copy is such an exciting thing for us and it's important. And the reception has been really strong. And I think it's a distinctive architectural benefit.
I think ServiceNow has always, because you've done so well in your core ITSM, you've been sort of given permission by your customers to expand. And I'd imagine having data products allows for potentially more surface coverage for you all over time. You're not going to announce anything, but I'd imagine as customers think about building agents that are cross-functional, things like that, the data foundation sort of helps support that view or that vision for you all. Can you just talk about that a little bit?
Absolutely. I think that data and knowledge foundation, as we just talked about, gives us the framework, and the fabric, no pun intended, in place so that you can do powerful things on top. And once again, it's a logical fabric. So not all the pieces involve moving the data over. Some can stay in place. So we play nice with the other systems of record and the data platforms.
So I think it opens up avenues for us. And I think I'm personally very content, because we can blow past all our revenue targets that we have for this business and our ambition by continuing to sell into our existing e-buyer more and more data and analytics capabilities, but positioned as outcomes that matter to them, right? But the time will come.
And this was actually something we did at Oracle. We were very late to the BI platform space. So we built something called BI Apps. Basically, it was CRM analytics, ERP analytics, HCM analytics. And that's what we sold on top of PeopleSoft, Siebel, JD Edwards and E-Business Suite. The customer often didn't know that they were using a BI platform underneath. We blew that past $1 billion, $1.5 billion in revenue. And then after that, the customer is like, "I kind of like this. Can I use it for other things?" And we said, sure, you can. And that was the expand motion.
It is our belief that exactly this will happen. What Mark Twain said, "History doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes."
Yes. How about just the go-to-market for these products? I assume, is this, from a rep perspective, they understand the benefit of bringing data into the conversation? You have specialists that just are sort of -- that come in along with the sort of account manager? How do you make sure that the assets you have in Data and Analytics are represented in conversations? Because I'm sure you're still introducing a lot of your customers to these capabilities.
No, no. Great question. And look, I think it's the latter. So what we do is we have our core AEs. And the core AEs own the relationship with the customer. They're typically more schooled in the sort of bread-and-butter products of ServiceNow that we are known for, whether it's IT service management or the like. And what they do is they know enough to be dangerous and have the first couple of conversations, and then they quickly pull in the specialists. And we've got specialist AEs and SCs as well.
But now we have to, as we go into 2027, ask ourselves. Because this business is -- it's one of the fastest-growing businesses ever in ServiceNow's history, right? Within a company that has already broken past $5 billion, $10 billion, now $15 billion, faster than anyone else. So we have to ask ourselves whether the time has come where we have a dedicated, not a specialist, but like dedicated sales force just for Data and Analytics, or do we wait a little bit? So those are the discussions that will happen back half of '26.
Interesting. Interesting. Any questions? I'll keep calling, but I can keep going too.
Analytics. What do you think the secret sauce is for you in that area, right? I mean we've all seen it, you're at Oracle, done that, we've seen analytics, I don't know, it almost takes on sort of people are like, "Oh, analytics, who cares?" But there's obviously value to that. Is the value in the analytics really just the whole stack that comes along with it from ServiceNow? It feels like it's a layer that people think is somewhat commoditized, which might not be fair, but it's the view. How do you make sure -- or I guess, how do you monetize value at that layer?
I don't think that's fair. And as in like, I think that proclamations of the death of BI are greatly exaggerated, as they say. And I think that it's never been more relevant. But there is such a thing called modern BI. And what is modern BI? Modern BI is the complete upending of a massive category. This is a $100 billion TAM category. I started my career at MicroStrategy back when the term BI was not coined, and we sort of evangelized it along with Business Objects, right?
And look, here are the 3 things that are happening. Number one is we now have a world, agentic AI world, right, where we want these AI agents to think and act on our behalf, right? And so like just as humans need trusted business metrics, you better believe that these AI agents need, not the Monday afternoon versus Monday morning definition of return on invested capital, but the official, governed, curated, best version, right? So they need authoritative business metrics just as much as humans do. That's number one.
Number two is that this separation between the world of getting insights and taking action cannot survive in a world where you've got AI agents doing both. And they need real-time analytics in the flow of work. That's the second big thing that's happening.
And then the third is I think dashboards will be greatly diminished as a consumption mechanism for BI and for analytics, and be conversational. You want to ask your questions conversationally, get results conversationally. And you want to have AI agents analyze the results for you, interpret it, spot outliers, bring them to your attention. And then because we are ServiceNow, trigger workflows. So you detect risk and you remediate, in one platform. Nobody else can do that.
And that's why analytics is deadly important for us. And it comes at a time when every single chief data officer is looking at the old analytics tools and saying their better days are behind them, like we have to think differently in the age of AI. It is a moment of profound disruption in this $100 billion TAM market, and we are positioned to go in with we're bringing insight and action together. That's the Pyramid acquisition that we made 2 months, 3 months ago, something like that.
Okay. That's super helpful. One of the conversations I think we've been having at this conference and with investors in the last few months is the sort of concept of a harness and orchestration layer at companies. And I know this might not be perfectly within your purview, but data seems to play a really important role in sort of the value of describing up these layers and what you can do with data, is sort of a differentiator versus just model intelligence getting better.
I guess how should we think about that with the data sort of offering at ServiceNow? Meaning, does it help you all have -- like does having the data platform make that sort of orchestration harness layer even more powerful to some degree as we -- because the models are going to keep getting more intelligent, that's going to happen. So the differentiation has to happen in terms of your ability to understand data, take actions on data, things like that. So I feel like it sort of feeds into that broader discussion, but I'd love your sort of take on that.
No, no, for sure. I think that we talked about this new context engine that we have, that is a graph of graphs. It combines the traditional ServiceNow Knowledge Graph that we've always had with an identity graph, a user graph. We've also built in sort of something we're calling a Decision Graph, which is because we are sitting on 20 years plus of accumulated workflows, we are able to understand, in a look-back fashion and a go-forward fashion, okay, when a decision was taken, why was it taken? When an exception was made, who made the exception? Did it go through a chain of approval, yes or no?
And so decision traces to figure out why that was done and what the outcome was is context for the AI agents to make smarter decisions in the future. Similarly, we talked about that one version of the truth for your business metrics, because in parlance -- in common parlance, that's called the semantic layer. So we got that through Pyramid. But that's going to fold into our Context Engine as well.
So these are ways in which the data products that we have become extraordinarily relevant to our AI story and to AI adoption with customers, which I think is what you were asking.
Yes. No, exactly. I think we're all asking a question of like we all know the models are getting more powerful, how do you add value on top of them? And I think, obviously...
Yes. So one is the unique context that we have and we provide. And then the second is what you were getting at, which I forgot to speak to, which is this notion of what Bill likes to call the rules and the rails, so the control paradigm and the harness. And I think that extends to data as well. That's what that Autonomous Governance piece will give us, that we're building out. And data.world, the data catalog, is the first piece of it.
So we create these data products that are blessed assets for AI agents and humans to use. And unless they're blessed, they can't be used. That's a harness. That's a control mechanism. In fact, like we -- I wanted to name that, before it got named Autonomous Data Governance, I wanted to name it the Data Control Tower. It can shut down. There's going to be only one control tower.
Only one control tower.
Yes, yes. Standing leg. So yes. But in essence, that's what it is.
Okay. And you all now have a much more fulsome stack of Data and Analytics products right now. Is there a cadence that's normal, I know it's early, is there a cadence like -- like is it RaptorDB first, then Workflow Data Fabric, then analytics? I mean how do you think about...
From a customer adoption?
Yes, from a customer adoption perspective. And maybe it's too early to know that or there's not a good sort of...
There is 1 or 2 patterns. I mean yes, there's a lot of noise in the data, but a couple of distinct patterns are, I think it's usually Workflow Data Fabric first, largely because we are already in 95% of the Fortune 500 doing the take action piece. So they are using the integration write-back capabilities. And so they're already Workflow Data Fabric customers. That's why we have more than 6,000 already.
And then it's about jumping up tiers in our pricing model with them. Would you like to also tap into true zero copy? Databricks, Snowflake, et cetera? Well, then step up to another tier. That's Workflow Data Fabric.
Raptor in the first innings was, "Hey, do I want my workflows to run 10x faster? If so, I mean" -- so the bigger companies with a lot of workload, they're the first to gravitate to it. But with Live Connect, Live Perform, some of the new capabilities I alluded to, I think we'll see more broad-based adoption of Raptor earlier. And analytics is the baby of the family, like it's only just rolling out.
Taken off.
Yes.
Okay. Maybe I got a couple of last ones. But of the data platform when you think about -- there's a lot of things, I think, bringing it in and having it to be part of ServiceNow with the change management database, things like that, is that what's durable? Meaning, I think everybody is wondering what moats are and stuff right now. When you think about your data platform and what's durable, that's very unique to ServiceNow as we think about sort of, you know, everybody is wondering about terminal value and all that in the AI world, when you think about your business in particular, the things that are going to be almost impossible for someone to sort of replicate or replicate easily, what comes to mind?
I'll give you 3 things and tell you why neither of those are the answer to your question. The first is that converge database you talked about, right, where you can do both operational execution as well as analytical execution in the same database without needing to move data, that's hugely differentiated, and which -- can you think of like which -- no one else has it, right, at our scale.
I'll ask a follow-up. Yes.
So that's number one. Number two is the ability to like federate out the process of understanding the data and taking action without necessarily having to move the data over from external sources. That's a crucial differentiation.
The third is the CMDB, which is -- I mean, it's a marvel of engineering, built over 20 years, with the accumulated workflow history that we have that allows us to do the things we can with the Context Engine, right? That, unless you've been in this business supporting 10 billion-plus workflows with trillions of transactions, how are you going to get it. That's a pretty good moat, right? That's the third piece.
But neither of these, and there's probably 2 or 3 more I could probably come up with, but neither of these are what I would put as number one. Number one is the fact that all of these gems are in a single platform. Single data model, single security model, unified user experience for everyone. No one else has that. And that's because Fred Luddy, when he founded the company, made that a defining characteristic of the company. And so that's number one. That's the true differentiation.
Yes. And is that single platform, what do you think about from a customer perspective, is it just like the simplicity of it to some degree? I mean what is -- like if I'm a customer, I'd be like, great, yes, I'm glad it's a single platform. What does that mean to me? Does it mean is it just performance based? Is it the understanding of centralization of data? Like just take it another step further. So if you're talking to a customer about it, why that would resonate with them? I understand why it resonates with ServiceNow, but why would the customers?
Lower cost of ownership. More accuracy in the results. The ability to have a core set of people within your IT department trained on using the platform that can then do, with the same skills, allow you to do magical things in HR, CRM, ERP, IT, you name it, right? So it's the gift that keeps on giving, right? And the ability to say, hey, you set up your security and like you have access to this kind of data, Andrew has access to something else, and suddenly, anything you do in HR or CRM or any of the other lines of business, inherit that.
In alternate solutions, it's all siloed, so then you've got to go buy some other product to stitch it all together. That's not the case when you have a single platform, single data model.
And I would imagine, because of that, the customers that have bought multiple products from you, whether it's ITSM plus HR Onboarding, are they the ones that almost see the value the most? Is it most obvious to them? Are those the easiest upsell customers where they are at? Okay.
100%. I think you alluded to it in one of your earlier questions, is this installed base is actually pretty happy, and it's quite refreshing actually. You go to Knowledge and you just feel the love. And I say that because if you're an installed base play, like Data and Analytics is, it matters. You're innocent until proven guilty. You're given a chance. And that's a big deal. That's a big deal.
One last chance. Any questions? All right. We've covered a lot of territory, so we'll probably end it there. But thank you very much.
My pleasure.
This is really interesting. And we'll see how data ends up in the next year or so at ServiceNow. It will be a lot to watch. Thanks a lot.
Thank you.
Appreciate it. Thanks, everybody.
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ServiceNow, Inc. — 2026 Evercore Global TMT Conference
ServiceNow, Inc. — 2026 Evercore Global TMT Conference
ServiceNow positioniert Data & Analytics als Kernbaustein für agentische KI und erwartet rasches ARR-Wachstum bei klarer Plattformdifferenzierung.
Gaurav Rewari (EVP) erläutert Produkte, Go-to-Market und technische Architektur hinter RaptorDB, Workflow Data Fabric und Context Engine.
🎯 Kernbotschaft
- Strategie: Data & Analytics soll ein eigenständiges Milliarden-Geschäft werden und ServiceNow als Anbieter von Insight‑to‑Action für agentische KI etablieren.
- Plattformvorteil: Ein single‑platform‑Ansatz (gemeinsames Datenmodell, Sicherheit, UX) soll geringere TCO und schnellere Skalierung ermöglichen.
🚀 Strategische Highlights
- Vier Säulen: Connect, Control (Governance), Context (semantische Zusammenführung) und Converge (Handeln auf Basis von Insights) strukturieren das Portfolio.
- Produkt-Stack: Workflow Data Fabric (Konnektoren & Governance), RaptorDB Pro (konvergente Transaktion+Analytics), neue Analytics‑Produkte und Context Engine (Graph of Graphs).
- Offenheit: Zero‑copy‑Integrationen zu Snowflake/Databricks und Unterstützung für Power BI/Tableau sollen Koexistenz statt Datenzwang fördern.
🆕 Neue Informationen
- Wachstumsziel: Data & Analytics ist laut Management auf Kurs, in wenigen Quartalen $1 Mrd.+ ARR zu erreichen.
- Rollout/Integrationen: data.world vollständig integriert und auf Knowledge vorgestellt; Pyramid‑Analytics‑Akquisition eingebunden für die semantische Schicht.
- Produktfeatures: Live Archive (Hot/Cold‑Query), Live Connect/Perform und direkte Anbindung gängiger BI‑Tools angekündigt.
❓ Fragen der Analysten
- GTM & Käufer: Primäre Buyer sind weiterhin ServiceNow‑Plattformowner/e‑Buyer; Specials und Cross‑sell ins installierte Basis treiben Land‑and‑expand.
- Koopetition: Zero‑copy‑Ansatz soll Coopetition mit Data‑Cloud‑Anbietern entschärfen; ServiceNow setzt auf "Knowledge gravity" statt reiner Data gravity.
- Skalierung: Diskussion über eigene dedizierte Sales‑Organisation für Data & Analytics im zweiten Halbjahr 2026 wurde genannt.
⚡ Bottom Line
Für Aktionäre ist das Gespräch positiv signalgebend: ServiceNow baut ein integriertes Data‑Portfolio mit konkreten Cross‑sell‑Hebeln und technischen Alleinstellungsmerkmalen auf. Key‑Risiken bleiben Execution (Skalierung der Sales‑ und Partner‑Motion) und Konkurrenz durch etablierte Data‑Clouds; kurzfristig ist die Story eher wachstums- als margentreibend.
ServiceNow, Inc. — Bank of America 2026 Global Technology Conference
1. Question Answer
I was asked to introduce myself before every session because the transcript after that doesn't know who is presenting. So my name is Tal. I'm 6 foot 3. And tomorrow is my birthday. So tell me...
Happy birthday.
Here you go. Thank you. So I introduced myself for the record.
We -- as you know, I cover software and networking, and we recently launched coverage on ServiceNow, and we launched it with a positive view. And we distinguish between -- I'm just starting with kind of 30 seconds of our views just to give a framework for our discussion.
I was just talking that's always...
We started with a positive view because we distinguish between companies that will use AI as a tailwind and companies that will be -- we will see great competition because of AI. Our biggest fear is that the AI labs, the next step for them is to launch applications because if they want to be -- especially those that are going to lose on the enterprise side, meaning they'll be behind, the natural evolution for them is to launch an application and to go into CRM, to go into -- because that's the way to penetrate to the enterprise space.
So the -- when we looked at our entire universe, whether it's Workday or ServiceNow or Salesforce, we identified ServiceNow as a company that is really entrenched, meaning it's impossible, in my view, to replace ServiceNow. It's also impossible to replace Salesforce. It's also impossible to replace Workday, but that's not the point. The point is, can you grow with new customers? Can you grow with upselling and can you grow with AI? And if you can do that, your growth could accelerate. And that's how we identified ServiceNow as a winner in the space of enterprise software. So that's kind of my introduction. I think I took a bad decision to host this in this room. We should have taken the bigger room, I apologize, but it's only 30 minutes and it's your daily workout. So Gina, thank you so much for coming.
Thanks for having me.
It's -- I want to start with kind of -- I start with a softball question, with an easy question. articulate your growth strategy in the context of my kind of initial thoughts on your company, articulate the growth strategy. And if you can speak about 2 things: growth before AI, meaning as if AI doesn't happen, how do you grow with existing customers, upselling? That's before we talk about AI driver and then growth in the context of AI.
So a couple of things. I think it's impossible in this day and age to talk about growth without AI because AI is embedded in every single product now that we offer to our customers. And so to talk about and to think about growth in enterprise technology without AI, I think, is a fallacy. So -- but what I will do is I will bifurcate AI, but it is a huge part of the growth strategy because ServiceNow is the AI control tower for business reinvention, AI built into the platform that, as you say, is entrenched in our customer base so strongly and you think about 98% average renewal rates every single quarter for over 20 quarters consecutively.
Over 20% revenue growth even at $13 billion before any acquisitions consistently at our scale. it tells you a lot before you think about the growth trend about how entrenched and how mission-critical we are in our customer space. The other great thing about us is that we are the trusted platform of the IT organization. And IT and technology is becoming the business for every -- or is the business for every single business, every single customer, every single industry.
And so as you think about growth from here, and we articulated, I think, really strongly at our Investor Day just last month, it's a few different things, right? And so we talked very, very clearly about our 3 big growth vectors being security and risk, CRM, data and analytics. And that's on top of an incredible base, core technology that even our most penetrated product set of ITSM still has so much white space if you think about customers even within U.S., outside U.S. And so it's about really embedding AI into the company, and it's part of each of the growth strategy.
So I can't talk about security risk. I can't talk about CRM. I can't talk about data and analytics without including AI in there because fundamentally, what people have to understand is that AI is the tailwind that will enable a company like ServiceNow to continue to grow at over 20% even at our scale, while at the same time, driving pretty incredible margin accretion.
And so if you think about security risk, data analytics, CRM, then think about EmmployeeWorks. So we did this incredible acquisition of Moveworks, which we integrated the technology into our employee experience within 3 weeks and launched EmployeeWorks, which is Moveworks plus our HR to really be that front door to the entirety of our entire platform.
But for customers, incredible technology, all AI-driven, that really allows their employees to self-service across the enterprise, whether they have questions about HR, IT, legal, security and then add that to -- so that's adding AI to our core. If we think about AI for our core IT, we just launched Level 1 autonomous agents, that are really there to help drive end-to-end resolution on our platform for our most prolific SKU of ITSM, that ability to build incredible Agentic AI into the platform to help our customers drive increasingly complex workflows and get great results, autonomously resolving 90% of issues, drives huge value both to the bottom line and as well to the top line because the value of an engaged employee versus an unengaged employee is tremendous.
That you can repeat -- rinse and repeat for CRM, rinse and repeat for security and risk. And if you think about what customers have been telling us for 2, 3 years now, and telling most people that the #1 barrier to scaled deployment of AI in the enterprise is all around security, risk and governance of the AI in the enterprise. How do we make sure that the AI is doing what it's supposed to be doing, is governed, is running the rules, has the right authority to do the right things.
And by the way, it needs to all be auditable. It needs to be traceable. If it's going off the rails, there needs to be a kill switch. The AI control tower enables our customers to have a bird's eye view across the enterprise of every single asset, AI asset across the enterprise and enables them to see what it's doing, how it's doing it. It gives them -- it enables identity, it enables visibility and then it enables the governance and the scalability across. And so these are just a few areas of really how we think about growth.
I fully agree with everything you said, but I have a question about it. And the question is about competition. AI enables other companies to actually try and be part of the workflow, meaning if you ask any winner, any company, a leading enterprise software company, what is your strength? They tell you we're entrenched into the workflow. Google is trying to be part of the workflow. CRM is trying to now -- because of AI, because of the availability of AI tools, they're trying to go into areas where you are strong. You are trying to go to their areas.
Do you see -- I'll ask it in 2 ways. Do you see increased competition in the areas you're trying to go to? And the other -- the flip side of this question is what makes you the winner, meaning what makes you better positioned to use AI to grow into all these areas?
Yes, yes. So would you believe me if I said the competition was not heavier? Not, right? Competition is fierce. Competition has always been fierce. But yes, competition is out there. What we've been doing and continue to do is ensure that we are staying at the cutting edge of innovation. ServiceNow has always been known as an incredible technology innovation company, organic innovation company. We will not change that.
We've been innovating. We've been building AI into our products since before 2018, right? We had our Pro SKUs that was the first kind of machine learning AI built into our SKUs. So number one, stay on the cutting edge of technology and innovation. We have done that always. We will continue to do that.
What I'd say competitive differentiation and advantage is in the context engine, 20-plus years of understanding the rules and rails of the companies, of understanding the workflows, of understanding -- context of understanding the assets. We are the CMDB of the companies, meaning that we know where all the assets are. We know what they're doing. We know how they're doing their work. The ability to continue to drive that, the large language models are driving incredible innovation and intelligence and intelligence is really important.
Our value proposition, the intelligence piece is less than 10%. Where the value is really accruing is on the context, is on the execution. Intelligence without the ability to act upon it, it's just really, really good, pretty darn expensive advice. You need to be able to do something with that advice to be able to do something with that intelligence. And that's all about scaling context execution, the action layer. And so this is why we continue to have 22% growth at our scale. While we gave an initial guide for our AI of $1 billion by 2026, we just increased that to $1.5 billion. And the conversations that we're having with customers are all about how do they use the platform? How do we build more AI into the platform to help them drive even greater efficiency?
And I'll tell you the proof point to customers when I can go in and say, we're customer 0 on all of our AI products, and I've been able to, over the course of 2025 and 2026, drive $300 million of savings to the bottom line. We have over $500 million of actual savings, some of which I've reinvested back into the company. With $300 million of real tangible savings from our AI driven to the bottom line, when we can show that to our customers, that's a compelling value proposition, and I'm probably one of the best people that they want to talk to when they look to buy.
I'm paid for expressing views, so I'll tell you my view, I believe you, by the way. The concern -- and that's a question, not a statement. The concern is that AI and agentic AI will happen, but it's not a very near-term phenomenon, meaning companies are talking about it. We see companies investing in cybersecurity now to protect for it and prepare for it. What is the risk that spending on the existing business is not related to AI, your regular customers, what you're doing with IT, what you're doing with, what's the risk that spending slows down ahead of AI, that companies invest less because they need to shift money in order to prepare for AI?
Yes. I get that question a lot. So a couple of points, right? Growth continues to be strong. Demand continues to be strong. What we're seeing -- and by the way, I just talked about $200 million in savings this year, $100 million last year, that's all from less hiring that I've had to do because of AI. So even internally, the ability to -- the savings isn't coming from IT budgets. The savings is coming from labor pool.
So the ability to utilize like the dollars -- some of it is coming from historical IT budgets, but a big chunk, C-suites, boards, CEOs, CFOs, the mandate is to really think about their AI strategy, and they need to lean into it. So -- some of the budget is coming from historical IT budgets, but not all of it, right? There are separate budgets coming because the understanding that this AI super cycle is really going to drive significant benefits, top line and bottom line to customers. They need to start building and they need to start building now.
And so we're seeing budgets come from many different places depending on the customers. And I know you have a question, I'm sure, on the demand environment and spending environment. And what we're seeing is not a slowdown in spending in IT. It's a prioritization for sure. And the core of what we do and the reason why ServiceNow is such a winner in this space is because we are a platform across the enterprise. So when you build AI into the platform and you then expand it across the enterprise, you're getting that value and those functionality and that capability, whether you're in HR, IT, finance, legal, support and the ability to really drive that platform value for customers has been significant.
So let's make an assumption. Assumptions are that budgets are not going to increase across the board, all of enterprise, budgets, if the revenues do not increase, budgets will stay the same. So that means the investment for AI will have to come from something else. And the question I have is when you combine everything, when you combine everything you're doing and you combine the AI, do you think that you can maintain the growth, meaning do you think that spending overall on what you're doing will actually expand and you will take the share of the pie from something else?
Yes. I mean if you look at a lot of the banks, a lot of the industry analysts do CIO surveys every year, right? Are you going to spend more or less on A, B, C, D, E, F, G vendor? And 90% of them will tell you that they expect to spend more on ServiceNow.
Got it. Okay. Of your target areas, you have multiple target areas, can you rank them, again, qualitatively, not in numbers, but can you rank them just to understand, where do you see bigger opportunities where -- versus where do you see more maybe later opportunities or smaller opportunities?
Yes. I mean I won't rank them because I'll get in trouble by my teams back home. But to your point, if everything is a priority, then nothing is a priority. And so the growth areas that I talked about earlier around security and risk, around data and analytics, around CRM, around employee works combined with Moveworks.
Those are -- obviously, AI baked into everything. I don't like to talk about AI separately because it is baked into everything are the key priority areas for us. Financial Analyst Day, we talked about the growth between 2026 and 2030 of security risk, CRM and data analytics being above 25%. We talked about a revenue target between $30 billion and $32 billion in 2030. And so those growth areas are probably the top where we're focused. But that doesn't mean that our core is not hugely important to us and that we continue to build AI into everything.
Just think about the launch of the L1 specialists. A lot of our L1 specialists are all about our core IT functionality. And so just because the growth is probably not as high in our more mature products, it doesn't mean that the focus is not as important. Our core is who we are, and we'll never stop investing behind it.
Another aspect of AI or deployment of AI is the question of pricing. On one hand, most of the companies I know are announcing workforce reductions. And on the other hand, your historical pricing was seat-based. How does it -- how do companies -- how do your customers make the change from seat-based to consumption-based? How do you help them to make the transition?
Yes. So the hybrid model of pricing that we've put in place over the last couple of years is a great way to help them in the transition. And by the way, help me in the transition as we think about predictability for revenue flow, right? And so the hybrid model allows a ton of predictability for the customer, but it also allows -- if they -- if them to not have to overcommit all upfront, right? As AI is in experimentation phase and is moving to scalability, they don't know what they don't know. There's articles out there right now about token budgets and people blowing through the token budgets in a quarter.
Let me tell you, every CFO I talk to is really freaking out about that right now. And so how do we think about -- the hybrid model allows them to have a much more predictable base. But if they start to really consume more, we're able to take the value from that, and they're able to consume as they go.
And so as we think about what the monetization model looks like, what I say to everyone is we were the first one to announce this hybrid pricing model. Finally, a lot of people are copying it. Fantastic. We will always be on the front end of how we think about enabling our customers to get the most value, but also for us to be able to monetize the value that we're providing.
And so for example, when seats end up being lower because AI is driving such incredible productivity, well, the only reason why they're able to lower seats is because they're using the AI. Well, we monetize the AI, right? So the more AI that's being consumed, the more value that we'll get. And then we talked earlier about accessing that labor pool of funds, right? If you're able to reduce labor by 65%, you can increase technology by a whole hell of a lot and still be driving significant value for our customers, where our customers are very happy to pay more for the technology because at the end, the value that's accruing to their bottom line is much, much greater.
How do you monetize the AI opportunity, meaning not from a pricing. We discussed the pricing, but rather what kind of products? You spoke about control tower. There are other products. Can you -- there are probably people in the room that don't really know what you're offering. So maybe this is the opportunity to explain how you go after the opportunity.
Yes. I mean it's all about innovation, right? So we talked about AI control tower. We talk about Veza being the place where you're able to have identity control over all assets, human and nonhuman. Any finance person knows that one of the big issues always in an organization from a cybersecurity perspective is identity risk. It was really, really hard to manage that with humans. Can you imagine how complex and complicated it is with nonhuman, right? And so that ability to really manage identity and then visibility across the estate of not only your physical IT assets but now you're digital, hugely important, that's Armis.
Think about the autonomous agents that we're building within our product set, the L1 specialist for technology. We're doing the same for CRM. We're doing the same for Employee Works. So Moveworks combined with our employee experience is the best of both worlds. I had this great conversation with someone internally the other day. And so the biggest competition that Moveworks had was them people not doing anything, but Moveworks combined with ServiceNow, the conversations that their salespeople are having with customers is so robust and the sales cycle is accelerating pretty dramatically. Fantastic. So it's all about continued incredible innovation.
When we went public how many years ago, right, Gartner, I think, had our TAM at $1 billion. Right? It's on $600 billion now, not because the market just expanded. Some of it is market, but we didn't sit still. Like we are known for our innovation. We moved out of IT into HR, into CSM, into legal and procurement and office of the CFO. So it's all about continued innovation and continued product launches and making sure that we're building AI into the platform and into the products, not bolted on, on top, right? So there's no integration issues. There's no complexity, right? One of the reasons why we've been so successful is our one data model, one orchestration, simplicity and not putting complexity on our customers.
Why was it important?
So I'm a cybersecurity analyst. I understand the importance of cybersecurity. But cybersecurity was around your solution for 20 years. Why is it important to get now to cybersecurity? Why did you make the acquisition? Why is it more important in AI than it was before?
Yes. So first of all, we had a security risk business before, it's over $1 billion. So this isn't like, oh, ServiceNow decided to move into here, right? Because security workflows are a big part of the enterprise, right? I'll go back to the comment I made earlier. Over the last 2 years, the biggest comment we heard from customers about the obstacle to scale deployment of AI in the enterprise is all around security and risk and governance. All of those security issues that we had with human identities with humans just got multiplied 100 times in the world of AI.
When you have Agentic AI deployed scaled within the enterprise, the attack surface just grew significantly, right? And so how do we help our customers think about secured governed AI scale deployment?
Execution and workflow is a really big part of it. Security and governance, so, so, so very important. If it was important before, it just got 100x more important because the attack surface is so much larger.
But is it the same buyer, meaning the same buyer that is buying ServiceNow also buys security? Or is it a different department and you need to develop new relationships and...
Yes. So one of the reasons why you buy an incredible cyber company like Armis, like Veza is because they are very connected to the CISO. Arguably, even our prior security and risk products, the CISO was part of that conversation already. And in most organizations, the CISO rolls up into the IT organization.
So it's definitely very adjacent to what we've historically always done. That being said, we also work with the CHRO with our HR products. We also work with the Chief Procurement Officer for our procurement products. We also work with the COO on customer service. And so our buying center over before AI has expanded much more broadly over the past 5, 10 years.
Yes. Let's talk about the numbers a little bit. You have expansion plans, AI helps on expenses. Your margins are extremely strong. Lots of opposing forces. Take us through your margin journey, your plans for margin journey for the next few years.
Yes, yes. So we have historically been on a trajectory of at least 100 basis points of expansion in margin every year, and that's before AI. And that's because of the inherent leverage in the organization, right? One platform, the ability to drive innovation into products across the platform, not siloed within specific product categories has been a huge differentiation from a leverage perspective. On the go-to-market side, the same thing.
And so there's innate leverage even in the initial model. If I think about from here to 2030, that leverage just becomes even greater because the ability of AI to help drive incredible efficiencies on the innovation and engineering side of things as well as across the enterprise. And so the ability to absorb margin dilution from the acquisitions we made within this year, all by next year pretty remarkable. But a lot of that comes from the inherent leverage in the initial platform and then AI built on top of it. I talked about the $300 million over the last 2 years built that will only continue to grow.
Right. And the hybrid pricing model, what's the impact of it on margins?
The hybrid pricing model, so at the end of the day, the hybrid pricing model doesn't have a huge impact on margins but does have an impact on margins a little bit. So you would have seen a little bit of pressure on gross margins over the last couple of years. So historically, we were like 95% our own data centers. We've been slowly migrating our strategy to use more hyperscalers. And so the hyperscaler margins, especially as you build, are our margin profile for our own data centers was best-in-class. And so there's -- it's a little bit more expensive, especially as we scale on the hyperscaler side.
As we grow bigger, that margin dilution comes down a little bit. You have a little bit of compression from AI. You also have a little bit of compression from our impact business, which is our business that provides incredible -- it's all about getting our customers to value quicker and deploy quicker. And so we have technology that helps them think about autonomous deployments. Think about also having L1 support to help drive implementation, has a little bit of impact on gross margins, but we've been able to offset all of that with the operational margins on OpEx.
And so you'll continue to see -- I think we gave Rule of 60 from a margin perspective by 2030, our margins continue to accrue. I feel really strongly that ServiceNow has been an incredible bellwether for a company that's able to continue to grow at over 20%, so best-in-class high growth and best-in-class margins at the same time, and you'll continue to see us do more of that.
Great. We only have 2 minutes left. I'm wondering if we have any questions from the audience. We have a mic to pass around. No. I'll continue, you have about 90 seconds to raise your hand.
I want to ask you about -- so it's very easy to ask managers to talk about the growth initiatives because that's what you do day-to-day. I want to ask you the flip side. What are your challenges? What are the things in your view, if you think strategically about the company, what's the challenge of the company for the next 3 years?
Good question. A couple of things. So number one, I'd say that we have a lot -- and I'll turn it around into a growth opportunity. But historically, we've been underpenetrated internationally. And so as we think about growth vectors outside of the U.S., we have a lot of white space to go after. So we've been investing there, and that's going to be a huge area for us.
And then the second piece I'll say, also part of the growth opportunity for us is deployment, like how do we get our customers. We feel so strongly, we know customers who deploy and get to value fast continue to expand even faster. So what are our opportunities to ensure that we're getting our customers deploy it as quickly as possible. We're continuing to invest in there. I talked a little bit about autonomous deployment, using AI to seamlessly help a lot of the journey upfront to really allow our customers to get the value faster because that is flywheel of consumption, right, the more they deploy, the more AI they use, the more capacity they generate, the more value they generate, the more they will buy and the more value they will get. So it's a huge area of focus for us as we think about getting our customers to value as quickly as possible.
Great. Gina, thank you so much.
Thank you so much, Tal.
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ServiceNow, Inc. — Bank of America 2026 Global Technology Conference
ServiceNow, Inc. — Bank of America 2026 Global Technology Conference
ServiceNow stellt sich als AI‑integrierte Plattform dar, erhöht das AI‑Umsatzziel und setzt auf Sicherheit, CRM und Data/Analytics als Hauptwachstumsfelder.
🎯 Kernbotschaft
- Positionierung: ServiceNow sieht sich als schwer ersetzbare Plattform mit tiefem Workflow‑Kontext und 98% durchschnittlicher Erneuerungsrate.
- AI‑Zentriert: KI ist in alle Produkte eingebettet; das Unternehmen versteht sich als "AI control tower" für Governance, Sichtbarkeit und Ausführung.
- Wachstumsmotoren: Security & Risk, CRM, Data & Analytics plus EmployeeWorks (Moveworks‑Integration) treiben weiteres Wachstum.
🚀 Strategische Highlights
- Feldfokus: Priorität auf Security/Risk, CRM, Data/Analytics; erwartetes Wachstum >25% in diesen Bereichen (2026–2030).
- Produktinnovation: Einführung von L1‑autonomen Agenten (90% Lösungsaussagen angestrebt), schnelle Integration von Moveworks in EmployeeWorks (3 Wochen).
- Go‑to‑Market & Preis: Hybrid seat/Consumption‑Preismodell zur Übergangsunterstützung; Monetarisierung über gesteigerten AI‑Verbrauch.
🔍 Neue Informationen
- AI‑Ziel: AI‑Umsatzprognose erhöht von $1 Mrd. auf $1,5 Mrd. bis 2026.
- Konkrete Einsparungen: Management berichtet von ~ $300 Mio. Kosteneinsparungen durch interne AI‑Einführung (2025–2026) und >$500 Mio. kumulierten Einsparungen.
- Langfristziel: Umsatzziel $30–32 Mrd. bis 2030 bleibt Bestandsgröße der Planung.
❓ Fragen der Analysten
- Wettbewerb: Sorge vor Hyperscalern/CRM‑Anbietern in Workflows; Management kontert mit 20‑jährigem Kontextwissen (CMDB) und Fokus auf Ausführung statt nur Intelligenz.
- Budgetverschiebung: Fragestellung, ob AI‑Investitionen bestehende IT‑Spenden kanibalisieren; Antwort: Budgets werden priorisiert und teilweise neu zugewiesen, viele CIOs erwarten Mehrausgaben für ServiceNow.
- Margins & Kosten: Hybrid‑Pricing und Einsatz von Hyperscalern drücken leicht auf Bruttomargen, werden aber durch operative Hebel und AI‑Effizienz kompensiert.
⚡ Bottom Line
- Fazit: ServiceNow liefert konkrete Belege (schnelle Integrationen, bezifferte Einsparungen, erhöhtes AI‑Ziel), die seine Rolle als Plattform‑Gewinner untermauern; Hauptrisiken sind verstärkter Wettbewerb, Hyperscaler‑Kosten und die Execution bei Internationalisierung und schneller Bereitstellung.
ServiceNow, Inc. — 46th Annual William Blair Growth Stock Conference
1. Question Answer
All right. Perfect. Why don't we go ahead and get started. Thank you, everyone, for joining us. Amit, thank you so much for being here.
Yes, of course. Thank you for having me.
Here we go. For those who don't know, Amit is the President, COO and Chief Product Officer at ServiceNow. Before we get started, a couple of disclosures. My name is Arjun Bhatia. I'm the research analyst here at William Blair, who covers ServiceNow. I am required to inform you that I personally own shares of ServiceNow, and a complete list of disclosures and conflicts can be found at williamblair.com.
Okay. Let's go ahead and get started. So I am very much looking forward to this discussion. There -- obviously, the big debate right now that everyone is going to be focused on is the AI debate in software. And there's sort of 2 sides to this camp, right? One is sort of AI is going to disrupt incumbent software vendors and the other is it's a huge sort of opportunity. You've sort of at ServiceNow launched a lot of new AI capabilities, a lot of innovation on the AI front. So for generalist investor, which I think there's a lot of them in this room, who doesn't maybe live in this enterprise software world, just explain why workflow orchestration, the position that ServiceNow has, is a tailwind to -- or benefits from AI rather than is being disrupted by it? And maybe you can touch on your sort of moats in that answer.
No. Thanks, again. I think it's a definitely important question. And maybe for people who don't follow enterprise software or you understand how enterprises use software, it's a pretty complex environment as many of you -- whoever have been following it. There are a lot of different disparate systems, which needed to be connected, which needs to be implemented and orchestrated on a regular basis as well as there's a lot of versions management, so backward compatibility, forward-looking compatibility and very integrated in terms of how those things operate.
ServiceNow has been in this business for 20-plus years, really managing that various different environments customers have in their enterprises to make sure their business run efficiently, predictably as well as give customers the outcome they expect. So that software, which we've been building for many years, the platform we provide is very integral to every enterprise out there, all the Fortune 500, if not all the Fortune 2,000. And good thing we have done over many years with ServiceNow is that we keep on innovating on the platform. It remains ahead. It keeps up adopting latest new technologies to make sure customers don't have to worry about doing it themselves. Because what it allows them to do is as they upgrade our software, they're getting the latest IP, latest capabilities, latest innovation in the same platform without having to learn something new themselves and not having to break anything which exists today. So it keeps the business running intact.
And with AI, we're doing the same thing. AI is definitely a great technology. It's very, very helpful for automation as well as be able to do things much more efficiently. So we brought AI into our platform today for a couple of years already, and we've been delivering that as integral part of our platform. So customers, when they upgrade or when they take our latest software as part of their normal day-to-day jobs, they're getting the value of AI with the idea that it works in the existing environment, so you're not breaking anything while future-proofing you because you're getting updated versions of capabilities to make sure you're getting automation, you're getting efficiency gains, you're getting revenue growth as well as bottom line improvements as well. And it is something which everybody is used to.
So ripping and replacing those things, which is what I think the narrative out there is that you can go and build anything because software building is becoming easier. Software could be built before as well. People didn't try to build custom software after packaged software became much more better and made customers' life better long term. Similar things are happening with AI now, right? Because you can always build something, but building part is very, very small, right? It's 15% to 20% of your cost. It's the maintenance, the governance, the security, the compliance, which is very, very important for all enterprises. You can't operate something in an environment which you can't predict, you can't be secure, you can't be compliant to all the regulations.
So what we bring in our software is the value of AI, but also the value of all those different things, which people think that it is not needed when you are thinking of consumer software. In the consumer world, you probably never have to worry about it, but enterprise, you do need to care about it a lot. And that's the work we do, heavy lifting, building, as I said, is 15%, 20% of your cost, but the maintenance and upgrade as well as the compatibility, a huge amount of very hardening work required, not sexy, not exciting, but you have to do it. And that's where the moat for us comes in because we know how enterprises run. We know how they operate, all these systems which need to be connected and how do you get the effectiveness out of it, but at a very good value as well. Value creation is happening in our software as well today.
So we brought AI to our platform. We've been innovating. If you look at the technology stack we have today and the platform we have, is as modern as it gets, better than pretty much any other vendor out there, while we're preserving the value customers expect from these products without having to rip and replace. I was using an example earlier, like, just because you can grow vegetables in your backyard, it doesn't mean you become a farmer and stop doing your day-to-day job. Same thing is happening here, like people can say, you can build software, but why would you do it if it's a software which you are using today, can do all these things at the same cost, if not better, and give you the value?
And that's happening. If you look at our AI business, it is growing very fast, and it continues to accelerate because we're innovating while preserving the investment customers have made. So there are a lot of discussions we can have around it, Arjun, but I think the reality is that these enterprises do require something which gives them peace of mind, gives them control, gives them visibility as well as the innovation associated with that. And we bring all of that together for ServiceNow today in our platform. And that's why we continue to please our customers and keep on growing.
And so in that, like, you're the domain expert in all the different fields that you serve and all the departments that you serve inside the enterprise, and that's where you're able to stay a step ahead essentially of what a customer might build themselves because they're not an ESM or an ITSM or a customer service.
Yes, good point to make. I think -- no doubt, I think the other part associated with that and some of the -- set the context, one of the things in enterprises is not like everything is documented. As many of you in your businesses today, a lot of the content out there, the document about standard operating procedure is pretty partial. It's a very small amount. A lot of things happen outside the documents, right? Exceptions, who approved what, why they approved it? So our business process which we are running inside ServiceNow is collecting.
We run today 100 billion workflows on ServiceNow platform for our customers and 7 trillion transactions every year, is growing at 20-plus percent. So we're collecting a lot of context about how a business decision was made and why this business decision was made. And that data, all this related content is bringing into something called Context Engine, which goes into -- on top of all these AI systems to really enrich it, but also make a decision which is a little more guaranteed than any system can do otherwise, right? So our outcome usually 90% to 100% accurate versus all other systems are 50%, 60% because they're just depending on some documents they've read and try to run a workflow.
We are doing it with the context we brought in, the data we brought in and the domain expertise we have. So things like employee onboarding, it's a very good example. A very common thing, right? If an employee joins a company, you have to go and update maybe 20 different systems in one company. Some other company will have 17 different systems. And then it needs to be also done based on what department you're joining, what systems you require, what exceptions you require, what you need temporarily, what you need full time. So all that stuff has to come together when you want to get an employee onboarded. We can get an employee onboarded on our system in less than a day and make them productive next day. If you look at -- if you do this from build mindset or something which you don't have the domain or context, it might take you 2 weeks. It means your employees are unproductive. And half of things will not be right, so that means you go redo it again. So by the time employee gets going, it's a year -- a month or 2 months wasted for that.
That's kind of the example of things we see. That's just not employee onboarding, resetting a VPN access or giving you access to something temporarily if you go into China, for example, with the right laptop. So HR-related PTO requests, how do you resolve all this stuff? The context we bring in makes a big difference in the domain we bring in. And those systems are now AI-enabled, completely agentic and lets customers really get the efficiency of AI, but with the guardrails and the harness around it, which makes it much more realistic and valuable to our customers.
And this is sort of the system of record advantage that you have. I mean you've been serving your customers for decades, and you've sort of built this context over that time. And one of the questions that I always get from investors on this is, how much of the data inside ServiceNow is ServiceNow's versus the customers'? And when you're bringing this context in, is it your own sort of proprietary elements that you're bringing in, in addition to the customers' records? Or how does that work?
Yes. I think the customer data is usually not huge, right? I mean this is information, which is in any kind of system out there, which you can easily get access to. It's a lot of the running -- the runtime is where the data gets generated, right? So the metadata we create related to a particular process is very unique every time we run a transaction, every time we run a workflow. And that's the Context Engine. It's taking a lot of the -- it, of course, applies the customer data and the relevance to that particular information, overlays with the metadata and which is very distributed, by the way. It's not like we got one table. It's thousands of parameters constantly being updated and constantly being collected and related to all the different systems you might have.
Plus, we have a system technology called Workflow Data Fabric, which is also connected to all the different data warehouses. Today, no company has everything in one place. Everything is very distributed. And Workflow Data Fabric connects and does federated information collection, overlays that with the metadata we have, which is our IP, and makes decisions real time to get the outcome. So the data is ours. The metadata, which we create, the context is really dependent on that one. And that's not available to anyone. And that's why, as I said, a lot of time people miss this idea that you can do the work, but how effective the work has been is a really differentiator, right?
As I said, if I finish a task and you never have to reopen the task, I'm 100% effective, but if it's something you have to reopen every other time, that's really waste of time, and it's not efficient, and it's costing you a lot more money, not just the cost of software, but the business time.
Yes. Okay. So you have the context, you have the domain expertise, and you're building the agents. I want to talk about one announcement that you made at Knowledge, your customer user conference, which is basically opening up the platform to third-party agents, right? And we see a lot of agents out in the marketplace, and you've essentially made the decision that this context that we have in our system of record, we will allow customers to power third-party agents with it, something that they want to build with Anthropic or OpenAI or anybody else out there. What was -- maybe just talk about the sort of the rationale behind that decision? Because you're obviously building your own agents as well in a vertically integrated stack that you're trying to provide to customers.
No, we've been always an open ecosystem. One of the reasons we've been successful for our customers is, one, that we understand that customers have a very disparate and heterogeneous systems. We cannot say everything needs to be like us and only thing which -- everything has to be through ServiceNow. You have to work in thousands of other environments. So we've been always thoughtful about that. And openness has always been core principle of the way we build software.
On specifically in terms of the idea of that how do you get access to a system. See, in the traditional days, everybody use UX, right, UI, you log in and you try to do things. Nowadays, there are going to be also agents calling into a system. So it's not only humans interacting through a user interface, but also agents now asking you to do something, maybe asking for data, but in our case, really asking us to do something, take action. We are really a system of action. So the way we think about this is that you can also ask when a particular system is -- when a request comes in from an employee, it can come from Claude Cowork, it could come from Copilot, it could come from our own user experience or an AI agent asking for it. We need to really provide the value to our customers that you can now take that action and guarantee the outcome. So that's the experience layer on top of us through agents or UX we provide. That's the headless -- or we were going to call it -- we call it Action Fabric.
And the idea is not data access. It's really action, taking the task, finishing the task. So if you want to now onboard an employee, an agent can tell us, please onboard this employee in this -- for this particular company, and we would take the full work, and get that outcome back to the agent, right? So we're not giving them the context data. We're giving them the full work. And I'm doing that work. That's why my value to every enterprise grows considerably. On top of that, it opens up more aperture for us, not just to our UX. Now any other system can also get access to us. So now suddenly -- as you said, there's an AI tailwind, and for us, it's definitely, because now giving me ability to take the IP I've built for years, understanding of the context and the data and the integration I've built, now open it up to so many more use cases.
So I don't give them the context by itself. I'm not giving them access to like, "Hey, you can ask." The context engine, which I built, the data is so difficult for anybody to understand because it's really our unique IP and our secret sauce, they can't use it themselves. It is what we overlay on top of an agent, and we do the work for you, and that's what they pay us for. That's how we monetize it, right? So we want to open up the opportunity for us broadly with all the work we have done through UX, our UX, third-party UX, agents, whatever it is, we don't really care. End of the day, our job is to really finish the work for our customers.
Yes. And it seems like it's a TAM expansion sort of motion for you, that there's generally more agents getting created and used in the enterprise because in either way, you have -- you're sort of benefiting. And from a financial perspective, even if you are powering these other agents that are outside your platform, that is a monetization.
100%. I think you're right, we are opening it up, but also like the reason Anthropic is working with us is because the Claude Cowork, for example, when they want to have somebody to do something for them, they need someone to do the actioning part of it. The Claude Cowork integrating with Action Fabric gives that full end-to-end. Versus they would go and do something in a particular system, the security issues, compliance issues, tracking issues as well as the employees should not be going and updating things without permissions.
So we put a layer. So something we have launched, and I think you saw it at Knowledge as well, AI Control Tower. We launched it last year. Giving customers full visibility and control over every AI system they have, not just ours, but third party, right? So we understand what Claude is doing, what the OpenAI is doing, what Gemini could be doing, what SAP Joule is doing, Salesforce, and we discover all those AI systems in the company and put it into this central control plane. We were doing that for access inside the company before anyway for enterprises, right, any hardware and software. And now you have full governance layer, cost structure management in terms of how much you're spending, which department is spending what, what models you might be using, but also all the security issues you might be running into.
And then we bought this company called Veza, which does this access graph. So it's nonhuman identity is becoming a big issue. And what that Veza does is it really manages nonhuman identities and ensures they're doing nothing wrong in real time. And that goes into AI Control Tower. We have full visibility across everything now. Customers can see that real time. And then we open up a platform for all these different use cases. We have full ability to now manage the security, the compliance, but also finish the work for them. And that is where the monetization becomes much more bigger. And we believe integration with third-party systems makes sense because we have the visibility and control, but also the actioning part of it.
Right. Can we talk about just pricing model real quick because I think this is another sort of narrative that's out in the market of -- historically, you've had multiple pricing models, but a lot of it's been seat-based. And now there's concerns about whether seats go away or the seat growth algorithm changes. But you have all these AI capabilities, including powering third-party agents. What is the pricing model for that? And how do you evolve the business? And, I don't know, do you see that as a challenge? Or is it...
Yes. No, I think we've been evolving our pricing. I'd say one thing we have to be always aware of is what are the customers -- where -- how they want to use our products and what is the best way to kind of show them value and monetize, right? So we have to be balancing on that one. So we have changed our pricing over the last couple of years. We introduced something called Pro Plus and Now Assist as a higher-end tier providing AI capabilities in a hybrid pricing structure. It's a combination of seat, but with some idea of something we call Now Assist entitlements. So you burn down that Assist. It's entitlement in terms of number of volume of Assist you get, and customers have predictability in terms of what the ceiling is but also flexibility in terms of how they use it and when they use it.
So we have evolved that pricing structure for our premier, higher-end SKU a couple of years ago. And it's been very, very effective business, as we have said, $1.5 billion this year planned ACV and growing very fast. And that hybrid thing has -- hybrid pricing structure has really resonated with our customers, and it allows us to really add more and more capabilities. So what we've done now going forward is now taken that idea and apply it to all our SKUs. We have a whole full set of AI SKUs starting from the base SKU to the higher-end SKU, functionally graded. So it's a different level of AI functionality depending on the SKU and allowing customers to now use AI Now Assist fungibly across all the different tiers as well. So that is the structure we're going towards.
And if you look at our business now, and we shared earlier that net new business, 50% of our revenue is non-seat based now. It just shows you that our change in terms of how we've been monetizing is more reflective of how the world needs to be, right? So we're not completely dependent on seats. There will be seats always, but there also needs to be another consumptive element, but with predictability, not this idea that I have no idea how we're going to pay this month. That doesn't work. I mean this idea that to go away and spend as much as you want and it reward you, that's silly and doesn't make sense long term.
So we are being very careful and thoughtful about how enterprises work and how customers think about it. And this idea of Now Assist burn-down with some predictability is what we're doing now. So our pricing structure is very straightforward now. It's across all our SKUs. So our go-to-market becomes very simple. Customers get AI across all our products. There's no idea of non-AI and AI because everything needs to have AI as a base building block. But then you surround it with a lot of deterministic and core capabilities around it and give the customer outcome with some prediction.
Yes. It feels like -- yes, it makes it a lot easier for CFOs to implement AI in that way as opposed to -- I think there's been some reports of individual employees running through tens, if not hundreds of millions of AI credits.
I think it's amazing that we can get away with that.
Right?
It's illogical.
Right. And maybe just thinking about the agentic capabilities that you're building on ServiceNow, on the platform itself, what do you think is the sort of the advantage? Or how should investors kind of perceive the advantage of you providing a full sort of vertically integrated stack with agents, data, governance, compliance, all in one SKU? Like, do you think customers and enterprises are more likely to go that route? Or are they more likely to put together external agents with your sort of infrastructure?
Yes, I think there'll always be interoperability required. I don't think there's ever going to be any enterprise that uses one product ever. It will be multiple products, and everything will have unique needs associated with that. So I do believe even the orchestration layer, there will be multiple orchestrators. You will have to integrate between different systems. We do this through agent to agent, but also from the business process level. There will be some unique build you might do. If you're a manufacturer, you will build your own supply chain, which is more your IP. Sure, you'll build it in-house. You're building it before, you might build it with AI. Makes sense. But you will need to connect it to your core operational systems, which is what ServiceNow is very good at.
So if you're running your IT department, your HR systems, your finance systems, your customer service, which are more operational, there's some uniqueness, but it's usually a little more homogeneous between companies, which we can provide at a much scale, but it will integrate with your unique IP, build in-house or third party. So that's the future going forward. It's agent to agent, no doubt. But in this idea that you will have different layers combined together. So when we build this full vertical stack, it's going to make our product much more, I would say, AI native.
So the whole stack is very modern, and it has to have all the elements you require in the AI world. You can't just say that I will build pieces of it and then depend on somebody else to complete the story and not provide a solution. Eventually, customers want solution. They don't want piecemeal. They don't want the spare parts. And the spare part world in enterprise software has been done many years, many times and always has failed because nobody can keep up. And you take your best people who should be building a business, building software, which is not needed, where you can have somebody who is much more uniquely qualified to do that for you, right?
So that's, I think, going to be the future where people will still buy solutions. And that's why we introduced something we call AI specialist, this idea of autonomous workers. So eventually, what people are trying to do is reduce the amount of human labor, get automation, reduce the time to fix or fulfill some issue. And that's what we want to provide with autonomous AI agents and take out the human labor cost, but also do something which used to take 2 days, do it in 20 minutes in a predictable fashion. And that's the solution they want, then why would you take AI agents and cobble them together yourself if I can give you a higher-level solution on top of it at a better price and reduces your labor cost, right, with a much more prediction? Because everything doesn't have to be AI. You can have things where like you're updating a database record, you can do that with just normal calls through API. Why do I want to burn a token on an LLM, which pricing might be going up every year, who knows?
So you need to be smart about how you build your software stack and be understanding of what part you want to do it through a traditional software mechanism, what you need AI for, what you use ML for, where do you -- which model version also use? Everything doesn't have to be Opus 4.7, right? You have to look at tiering where you need small models, cheaper ones, while you also build IP on top of it, around it. So that's how we're building our top software stack. It's not this idea that it's fully vertical, idea that everything is owned by us, but we connect it to everything else.
Yes. And how do you -- in that, sort of, how do you view the model layer? Because you have -- you mentioned it's not one model for every use case. How are you viewing -- and you have partnerships, I think, with pretty much all the frontier labs, but you're using multiple models, I presume, and just talk about how this goes?
We have model agnostic, to be clear. I mean we provide customer choice. Just like across the whole stack, we always have this idea of you can run with any -- on top of any system of record, you can run on top of any cloud, hyperscaler or CoLo or private cloud, for sure, any model, any data layer as well as any engagement layer now, right? And any tool you can build with Claude Code on top of us. We have a build agent.
So we've been always idea that very open, but any kind of choices available to customers. On the model, it's the same thing. You can use any model underneath. Model for us, LLMs, the frontier labs, are probably 10% or 8% of the full stack. 80%, 90% of the IP -- 90-plus percent IPs we build. That's where the differentiation comes in. And a lot of these models, in some cases, are interchangeable. So whenever the pricing changes, we look at which is the best pricing. For some example, customers might choose something. They said we standardize on this. We want to use that. That's okay with us. There might be some sovereign requirement. Some models can't meet.
And there are also use cases where you can -- we do a lot of optimization. Through AI Control Tower, we know the cost structure of everything, who's using what. And then we also look at where the cost structures are to understand which model to use for a particular use case. So we're switching those things underneath the covers. Just like -- I think, if nobody cares what chip you use underneath your cloud, most of the time, same thing will happen to the models, right?
As long as the results are there.
Yes. As I said, the autonomous AI specialist, if it reduces my ticket volume, fixes something in 20 minutes versus 2 days, why do I care what I use underneath? That's, I think, over time, right now, this excitement and the FOMO going on that everybody is looking at it every day in terms of features and all this stuff, is kind of even out.
Right. And you're kind of at the forefront of at least getting AI into the enterprise and sort of top-down processes. But I think there's maybe a dispersion of how ready enterprises are actually to adopt AI. So talk about what are you seeing in terms of where are we in the adoption process today? For the customers that have adopted it, how are they thinking about ROI? Because they are at least increasing their tech spending. So where does the return come from on AI adoption?
Yes. I would just look at from -- like, last year, for example, early last year, when we were talking to a lot of -- agentic was becoming kind of what people wanted to do. And the technology was getting better. We had an agentic solution, but the customer didn't know. Whenever we used to go and talk to them about it, like, first, they don't know where to start. What use case makes sense? Second was how do I do it? Third thing of worry for them was, is it secure, is it compliant, can I have visibility? So that was the barriers last year -- early last year. That kind of was the kind of how we thought about AI Control Tower because what we wanted to give them is like, let's take out this governance, security, visibility issue off the table first.
So when we introduced AI Control Tower, our customers and the CIOs started feeling comfortable, "Hey, I can implement agentic without having agentic go haywire and break systems underneath," right? I mean you've seen some examples out there like PocketOS and all where the whole database and the production system got wiped out because you had no control. So that was one part. So we did that early -- middle of last year. We launched AI Control Tower, very successful.
Second thing we see from adoption perspective, as I mentioned, was where do I start? So what we did was we did 100 different use cases, agentic frameworks with like a point-and-click kind of mindset, right? You can get going very fast in a few weeks and give them a very prescriptive ways of getting going, right? Do you want to start with incident management? Do you want to do resolution planning? Do you want to do triaging? Do you want to do SecOps? So we need to find those use cases, say, "This is -- you're currently running this system. This is the agentic version of it, and we can get you live shortly with this control around it." And that took over the next barrier, "where do I start?"
And then third one was how do I go doing this? We also brought in some FDE mindset. This is not like armies of people every day available to customers. It's for a short amount of time, taking the first use case and getting it live.
Specialist engineers.
Specialist FDEs, yes, forward deployed engineers, which are basically black belt, very heavy understanding, deep understanding of AI and our products, and they can get our customers get going in a few weeks, so that they can take the barrier out and show them the value, show them the ROI. We do calculations and all kind of stuff. And once we saw these 1 or 2 use cases go live, it was just open gates stuff, right? Any customer like, "Oh, I want to do this for this one. This, this one." So we start seeing the volume go up, right? And that's really the adoption pattern we're seeing.
And this year, if you see it, the amount of customers now doing agentic with us is pretty high. The volume has gone up considerably. That's why we felt confident to increase our plan for Now Assist to $1.5 billion, 50% growth over what our plan was because of the volume of agentic going up and with the AI Control Tower surrounding it and the security. So we invested aggressively on the security platform to make sure customers feel comfortable adopting this thing because that's a big area of worry. So that's the, I think, the trajectory now we're seeing.
And is it -- I think you mentioned volume, which I'm trying to figure out, is it the breadth of customers increasing? Because there were -- last year, I want to say a lot of customers that were in pilots that probably moved into production this year. But then are there more customers and enterprises coming into the pilot phase and looking to expand?
So yes, we track that kind of the whole pipeline, right? There's a lot of POCs and then we do pre-prod and prod. I would say 70% of our customers now who are doing AI are in pre-prod and prod. So they are going very fast on the production environment, right? The usage, that's why it keeps on going up because now they're starting to see multiple use cases. Usually, the one use case unlocks, then you suddenly get 4 or 5, the multiple department wants to get involved. And that's where I think the production systems have gone up a lot more than last year. I think there were a lot more experimental. This year, I think most of the case discussions we're having with our customers are pre-prod and prod, pre-production and production, so that they can start seeing the value of the investment they're making in this area.
And maybe last one for us to close out on. You have a target out for -- a revenue target out for $30 billion by 2030. Just talk about -- now that you are seeing some of this traction, on AI. What role does that play in that long-term target? And where are we kind of in sort of getting to the milestones -- the interim milestones to get to 2030?
Yes. I think we are very confident about our 2030 plans. I think this is the base case we laid out based on -- we want to be also very prudent to make sure that we know what we can predict and how well we can do in that. So the $30 billion case for 2030, which doubles our business by 2030, is kind of the base case we've laid out, right? So we do believe we have all the core products, very differentiated, well liked by our customers and a TAM which keeps on increasing. There's also, I think, our expectation -- and if you ask Bill, $30 billion is definitely not even to think about. Much more opportunity in front of us, and we'll get there.
The thing which will drive this, as you said, is what, kind of, gives us the confidence. One, I think we have a lot of unique IP and very modern platform, and it's getting adopted very fast. I think if you look at -- now we combine the things we have, AI with workflow, with data. And our data business is on fire, and it continues to grow considerably. And then you combine that now with security, which we have invested aggressively, and we have -- CIOs and CISOs are 2 big buying centers: CIO #1; and CISOs, chief information security officers, #2 buyers for ServiceNow. A lot of people don't realize we are one of the largest cybersecurity provider in the market today.
So that -- so if you look at the growth engines now we have, security, which is going to be and continues to be one of the leading areas for us. You add data with the Workflow Data Fabric, the RaptorDB, which we launched just last year. $100 million ACV in less than a year, right? So very fast growth. And we are looking at $1 billion-plus kind of business growing there for sure. And then CRM, which we've been there for a few years, especially customer service, field service management, CPQ doing very, very well. And then you layer our core very solid IT business in HR business and then you layer the employee works, which we build with Moveworks, the idea of engagement layer for any employee to really -- like CVS Health, for example, uses it for 160,000 employees every day to get any kind of help they need inside the company.
So we have a very solid portfolio. And I think we feel the investments we made are lining up very well. And the AI is definitely a tailwind to let us get into a lot more conversations when you surround that with AI Control Tower and the security product. So a lot of growth opportunities, and we feel very confident where we are going, and it's been reflected in our numbers, and it continues to do better and better.
All right. Perfect. We'll wrap it up there. Amit, thank you very much.
Yes. Thank you, everyone.
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ServiceNow, Inc. — 46th Annual William Blair Growth Stock Conference
ServiceNow, Inc. — 46th Annual William Blair Growth Stock Conference
ServiceNow positioniert sich als zentraler, AI-gestützter Orchestrator für Unternehmens-Workflows mit offenem Ökosystem, Governance-Mantel und planbarer Monetarisierung.
Fireside-Chat mit Amit Zavery (President, COO, Chief Product Officer) vor Analysten/Investoren.
🎯 Kernbotschaft
- Kern: ServiceNow sieht AI als Nachfragebeschleuniger: Plattformintegration von KI sorgt für Automatisierung ohne „Rip-and-Replace“, die proprietäre Kontext-Metadatenbasis schafft eine praktische System-of‑Record-Moat.
🚀 Strategische Highlights
- Workflow/Data: Workflow Data Fabric und Context Engine sammeln Metadaten aus laufenden Prozessen; Ziel: bessere, reproduzierbare Outcomes statt punktueller KI‑Antworten.
- Action Fabric: Plattform öffnet sich für Dritt‑Agenten, aber ServiceNow liefert die Aktion (Actioning), nicht rohen Kundenkontext — Monetarisierung über erledigte Aufgaben.
- Pricing: Hybrid‑Preismodell mit Now Assist‑Entitlements (Predictable Consumption); geplantes Annual Contract Value (ACV) für Now Assist: $1,5 Mrd.; 50% des Neugeschäfts nicht mehr rein sitzbasierend.
🆕 Neue Informationen
- Plattformoffenheit: Konkrete Öffnung für Dritt‑Agenten via Action Fabric (Aktion statt Datenausgabe) und AI Control Tower als zentrales Governance‑Layer.
- Sicherheit & Rechte: Übernahme/Integration von Veza für Non‑Human‑Identity‑Management; AI Control Tower überwacht Modelle, Kosten und Zugriffe.
- Produkttraction: RaptorDB/Workflow‑Data‑Produkte zeigen frühe Erfolge (RaptorDB: ~$100 Mio. ACV in <1 Jahr) und stützen das $30 Mrd.‑Ziel bis 2030.
❓ Fragen der Analysten
- AI‑Risiko vs. Chance: Kernfrage war, ob AI incumbents verdrängt – Management argumentiert, dass Governance, Kompatibilität und laufende Metadaten den Vorteil für ServiceNow sichern.
- Datenbesitz: Klarstellung: Kundendaten bleiben bei Kunden; ServiceNow‑Value liegt in generierten Metadaten/Context Engine als proprietärer Layer.
- Preismodell & Adoption: Nachfrage nach Details zur Verbrauchsmetrik beantwortet mit Now Assist‑Entitlements; Management gab keine detaillierten Margenprognosen oder konkrete Preiselastizitäten an.
⚡ Bottom Line
- Fazit: ServiceNow stärkt sein Produkt‑ und Governance‑Moat durch kombinierte Investitionen in Daten, Sicherheit und offene Action‑Schnittstellen; AI treibt Produktions‑Adoption und erweitert TAM. Risiken bleiben bei Umsetzung über mehrere Produktlinien, Änderung der Verbrauchspreise von Modellen und der Frage, wie schnell breitere Kundenbasis von Pilot zu Prod skaliert.
ServiceNow, Inc. — Jefferies Software
1. Question Answer
All right. We'll go ahead and get started. Thank you, everybody, for joining us. We have Amit Zavery from ServiceNow, President, COO and Chief Product Officer as well. So Amit, thank you for joining us today.
Thanks for having me. Hello, everyone.
So look, originally, I think the shape of the conversation was going to maybe be a little bit different. But given the speed at which things are moving and the focus on AI, I wanted to maybe just jump right into that. And I think there's a lot of questions, some might say some debates. But can you talk about how the Now Assist platform has broadened both in flexibility and capability over time? And then I have a bunch of framing questions or follow-up questions after that.
Yes. So I think if you look at just in AI, it's just moving at a very fast pace, right? So we, of course, started with the idea of Gen AI and giving summarization, helping users get more value from the content they have or what they're doing as the day-to-day task. Over the last year, 1.5 years, we've accelerated what we've done with Now Assist, specifically becoming more of a system of action, right? So the idea of doing things with agentic and making it an agentic platform. So taking different AI agents, how you orchestrate them, how do you work with them, how do you use AI agents to finish task. And coordinating the full activity end-to-end. It's been the next phase from Gen AI to more agentic use cases.
And that has been a big game changer because now you're getting a lot more value out of the investment in AI and you're also getting a lot more efficiency associated with it and removing some of the complexity associated with that, right? And when we started doing a lot of that work, one of the big things which came up was around this idea of governance, security, compliance, visibility. And we built on top of our Now Assist platform, something we call AI Control Tower. And that was a big evolution because that removed some of the barriers customers had in terms of adopting AI, especially agentic as well as ability to have visibility across not just our platform, but third-party systems out there as well.
So our agentic platform has become more this heterogeneous connecting different agents together, but with visibility. And then over the last many months, at Knowledge, we announced this idea of AI specialist. So we have 20 different AI specialists, which do full end-to-end work. So it's really human-equivalent AI specialists, like a Level 1 support engineer, HRSD or HR Service Manager, things around FinOps, things around security ops, things like that. And 20 of these AI specialists now really driving not this idea of you have to manage all your AI agents, but we're finishing that work for them. And that is a big change, right? Because now you remove a lot of the barriers, the work you have to do, but you're getting an outcome which you can also now calculate the ROI against a human cost associated with doing that same task.
So that has been the evolution. And Now Assist has gone from -- and we use that as a term, but it's pretty much across all of our portfolio, right? So we're adding AI across our stack and making sure we have tiering in terms of functionality, but also making sure that this kind of capability becomes much easier to use as well as adopt across the different kind of use cases which are happening inside the enterprise. And we've been adding a lot of more capabilities across the board in this area now.
So there's a lot I want to unpack there, especially on the technology side. But before I jump to that, you mentioned this idea of lowering the barrier. And I think one of the big changes that happened recently was putting AI at every level of the product portfolio. So maybe help investors understand what signals drove that decision and what it unlocks for the end customer?
Yes. No, I think so if you look at -- we have this Pro Plus SKU, which is the Now Assist idea of providing a premium capability for doing automation. And we had this hybrid pricing for the last 1.5 years already. So we have got a lot of signals from a customer that they like this idea of combination of flexibility and predictability with the pricing. They like that they need AI and they can get that full end-to-end in one particular offering as well. But one of the feedback we were getting is that why do I have to always start at the top, right? There might be some other use cases. I want AI as a table stakes. So we wanted to make sure that we bring AI not only in the premium SKU, but AI capabilities, all very, I would say, factored by functionality in different tiers, but available in all of our products.
We don't want to have a non-AI and AI mindset anymore inside the company. Our customers don't want it. They want to be able to adopt AI as part of the same products they buy from us, not just one of the products. So that kind of drove this. We knew the pricing has worked. The feedback we got from our customers were very positive, how we've approached this AI capabilities in our Pro Plus. And then we tiered a functionality and gave the basic base capability in the SKU we called Foundation. And then we have Advanced SKU, which has a little more ability to act -- take action on top of it and then Autonomous at the top tier. So that's what drove it. And it allows our go-to-market to be much more simpler for our reps to go and have this conversation with our customers.
It allows us to monetize AI across our full SKUs as well. Messaging becomes much more simpler as well. And also lets me drive one integrated technology stack instead of having fragmentation in a product for no reason really. Over time, it had to get to an AI end-to-end. So we kind of took that accelerated path towards it based on the feedback we've received, it's been very positive so far. And customers like this idea that they can start anywhere and they can get the value of AI investments we're making while we let them move up as they need to. And we preserve the top capabilities only in the top tier anyway. So we're not losing any of the revenue opportunity, but we're monetizing AI in other SKUs now as well.
I think the simplification makes it a lot easier for adoption. And I think that's important. And the other thing investors are really focused on, we hear it across the different platforms and software. Who's going to be the AI control tower. Now I know at Knowledge in the Financial Analyst Day, you unveiled it to investors. But help us understand what ServiceNow's platform, what allows it uniquely to be well positioned to be the control tower for organizations?
Yes. I think you look at ServiceNow has always been this system of record for enterprises, for any kind of assets, right? With CMDB, which is the core foundation of ServiceNow, which became kind of the way companies adopted ServiceNow was to really have visibility across every asset they have inside the company, any hardware, any software, any IT asset. And if you look at what AI agents are, it's really a software asset. So we were already discovering everything a company was using from IT perspective and bringing into CMDB for many, many years. And if you ask IT departments in terms of knowing what they're using, what licenses they have, who's using how many of those licenses, what much you paid for it, all that stuff they used to go to ServiceNow CMDB to get that data typically, right?
So for us, it's a very natural extension to now say that I will also discover and track and manage and give you visibility to AI agents. We discover them just the same way in the same architecturally. We, of course, build connectors and adapters to discover a lot of the next-generation AI systems out there. But for IT managers and IT system owners, this was like, okay, I already have all the other visibility. I don't want to go to a third-party system for only AI-related stuff. I want to go to the same place where I can have full license visibility, all usage visibility, all cost visibility.
So that's what drove AI Control Tower. And second thing, we're always doing compliance management, auditing, risk management in the CMDB as well. So it was very natural for us to expand that into the AI domain as well. And the reason why we've been able to do very well is because it was not very difficult for them to implement this. It comes naturally as part of what they already have in the IT systems. And what we are thinking of it is that, one, we've always been heterogeneous. We look at everything inside a particular enterprise systems anyway. I can give you, as somebody managing the environment, full visibility control while I integrate with third party. So it's not only about ServiceNow, it's always been about the third-party systems as well.
And that's what is giving us the right to play, right to win, and we were winning in that area, right? Because we are probably as neutral as it gets from all these things. We discover all these things. We give you the cost management associated with that and really remove some of the barriers associated with the shadow AI projects or cost runaways or even security. And one of the reasons we did the acquisition of Veza was that idea of nonhuman identities, right? How do you have visibility in the nonhuman identities, the governance associated with that, any kind of security issues you run into? And what are these AI agents doing given they change identity so frequently based on the role and request they get.
So it became very natural for us to keep on expanding into it. It's been resonating. It's one of the fastest-growing products for us as we speak. And it really gives a lot of peace of mind for any operator inside an enterprise, right? So -- and our view and our vision is that we would kind of integrate with all these different things out there. And we are not just saying it has to be only about ServiceNow. And that's why our integration with Anthropic, Google, Microsoft, OpenAI, but also a lot of agents coming from Workday, Salesforce, others, we can bring that into one place. And nobody else has been able to do that today.
So earlier today to kick off, we had the CIO of Jefferies on stage. He said in multiple different ways that we're essentially a ServiceNow shop that we -- that's not something we're going to look to recreate that, we're going to continue to build on it. But he also mentioned this idea of the difficulty around on agents, right, that we didn't build for a world where you had agents, you had humans that were meant to work, right? And so you just mentioned with the acquisition, how does the recent M&A allow you to help companies monitor what agents are doing? Kind of what's the unlock there that other systems aren't designed for? And maybe speak to the M&A specifically how that adds to your capabilities?
No, I think we're hearing the same thing. I talk to CIOs and all, right? One, they do depend on ServiceNow. It works very well. And just because you can do something separate -- differently, you don't need to, right? So I think that's been pretty much the theme I talk to every customer. And then the second thing is that our view always has been we need to keep on making sure we bring the value of AI or any innovation, as a matter of fact, into our platform, the customers don't have to deal with it later, right? So we keep on modernizing. My job at the company and what we're doing with our R&D work as well is to really ensure that we remain ahead and continue to innovate to give value to our customers.
So as I look at the landscape of opportunities for us across AI and what we've been building, see the AI agents are going to be a new paradigm, and it's already starting to happen where they will interact with all the systems. So users are not only going to be going and pointing and clicking through UX, there will be also AI agents who will request some activity from third-party systems. Similarly, so one of the reasons we have opened up our platform and we launched something called Action Fabric is to allow any AI agent to call into ServiceNow and allow us to do the actioning for them, right? And we've been always a system of action irrespective of whether you come from our UX or you come from Copilot, you come from enterprise Claude or Cowork or whatever it is, we don't really care. But we also want to make sure that we also provide you the first-party experience if you want to choose to.
So our UX has been modernized drastically. I mean if you look at the experience layer is as AI native as it gets with the conversational front-first mindset. The Moveworks acquisition we did kind of led that to give this one unified modern experience across all of our products. And then we added this idea of conversational experience for voice and multimodal omnichannel into the same platform. So you don't have different stacks for different things. and it's completely modern going forward. And then underneath the covers, we're doing a lot of work around security, compliance and visibility and giving that view to our customers so they don't run into issues when they're deploying AI and they find nefarious things happening into the system.
And I don't know how many people realize we have a very large post-breach security business, $1 billion plus, and it's been growing very significantly. And when we now augment a lot of the cybersecurity, vulnerability management as well as nonhuman identity or devices, which is becoming big as well, right? Devices are accessing a lot of the system as well. That's where the acquisition of Armis and Veza fit in. Armis gives you full understanding of any devices out there in the system, be it OT, IoT, medical devices, physical AI now, which is becoming prevalent inside shop floors and manufacturing environments and hospitals. So how do you bring -- just like we were doing any asset, we need to bring every device into this. And now this idea of a platform, which has full visibility, full understanding, provided securely and then giving you the ability to interact with that through our UX, third party or any agent, you have a platform which is very robust, very end-to-end capable, very modern, but also in a very secured, governed and compliant manner, which really gives you peace of mind if somebody is going to operate it.
So I keep on modernizing while keeping the enterprise mindset always in a platform. And that's why a lot of customers love it because they can keep the same platform as we upgrade, they get new features. You don't have to replatform, right? So our platform is still one platform. We add new, new domains on top of the same platform, but it becomes very simple for customers. That's how we've been able to get into CRM and other areas because it's the same underlying technology stack. And now you have a very modern AI native stack underneath the covers.
So I want to pull on some of the newer areas that you're moving into. But before I get there, I did want to touch on the M&A question, right? And if we zoom out, there happened to be a cluster of M&A in a very short period of time. And so the follow-up question has been, is there a shift in strategy? Or how should we think about M&A going forward? So I figured as a technologist, like how are you thinking about the M&A strategy at ServiceNow? What led to the recent M&A? And then how do you think about it going forward?
We have been very careful with capital allocations in general, right? So I mean, we definitely want to make sure we feed our organic engine everywhere. I mean, everywhere we have opportunity, we need to make sure we build the best product, which are well differentiated. But AI also opens up opportunities to expand our TAM and areas where we believe we can accelerate our road map based on customer demand, where we can also build out -- continue building out differentiation and new opportunities for us. Our tuck-in -- ServiceNow has typically been doing tuck-in acquisition, and that all continues, right, where we want to find good IP or acqui-hires or good talent who can help build our teams faster and provide better delivery on the road map and new IP as well.
In some areas, as you mentioned in some of the acquisitions we did recently, cybersecurity, and I think the security space for me and for all of us is really relevant to AI. Without that capability in the platform, you really become just a feature provider without any kind of governance and security associated with that. So we saw immense opportunity with the acquisition we did of Armis to augment what we did with CMDB with any asset, now to expand. We've been talking about OT anyway. So we've been doing IT and OT work. Now adding the security layer around that changes the game. They are -- they have a lot of good IP, very domain-specific capabilities. And adding that to our security business really does 1 plus 1 is much bigger than we would be possible otherwise, right?
So that's really the kind of drivers for some of these things. I think we are at a point where we have all the assets we need at the size we're talking about. There will always be tuck-ins when we need to or where we find something unique. But beyond that, I think between what we've done with Armis and Moveworks, we cover what we need. Veza is a smaller company, but it gave us this ability to do nonhuman identities with a patented Access Graph technology, which is very critical. You talk to any large company now, they want that. We had done another smaller acquisition of Logic to really expand what we can do with CPQ because that's a more AI-driven case -- capability, so you can do accelerated configure, price and quote. So we've been always finding those things so we can really get faster at where we need to go and bring in people who have a lot of the domain expertise. And I think it has worked out well so far. But as your question in broader in terms of acquisition, I think what you should expect is the tuck-ins. And beyond that, I don't think that there's anything we really need to do drastic. That's how I summarize.
I think one of the things that underpins all of this is when the company rolled out RaptorDB, which I think allowed a lot more workload horsepower. Can you just help understand how that underpins all of this and maybe what adoption of RaptorDB Pro has looked like?
Yes. I think another area where probably a lot of people don't have understanding, like we have a very large now very fast-growing data analytics business. The core foundation -- a couple of core foundations to it. One is RaptorDB, which is a PostgreS database, but we rewrote it to be more of an HTAP. So basically hybrid, both analytic as well as transactional processing database. And all of our products now underlying that it comes automatically with RaptorDB standard, right? So that you have a good, scalable, highly performing product available to all our customers, given the size of ServiceNow deployments have grown quite a lot across our customers. We wanted to make sure we have a very foolproof and balanced database underneath the covers. Before we used to use some open source technology, we didn't scale to the level we need.
But beyond that, what we're discovering now is that customers want to do a lot more with the information they have inside ServiceNow as well as bring in other information through either Zero Copy Adapter or any other way. So what RaptorDB Pro does is, one, it is much more highly performant and scalable. Performance is like 17x of what the standard would be. Plus, we've been able to now do a lot of analytics workloads on top of that. So you could do insight to action, you can understand what your incidents happen, where happen, what you need to do with it, also connect into Databricks, Snowflake, BigQuery and really do a much more -- a very detailed analysis associated with that.
So we've been able to sell that. It went to $100 million in a very short amount of time in the last 4 quarters, ACV. And we continue to see that expansion happen because there's a whole thousands of thousands of customers, ServiceNow, who don't have that, and we can easily go and talk to them the value of going to Pro. But on top of that, what we build is the idea of Workflow Data Fabric, the connector as well as the integration into 300 different data systems. And then we are layering on top of a semantic layer and a data catalog to do analytics apps, which we can now monetize by different domains as well.
So this portfolio and the platform has grown drastically to be now providing a dual data stack. And using that stack, we did a Knowledge Graph. We have a context engine, all built on the same stack where customers can now use a lot more capability from ServiceNow than they could typically before they used to extract and move everything out. Now they can do inside ServiceNow and they get more because we are touching so many different systems anyway. So that's really the RaptorDB as well as the Workflow Data Fabric and the data analytics stack. I mean we have said openly that's our next big growth engine. It should be getting to be $1 billion plus and continue to grow beyond that because it really changes how a platform can be used end-to-end different use cases than we were monetizing before.
Helpful. And you mentioned now different growth opportunities, and you mentioned moving to different areas. I think one of the questions we get commonly is maybe around the right to win in categories like CRM. And I think it would be helpful maybe even to explain just what is ServiceNow focusing on in these newer areas? And where do you see maybe existing vendors as competition versus you're just offering something that isn't addressed. Can everybody please silence their phones? Let's just all do this at once.
Yes. No, I think -- let's say, our right to play has always been about really doing actioning across multiple different domains. And our heritage has been IT, no doubt, but case management. Like how do we resolve an issue somebody has. So that we did that for IT, we do that for HR. We do that for finance. We do that for procurement. We do it for security now. CISO is the second largest buying center for us, right? Because any incident happens, somebody needs to help you resolve it. And then you need to coordinate it across many people. There's a workflow, there's a resolution plan, there's triaging. Same thing applies to customer service.
So when we look at CRM, it's a natural extension of what we did inside the company. I can do it for outside the company for enterprise, right? Because all what we're trying to do there is like somebody has an incident with customer service. They need help. Somebody needs to answer that either on a chat or a phone or whatever other mediums is and then triage that and help other people resolve it and get the resolution back to the end user. So when we look at CRM, it's really about expansion in areas where we're good at. So it's customer service. We're not doing like full-blown SFA, marketing automation, things like that. CRM is big enough space. The largest TAM is customer service. And that's an area where we are very good at.
Naturally, we are starting to win there. We -- as you see the numbers there, one of the fastest-growing area, a couple of billion dollars now and heading forward. So that has been -- but the core of it is really the complex orchestration and with an outcome mindset, not just giving you an information, but taking action. So if you look at customer service, you're taking action by resolving something. You look at what we're doing with CPQ, same thing. You're configuring something, you're taking pricing associated with that, then you're getting a quote. So it means you're connecting various different systems together and now making some decisions for them, helping you orchestrate that, getting an outcome, which is a quote, not just like say, tell me what is my forecast because that's just information gathering.
How do you do these various steps, which we've been very good at for years and years. That's really been the heritage of ServiceNow for 20-plus years. So this idea is wherever it's applicable for us, we go. And we started with, of course, IT, but very naturally, we moved into other areas because it's the same platform. We don't have to rebuild everything. It's the same technology underneath the covers. So the customers love it because when they add new domains to us, new workflows on it, it's on the same platform. So you're not replatforming every time you want to add this particular use case versus what you find with most of the other vendors is that every domain is a different platform, different stack.
Marketing is a different stack. sales is different stack, service is different stack, IT is a different stack, which is painful. So that's why customers and IT love us because we are able to do this thing on the same way, it's very modern and able to do this thing very quickly. So that's our right to play. And that's why we win. So yes, there will be natural worry that there are a lot of other vendors in every space, but we've been multi-vendor competition for every space we've been in. It's just that we have to make sure we out-innovate, we build the best product, make our customers happy. And we've been doing that, and we feel that we will continue doing that because we have that ability to do it.
Well, I think the growth speaks for itself, right? It's been very durable because you guys have been making customers happy and adding a lot of value. As I think forward to the 2020 -- the 2030, I cannot believe it's going to be 2030 in a few years. But as I think about the 2030 targets and the growth to get there, can you maybe just help us think about what you think is going to be the biggest engine to drive to those 2030 targets? And I have a couple of follow-ups.
Yes, yes. So 2030, I mean, you saw the numbers we're talking about, our base case is $30 billion. right, and a very good growth rate as well as improvements -- continued improvement in the margins, free cash flow while absorbing some of the acquisition, plus also a lot of the innovation we're doing, right? The growth drivers are straightforward, right? One, our AI stack and the agentic is going to be what you're seeing with our already increased guidance on top of what we're doing with Now Assist this year, and that continues to grow. So a lot of the use cases we're doing in that area will drive a lot of that growth associated. Second growth driver is security space. I think security and risk is becoming a very key element of our portfolio. And the assets we have, the differentiation we brought in and the innovation we're bringing in there is a great adoption happening already, plus also solving a lot of the critical problems to remove the barriers for AI.
The third driver is Workflow Data Fabric and the data analytics stack. As I said, it's one of the big growth engine for us, and we're already starting to show that acceleration. And the more investment we make in there to continue bringing a lot of the data and the ability to do analytics on it, it drives a lot more value of our platform. And the fourth one is CRM, right, customer service, the CPQ and CPQ is leading a lot of that conversation with the customers to really improve how they deal with their end customers as well.
So those are the growth drivers, a platform broadly touching everything around IT, HR, the Employee Works, which we released recently between the combination of Moveworks and what we do for HRSD, which is bringing that thing into the platform end-to-end and then have the AI associated with it every product and then you layer the data, the security and CRM, suddenly, you have a portfolio which is very robust, very fast growth and differentiated in the market. And that's what will get us to the beyond the base case as we expect in the future.
Helpful. So I want to end on a curveball that I didn't prepare you for, which is I love asking technologists what they have found to be either -- I'll let you define it how you want as a Rorschach test, whether whatever cool means, but what has been your coolest experience using AI tools, whether that's as an employee at ServiceNow or whether that's in your personal life, what have you found to be the most interesting thing in terms of your AI utilization?
I think to me, AI should be really -- you shouldn't care it is AI. Why do you care it is AI or what it is, right? If it can help me solve my day-to-day job and make me more productive or make me better, that's how I look at AI. So I'm not really going looking for AI tools anymore. I'm seeing like how has my product improved by it using AI. So I think the AI -- I'm really excited about what we're doing inside ServiceNow with the AI specialist because it really changes -- it does what you need to do in a short amount of time with better outcome and solves the customer problem. And eventually, what you use underneath the covers, as an end user, don't care. As a technologist, I love it because I'm using a lot of this technology to learn how we can do better with our products. But end user, when I look at customers, I shouldn't worry about it at all.
Super helpful. Amit, thanks for joining us. Great to have you, and wish you the best of luck.
Thanks for having me. Thank you, everyone.
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ServiceNow, Inc. — Jefferies Software
ServiceNow, Inc. — Jefferies Software
ServiceNow stellt sich als AI‑native System of Action auf: agentische Workflows, ein AI‑Control‑Tower, Datennetz und gezielte Zukäufe als Wachstumshebel.
🎯 Kernbotschaft
- Plattformfokus: ServiceNow transformiert Now Assist von reiner Gen‑AI zu einer agentischen "System of Action", das KI‑Agenten orchestriert und Aufgaben komplett ausführt.
- Vertrauen & Kontrolle: AI Control Tower soll Governance, Sicherheit und Visibility über interne und Dritt‑Systeme liefern und damit Adoptionsbarrieren für AI senken.
🔝 Strategische Highlights
- AI‑Specialists: Einführung von ~20 "AI‑Spezialisten" (human‑equivalente, z.B. Level‑1‑Support, HR, FinOps), die Outcome liefern und ROI gegen menschliche Kosten vergleichbar machen.
- Tiering & Monetarisierung: AI wird across‑the‑board in SKUs eingebettet (Foundation, Advanced, Autonomous) statt als Alleinstellungsprodukt; Pro Plus bleibt Top‑Tier.
- Integrationen & M&A: Action Fabric erlaubt Dritt‑Agenten Aktionen über ServiceNow; Zukäufe (Armis, Veza, Moveworks, Logic) erweitern Security, Non‑human Identity, Conversational UX und CPQ‑Funktionen.
🆕 Neue Informationen
- RaptorDB Pro: Leistungsfähigere HTAP‑DB, RaptorDB Pro erreichte ~$100M ACV in den letzten 4 Quartalen.
- Produkt‑Signal: AI Control Tower gilt intern als eines der am schnellsten wachsenden Produkte; Workflow Data Fabric/Data‑Stack als nächster $1B+ Wachstumshebel.
❓ Fragen der Analysten
- Governance: Nachfrage, warum ServiceNow für ein AI‑Control‑Tower prädestiniert ist; Management verwies auf CMDB‑Heritage, Armis/Veza‑Integration und Multivendor‑Neutralität.
- Monetarisierung: Fragen zur SKU‑Strategie und Pricing; Antwort: Tiering soll einfacher verkaufen und weitere Monetarisierung ohne Verlust der Top‑Capabilities ermöglichen.
- M&A‑Strategie: Viele fragten nach Häufigkeit/Grösse von Akquisitionen; Management betonte überwiegend "Tuck‑ins", selektive Zukäufe zur Beschleunigung von Roadmap und Differenzierung.
⚡ Bottom Line
- Implikation: ServiceNow setzt klar auf AI + Security + Data als kombinierte Wachstumsachse; konkrete Produktmetriken (RaptorDB Pro ACV, AI‑Specialists) stützen das Narrativ, finanzielle Hebel bleiben aber in Teilen noch projektiert.
ServiceNow, Inc. — J.P. Morgan 54th Annual Global Technology
1. Question Answer
Thank you for everybody for joining here. It's a great pleasure to be here with Amit Zavery, President, Chief Product Officer and COO of ServiceNow. Amit, thank you for joining us.
Yes. Thanks for having me. Hello, everyone.
We're back here a year on after what's been a very consequential 12 months, I think, in ServiceNow's history. You guys have 3 highly strategic acquisitions, launched Autonomous Workforce, wholesale repackaging under a new kind of scheme with foundation, advanced, prime categories. You just had your Financial Analyst Day, you laid out a $30 billion subscription target by 2030. So a lot to dig into, but we can start off simply. Love to hear your introduction, yourself, your background and a little bit about what you focus on at ServiceNow.
Yes. First, it's been a busy, 12, 18 months for sure. I've been at ServiceNow for the last 18 months. As you mentioned, I run the product engineering, operations and product strategy for ServiceNow. Previously, I was at Google Cloud for 6 years, where I ran all the platform teams, including a lot of the strategic products and portfolio there. And previous to that, I was at 24 years at Oracle, ran various different groups. Before I left, I ran the cloud team as well as all the middleware and the platform team over there as well, which was a substantial part of Oracle's revenue. Very excited to be at ServiceNow. A lot of things going on, great portfolio, great product plans going forward as well as a great customer base. So really good time to be at ServiceNow.
Yes. Yes. I think we should start off with what was probably the biggest topic for me when I was talking to the partners and customers out at the Knowledge Conference, and that's AI Control Tower. A lot of traction with it. Our checks suggest that customers are deeply concerned about their AI sprawl. They don't know what these agents are doing, shadow IT, not to mention the cost side of it as well. They need something to bring this all together. You can talk about what's differentiated, kill switches, all those pieces.
But I think one thing before we get into it, that's interesting is that this is a very contested space. Everybody wants that governance and control. Customers are choosing you guys to do that. So can you describe why it's so differentiated and why you guys are the right platform for customers?
Yes. I think, see AI control tower, last year when people started talking about agentic and even when I was at Google, the amount of AI work going on, and I was building a lot of the AI technologies. It was clear that customers are going to face a lot of issues managing the AI capabilities, the usage of AI, discovering a lot of things which is going inside the enterprise and really making sure it's secured and governed. So last year, we launched AI Control Tower. One of the reasons behind that is whenever we're talking about agentic to those customers, they were really getting worried about security, governance, compliance, auditability as well as just visibility broadly. And ServiceNow has this product called CMDB as a core foundation of our product portfolio, which -- where we control -- we manage and monitor all the assets inside an enterprise, any IT asset, hardware, software.
For us to do that and extending that to AI was very natural. AI agents are software. We are discovering a lot of other things for every IT system out there anyway. And so we added the AI agents as a way for extending what we did in CMDB very quickly and easily and then giving them so much monitoring and measurement as well as the cost management associated with that. And that opened up a lot of conversations with our customers. And the reason it's kind of valuable for us as well as why we are differentiated. One is I said, we already had the foundation for managing and monitoring a lot of the systems and AI was very natural. Second is, I think we were connected to so many different systems out there. I mean, ServiceNow is kind of enterprise OS, the way you think about it, connecting various different systems East to West across different systems already, very heterogeneous, very open ecosystem.
So for us to be more of a neutral third party where we can now not just track our AI agents, but also discover things coming from any different systems out there, hyperscalers, all the large language or frontier model companies, any AI systems or system of record. And providing a full governance layer on top of that, just like we did for any asset, became -- it's much more differentiated because of that.
And the other part, which we have been doing very well is we recently did an acquisition of a company called, Veza, which has a patented technology called Access Graph. An Access Graph for nonhuman identity is becoming a very, very critical element for monitoring and managing AI agents because their use cases as well as identity changes so frequently, and you have to do that monitoring real time. They do around 30 billion different permissioning and parameters for nonhuman identities.
So we brought that into AI Control Tower, and that suddenly changed the game for a lot of our customers because they can feel more confident about AI systems not taking wrong actions or doing wrong things and giving them the visibility. So tons of stuff going on in our product portfolio and that has been really well adopted and differentiated, and we continue to invest and provide that capability with AI Control Tower now.
And maybe to double-click a little bit in there. You have this product that's answering a lot of customer needs. Your customers are in different parts of their AI journeys. At what point do they kind of hit that where they're like, "Oh, we need to do something that's like AI Control Tower?" Is it a cost function? They're like, all of a sudden we're spending more than we expect or is security the main function where they're like, hey, if we want to push this and put to production, we need to have a way to make sure that it doesn't go rogue?
Yes. I think it usually starts with when more usage of AI starts happening. Like if they want especially agentic where you have all these business processes and systems connecting various different AI agents together. And there could be a lot of shadow AI projects happening. And then you have no idea what's going on and who's spending what or who is using what. And last year, as we said, when the agentic use cases were starting to emerge, a lot of the worry customers had around was just control and visibility. And what AI Control Tower conversation started was just peace of mind, where you don't have this sprawl of AI without IT knowing what's going on, who's using what, how much they're spending.
So it really accelerates the AI adoption by having this as a central control plane and heterogeneous because a lot of the providers today, they do pieces of the technology for their own visibility. They might connect into a few other things, but the end-to-end discovery mechanism and the whole monitoring and visibility mechanism. It doesn't exist in the market other than AI Control Tower. So I think it just removes that barrier for adoption of AI because now IT team members as well as CIOs and CISOs start feeling a little more confident they can get going with AI without just random stuff happening inside the enterprise. And with enterprise anything -- I mean, you've seen a lot of examples. I mean you saw the recent PocketOS and others, where if you don't have visibility and control, things can go completely wrong, and you need to have some guardrails, and this is what it allows them to do.
Yes. Yes, it's a gating factor so they can deploy more. If we go to something you already touched on, which is acquisition, Moveworks, Armis, Veza. One thing that I noticed is, I think, investors have been kind of trying to digest what it means, why they're strategic. When I talk to the customers and partners, they seemed really clear about what it brings together, why it's such a high value. There's been a lot of companies that do acquisitions. This was one of the ones where they seem to be paying attention a lot and kind of see the vision that you have. So what do you think that they're getting that maybe investors kind of haven't wrapped their mind around?
No, I think we've been very disciplined and thoughtful about what we acquire. And over the last -- as I mentioned, with the AI growth, there's an opportunity to really innovate faster, have -- get a lot more domain expertise in some of the areas. And one of the biggest areas we've seen a need for is around security and governance, right? So the acquisition like Veza and Armis fit into this idea of how do you really monitor and manage the proliferation of AI systems, but also devices. Armis provides the ability to do OT, IoT as well as medical devices, vulnerability management and exposure management.
Today, our business in security space is $1 billion plus, which happened last quarter -- Q3 of last year. And that was an organic business we built over a few years, and it continues to grow very, very fast. What we saw from customers was that you already manage all the IT assets. Why are you not able to now do also security and asset and vulnerability management for non-IT assets like OT, IoT and specifically medical devices? So Armis fit in very well with that kind of mindset, right? We -- allows us to extend to any kind of devices out there and also extends what we have in CMDB and augment that with millions, billions of devices into that system as well.
So that as a growth with physical AI and other things come up, we see a lot of value for ServiceNow to provide that exposure management, vulnerability management on top of post-breach what we were doing already. Veza is a little much smaller than Armis is, but this idea of patented Access Graph technology, again, augments everything we do for nonhuman identities, just like we use for human identity. The identity governance specifically becomes very critical. So our security business and the product portfolio road map got accelerated by this acquisition. We're bringing a lot of good domain experts in this area who are well-versed and have been doing this for quite a few years and made our story much more powerful to customers as they think about AI adoption as well.
We continue to do the integration with third-party systems, right? So this is not like it's replacing a lot of things we were doing before -- not doing before, like we integrated into CrowdStrike, for endpoint, we integrated with Palo Alto and network-related stuff and get a lot of signals, but the whole exposure and vulnerability management with the idea of post breach. And today, CISOs is our second largest buying center for ServiceNow already, right? IT, CIOs were #1 and CISOs are #2. So this was natural for us to keep on expanding into these new areas, no doubt increased our TAM, but also accelerated our road map and bring a lot of this expertise into our product. And it has resonated very well with our customers. Our pipeline since the acquisition has grown for security portfolio very, very well. And we continue to see a lot of good traction with the product being integrated.
Similarly, the Moveworks acquisition was very much led with this idea of conversation first, AI native, experience layer on top of ServiceNow. We had a very great -- we have a great set of technologies today for doing actioning, fulfilling a task. On the requester, we wanted a very AI native experience, and Moveworks brings that. So that's now integrated into our employee EC Pro product we had, the whole employee center and bringing this thing together as employee works.
In the first quarter, we announced, I think, in the Q1 results, we did more as a combined product than what Moveworks has done by independent whole last year. So we saw acceleration because of the road map being integrated, able to deliver a lot of new AI native capabilities on our product portfolio, and it's becoming our user experience across all of the offerings we have today, right? So we've been very thoughtful about how we bring all this stuff together to really differentiate, accelerate the road map as well as continue to innovate in all those areas.
Yes. One of the debates out there obviously has been if AI is going to generate all this value, where is that value going to accrue? And where is most of that getting to get captured? I think you guys have been pretty explicit that the moat is not necessarily the LLM. You guys have the context engine, this graph of -- graph, including the CMDB layered with Veza, Armis is included in there, too. You guys have about $100 billion in annual workflow, 7 million -- excuse me, 7 trillion transactions and you guys put it pretty simply at your Analyst Day, there's no competitor that can do that, right? Help us understand in layman's terms what the technical reasons are that others can't do that. What do you provide for your platform that enables that differentiation?
Yes. I think you, remember, I mean, we have been doing this work for our customers for 20-plus years. The amount of data we collect, as we said, 100 billion workflows we run, plus 7 trillion transactions happen on our platform, which is growing at 20-plus percent -- 25%. So the Metadata we create, the context we generate around why a decision was made in the business process. Why an exception was done, who made those exceptions. Those are not available in any documents, which an LLM can read. These are all information we're collecting as you run these transactions. That's in a context engine, which is distributed across multiple areas, and Metadata is very hard for people to understand what to do with it, if it's not done by ServiceNow as a part of our workflow, right?
So we build that. The CMDB, as I said, is really kind of the enterprise database today, right, the IT system of record and used by all the Fortune 500 and pretty large number of Fortune 2000 companies. So that has become the kind of the underlying ways for large enterprises to operate on ServiceNow. All the systems today, they operate the operational part of it in terms of executing the workflows, business processes around for IT, employees, for security, what we do for customer service, FSM and other things like that. It's pretty broad and deep for many, many years.
That information allows us to now take some advantage of AI technologies like LLM, which is probably around 8% to 10% of IP in a stack, but the rest we build and operate over this information we have collected plus the efficiency we have gained. And everything doesn't require or need to be LLM driven, right? There's a lot of deterministic things we do, which requires a much more understanding of the business process is and not have to say, is lender spending money on tokens, but you can still operate that very efficiently.
So we bring this deterministic mindset to very probabilistic systems like LLMs and still give you a guaranteed outcome because you can't make mistakes in enterprise systems. If you get the wrong answer, you instead of onboarding an employee, you deboard an employee or you have the wrong financial results, it's not going to be very valuable to you as an enterprise. So the context we have gotten, the way we run the systems, the 20 years of experience plus having up stacked being very AI native now, right? So we're getting the same advantages as AI companies have in terms of technology, but then you're wrapping and providing a lot of insights into these things. Plus, we also work in a very open ecosystem, right? Customers start in many different ways. And you can't just say that there's only one way to operate today a business.
So having that opportunity to integrate into different system providers, like a system of records, integrate into any kind of hyperscaler, be able to also run -- or use any large language model, any data provider, any tool to build your workflows custom on top of our ServiceNow platform and have the whole governance and security layer. One of the biggest issues you run into when you're building the systems out there or running a business application or business process is the security and the governance. I would say most of the time, when we build our products, they have to be compliant. We spend probably 50% to 60% of our cost of engineering and R&D is around that whole security, compliance and things like that, which are very hard to replicate from scratch. It takes years and years of hardening. The life cycle maintenance around that is pretty long, and customers need a place to call when things go wrong as well.
So that's all the things we provide out of the box, working together with our customers, proven and operating at scale. And that's really what -- and the partner ecosystem associated with that, right? And the go-to-market muscle we have for years and years of building that relationship with our customers. So those things all add up to really be able to provide that comfort for our customers as well as differentiated and innovative products long term.
Yes, that 50% to 60% statistic, pretty interesting...
Yes. A lot of people forget, people think build is the only thing you have to do and build is -- itself is 20%. The rest is all around everything you have to do around it.
Yes, that's what it takes to be in the enterprise, right?
Yes. Quite boring, but painful but important, I mean.
If we go up 1 level with this AI topic, Bill broke the news on the Q1 call that the Now Assist target is being raised from $1 billion to $1.5 billion, 50%. I think in Q1, you guys were already around $750 million. You got growth in customer spending $1 million plus and Now Assist growing 130% year-over-year. That's all real acceleration. And importantly, I think, Gina, kind of emphasized the methodology hasn't changed, even as if you guys kind of repackage some of the pricing. What's given you confidence in that revised figure as you move away from this kind of sidecar AI concept to help fuel that growth and maybe even kind of go beyond that?
No, no, I think we've been monitoring, of course, our pipeline as well as a customer interest and the adoption associated with that and the renewal as well. So as Bill mentioned in Q1, we'll be going from $1 billion ACV to a $1.5 billion target this year. Our plan was $1 billion. We feel very confident in $1.5 billion ACV on that one. It's because I think, one, with the agentic use cases and some of these things go in production and people using it, we're seeing the volume of usage go up very fast. We're seeing a lot of interest to do multiple use cases than what they started with the employees -- with the enterprises.
So that gives us the ability to say, you know what, we will end up using up whatever entitlements the customers had previously. And when they renew, they will renew at a higher longer -- broader entitlements or they might buy up-specs early enough, right? So that is one vector, which we see happening.
Second thing, as we think about some of the things we're adding around our product portfolio. Our product portfolio has grown drastically, right? So we've added things like AI Control Tower, what we're doing with employee works in terms of amount of requests coming into a system, which will end up burning down a lot of Now Assist and the request volume will continue to go up. What we're doing with security portfolio is pulling a lot of this conversation for monitoring and managing a lot of AI systems as well.
So suddenly, we are in more conversations about AI than maybe previously we were. So I expect our renewal sizes to be higher as well as we're seeing expansion into a lot of new cross-sell areas, which we didn't have. We simplified the packaging as well. So we're bringing AI across all of our product portfolio, and that will drive a lot more conversations with our customers going forward as well. So I think in general, just the demand is there. We're seeing a lot of adoption. We're seeing a lot of interest. And then I think the innovation cycle continues to grow, and we see a lot more capabilities now continue to be introduced into our portfolio, which will help our customers with their AI use cases as well.
Yes. And touching on the -- some of the pricing and repackaging that you're doing. I know it's early days and it's going to get phased over time. But what has the customer reception been to that? Do they understand this new schema? Does it help them with that adoption friction?
Yes. For those who are not aware of what we did, we had a product we have called Pro Plus, which is the Now Assist the premium SKU, which was AI-driven, which we've been in the market for a couple of years, and that has done very well. The pricing structure we had, which was a hybrid pricing structure, licensing-based, but combination of seat, but also consumption, right? And that has been in the market for some time, and we've seen customers understand that hybrid pricing structure, gives them predictability as well as flexibility. They're not going to get sticker shock or any kind of billing shock, but also they know what they're using and that they're using it and seeing value, they will renew it -- also they have predictability in that regard. But we also account for revenue upfront as well as we use that just like any subscription. So the model has worked very well.
So what we decided was based on what we're seeing from our customers to bring that same kind of structure to all of our SKUs, not just to the premium SKU. And the idea is that every SKU will have some AI capabilities tiered by different functionality level. The top tier always remains most differentiated. The bottom tier will have some basic capabilities, but customers can start with AI as they choose to, and they can use a consumption model to see value and use it while that we still have a licensing kind of mechanism. And given how successful we've been with Now Assist and the Pro Plus kind of combination, we are now introducing that across the product portfolio and also removing this nickel and diming where we structure where you have to buy every feature separately.
We're bringing it together into much more structured across ServiceNow product portfolio, giving them the AI Control Tower capabilities, the experience layer, the data connectivity in this kind of a tiered structure. And every customer I've spoken to so far really like it because this gives them the ability to take AI if they choose to in all the SKUs, but they do it by consumption, so they only use it if they choose to, and they will have associated entitlement. And it simplifies our go-to-market. Our sales teams can really pitch this very simply and easily. And customers can move up the tiers as they choose to, based on functionality they like as well as the adoption they see value from.
So no, I think, it's very well liked so far. The hybrid model has worked already. So we're not experimenting with new pricing structure. It's just now adding the same pricing structure, which has worked into all of our SKUs and simplifying our go-to-market as well as customer conversation. So we're very excited about how this has evolved. We announced it at Knowledge, which was just a few weeks ago, which is our large customer event. And everybody seems to be feeling comfortable with the way we are thinking about this and how we will go ahead. And there's no force migration. They can do this at renewal. And the Pro Plus and the Prime, which is the new version, the top version of this new structure is equivalent. So there's no pricing change for those customers. The rest will go through the license changes whenever they renew if they choose to. So customers like that message. And so far, we feel good about where we are.
If we touch on the less positive aspects of AI, I think, it's created a lot of confusion out there. I think you guys said in your last earnings call that customers don't know what to do, they're somewhat confused. We kind of hear the same thing. I've heard more people than usual, who aren't in finance, talk about terminal value risk. So it's getting out into the ether a little bit and probably creating a little bit of reluctance, right? So when we think about that what does that look like? How is that impacting decision-making from your perspective? And maybe the other important piece is, is this an issue that's going to persist for 3, 4, 5 quarters? Is it something that will be resolved in a few quarters? How should we frame it that way?
I guess maybe if I understand your question. One, there's definitely AI -- there's a volume of message in AI and the market is large. The customers don't know in many cases, what is real, what is not real, what to go and where to do things, who to work with and how to get going, right? That's why I think our goal always has been about talking to customers about how to get started and where to get started, right? Some of the -- most of the times, the conversation is the use cases, what makes sense. And we are very prescriptive now than maybe a year ago about which use cases for a particular customer makes sense. We provide them POC capabilities. We provide them the FDE help, engineering capabilities as well as needed in a short amount of time, but get them the right use cases identified so they can get going. And that has removed a lot of the barriers for us at least.
Having said that, I think customers also are cautious about security and risk and the whole visibility as we talked about earlier. So that's why I think the investment we're making with the AI Control Tower again resonates, even if they don't mind wanting to use anything from AI from us, they can still use the AI Control Tower to have the central control plane. So suddenly we have a conversation even if they're thinking about something else from an AI perspective. Similarly, the security around devices are all becoming very real because there is a proliferation of physical AI and other things coming up.
So we now suddenly have many at-bats than probably what we had before, right? If you look at where we were at 2 years ago and where we are now, the volume of conversations we can have with the customer, we can start from so many different angles. The employee works is a very good example as well. Any kind of conversational interface you want to provide to customers to use things across their enterprise, find information, ask for tasks or getting work done, again, we provide an option. Same thing with what we're doing with AI-driven omni-channel intake with CSM or FSM.
So I think that is really opening up a lot more senior level conversations for ServiceNow. IT always loved us and they continue to love and invest in what we're doing going beyond with autonomous AI and other things like that. Same thing with CISO. So suddenly, you have a lot of supporting structures inside the company for ServiceNow. And AI, irrespective whether you use AI or not from us, there's always a product available to you, right? And the AI part, I mean, again, we'll see in many years. I don't think you use large language models or frontier models for everything. Because it's very costly over time probably or some things you don't even make sense to use.
We give you this flexibility and the ability to really do the right thing to run and operate your business because eventually you want outcome, cost savings and a lot more efficiency. And that's what we are driving towards. So the idea of autonomous AI and AI specialist is that, that I'm giving you an agent -- the whole autonomous worker who will replace a human worker at a much cheaper alternative, but guaranteed outcomes. Instead of just having this thing do something, which might not be really productive and then have to redo every time, right? So we're trying to improve that situation with outcome-driven mindset, place.
Let's follow that thought of the LLMs out there. We've seen a little bit of a leapfrogging, right? One day, ChatGPT is going to take over everything then it's Gemini and it's Claude, who knows what will be next. What is your view on that? I mean do you expect that cycle of the leapfrogging to continue? And then from the customer perspective, are they dedicated themselves to one or the other? Or they just want whatever gets the job done the best?
Yes. I think it's still early days. I mean you're right. I mean there is a huge amount of leapfrogging as well as, I would say, equivalence of commoditization. So there's a lot of -- between the large language models. And we work with all of them and we work with a lot of open source models as well. We try to be more effective about what will give us the right result, irrespective of which one is the model. I think customers, same thing, right? Underneath, as we said, we also have a large language model in our stack. Customers get to choose, but a lot of time, they just take the default. Most of them don't care.
A lot of them wanted to get a guaranteed outcome as well as secured environment. As long as we can guarantee that, we can choose and change the models underneath the covers, they would not even know or care most of the time. There's some who will because they might have standardized on one or something like that or they might have a license or committed agreement, which they might want to burn down. They've been trying to do -- large language models are trying to do something similar to what clouds do. Where you commit model, you can burn down different of your AR usage.
But over time, I think, there will be a lot more commoditization going on there as well. There will be tiering. I would expect in some of the use cases you want to use an older or cheaper or even nondifferentiated model. In some very complicated use cases, you might use the most latest one, but over time, it just becomes like chips. I mean you don't really care what chip you are using in your application. I think it will be the same thing in this infrastructure layer. It's going to be cost-driven, less differentiation. And how many times you want to keep on testing them. See what happens with every version you have to do prompt engineering again, you have to redo your work. And that's the problem, I think, a lot of customers are realizing when they say you want to build something completely brand new on a large language model. Because every time the new version comes out, you have to retest. It's not backward compatible. It's not feature, forward-look -- feature -- it is not future-proofed.
So a lot of those issues we have to take away and that's what we're trying to do with our software stack is to remove that barrier of usage without customers having to deal with it. We deal with it for them. We extract it out enough but then we give you the value and outcome or a solution on top of it. So I expect a lot of these things to change over time. And many of these model companies will start having to figure out how to solve some of those problems.
Yes. Let's look at a few years. You guys laid out the $30 billion to $32 billion 2030 subscription revenue target. A lot of pieces in that, but what people noticed was it's like high teens 20%-plus CAGR between now and then, AI, 30% of ACV at that same time frame. This last quarter, you guys kind of -- if you think about the CRPO kind of growth curve, it's kind of in that high teens area as well. So it kind of implies that you guys are going to be able to sustain that level of growth, maybe even inch up a little bit between now and then. Help us kind of frame some of those components that are in them. You guys have talked about it and what gives you guys confidence? I mean, Bill, obviously, sounded very confident about it, but help us maybe kind of get closer to where he is maybe?
Yes. I think at Financial Analyst Day, we wanted to lay out our plan for -- until 2030. And I think there are base cases, and I think there's a lot of upside cases, right? So I think Bill is definitely -- and we all see there's a huge amount of headroom available for us to grow. What we already have, and we want to make sure that there's a clarity in terms of where we will definitely be there. The $30 billion to $32 billion is our base case, and we'll continue to focus on accelerating more of that going forward. But the reason we feel very confident, one, I think our innovation cycle, the product we're building is resonating with our customers. We are still the proven and most adopted enterprise kind of workflow as well as the whole idea of bringing AI workflow data and security into one platform. I don't think anybody does that today end-to-end, right? So we give you that confidence level for our enterprise customers. And also unlocking a lot of new things for us.
I think if you look at the growth engines we have, security and risk growing at a very significant rate. As we said, we kind of crossed $1 billion, and we'll talk about where it's going, but it is one of the fast-growing areas and then the road map has been accelerated.
Second, if you look at data platform, data and analytics, the Workflow Data Fabric. We talked about RaptorDB, which is our Postgres HTAP database, $100 million ACV in less than a year, right? So it's like a very fast acceleration path. And this is just untapped market. It's all available to us. Then you add the Workflow Data Fabric, the connectivity with the zero-copy adapter, the data analytics and the data platform we're building out. That's one of the fastest-growing areas, and we talked about a potentially very fast $1 billion business for us, right?
Similarly, if you look at what CRM is, customer service, one of the fastest business to $1 billion plus. We're on target for $2 billion, I think, what we shared at the financial analyst days. So that is getting -- continue to accelerate. We've done a lot of modern work with AI, voice and capabilities on SFM. CPQ acquisition of Logik is really driving a lot more conversations with the customers, customers like NVIDIA and others who are using that for CPQ today.
So we have large growth engines which are all substantially invested in innovated, differentiated, while we have a very good base platform, right? It's completely AI driven, but also it's very deterministic in terms of it can get the work done. Guaranteeing an outcome. And then our -- the domain expertise in IT, HR, CRM, security allows us to really go into a lot of those conversations and give us the confidence that we can really accelerate growth in each of these areas. And all these technologies are pulling in more and more of our products, whether you look at it with ITOM, ITAM, ITSM, what we're doing with portfolio management, what we have capabilities in our enterprise architecture, I mean it's just a source to pay.
So we have a very substantial capability, but it's on this one platform. So you don't have to keep on replicating every time you want to add new features. That's why we're able to innovate faster, which is very hard for many other vendors out there where they have to keep on rebuilding a lot of things because they're not built on the same platform. So that's why we feel very bullish about the headroom we have in front of us, and the pipeline and the customer traction is proving it out so far. And I think our base case is laid out, which we feel very confident and I think Bill mentioned at FAD that he has a lot more expectation and I think we all know we will be there, so.
Bill seems like he has very high expectations. Very quickly, just on CRM, you hit on it a little bit. I think the quote you guys had was going to blow through $2 billion. When you're seeing success with that product, what does that look like? Is -- are you displacing other CRM systems out there? Or are you kind of coming in, in areas where there's a little bit of greenfield and growing from there, what does that look like? Because a lot of enterprises have a pretty robust CRM solution?
I think CRM is a broad market. So just to be very clear, we are -- the space which we have been seeing a lot of, the investment we've been doing and seeing growth is customer service, which is very logical for ServiceNow, right? Because if you're doing case management, we understand incidents, we understand issues and how we resolve it. And that has driven the early growth of CRM business for us. Associated with that is Field Service Management in terms of how you operate all the people who want to help you. Then you add layer on top of that. All this complex orchestration work. Like CPQ is a very complex orchestration. It's not just asking for information. You're going to do something, which is, again, very much action-oriented like ServiceNow has been always. Same thing with some of the things we're doing around distribution like order management.
So the portfolio we built is in areas where we know we have expertise, differentiation and the credibility and the capability building the platform. And that's why we feel very confident of blowing through $2 billion, as you heard at financial, it's a pretty large number already in a very short amount of time. And we are displacing people in some cases. I think in customer service, there are many incumbents. But I think a lot of what's happening in customer service, given that most of customer service products out there, customer has been very fragmented and very old architecture. So people are rethinking voice, for example. They're rethinking how omnichannel intake happens. People are not just calling people on the phone for support. They're doing it in multiple mediums.
So for us to build that in a platform because AI platform is what is supporting our CSM product is very quick. And today, we have customers who now are using this multichannel way of interacting with our systems and replacing what they had or sometimes consolidating because the opportunity is to really modernize, make it more efficient and get into this technology stack, which allows them to get into many more areas for customers to do much more efficiently. So that's where we're displacing or interoperating in many cases. And it's just a modern stack and proven capability -- allowing -- and a lot of people who are running CSM, are also running the IT systems. So they're used to our platform for them now extending that into CSM, becomes much more natural because you're not redeploying a completely new stack. It's very easy for them to now add CSM from us or CPQ and other things like that, given it's built on the same platform.
Yes. Very insightful. Thank you for coming here and giving us your wisdom. I think we'll all be watching ServiceNow very closely.
Thank you all for your interest and support as well. Thank you.
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ServiceNow, Inc. — J.P. Morgan 54th Annual Global Technology
ServiceNow, Inc. — J.P. Morgan 54th Annual Global Technology
ServiceNow positioniert sich als Plattform für sichere, kontrollierbare KI‑Adoption und skaliert Wachstum über Akquisitionen, Packaging und Plattform‑Moat.
🎯 Kernbotschaft
- Zentrale These: AI Control Tower adressiert "AI‑Sprawl" durch Discovery, Governance und Kostenkontrolle auf Basis der bestehenden CMDB (Configuration Management Database).
- Plattform‑Moat: ServiceNow betont seinen Daten‑ und Workflow‑Kontext (langjährige Transaktionen, Metadaten) als Differenzierer gegenüber reinen Model‑Anbietern.
- Wachstumsfokus: Akquisitionen (Veza, Armis, Moveworks) und neues Packaging sollen Now Assist‑Adoption, Sicherheits‑ und CRM‑Geschäft beschleunigen.
🚀 Strategische Highlights
- AI Control Tower: Nutzt CMDB‑Foundation plus Veza Access Graph für Echtzeit‑Monitoring nonhuman identities; adressiert Sicherheit, Auditierbarkeit und Kosten.
- Akquisitionsstrategie: Armis erweitert OT/IoT‑Security, Veza liefert Identity‑Graph, Moveworks bringt konversationelle UX — alle drei integrieren sich in die Plattformroadmap.
- Pricing & Packaging: Hybridmodell (Lizenz + Nutzung) wird als Standard über SKUs ausgerollt, Top‑Tier bleibt leistungsstark, Migration bei Renewal.
🔭 Neue Informationen
- Now Assist: Management bestätigt Zielerhöhung auf $1,5 Mrd. ACV (von $1 Mrd.) und starke Nachfrage/Verbrauchsvolumen.
- Produkt‑Traction: RaptorDB (Postgres HTAP) ~ $100 Mio. ACV in <1 Jahr; Security‑Portfolio organisch >$1 Mrd. und beschleunigt.
- Packaging‑Rollout: Angekündigt beim Knowledge‑Event; Kundenfeedback bisher positiv, keine Zwangsumstellung vor Renewal.
❓ Fragen der Analysten
- Governance‑Differenz: Warum Kunden ServiceNow vs. Point‑Tools wählen — Antwort: CMDB‑Kontext, Integrationsbreite, Compliance‑Hardening.
- Adoptions‑Trigger: Kunden greifen zu AI Control Tower bei Agent‑Sprawl, Kosten‑/Security‑Risiken oder Produktionsplänen.
- Risiken/Unklarheiten: Management quantifizierte einzelne Hebel (Now Assist, RaptorDB, Security) konkret, blieb bei der 2030‑Pfad‑Tempo‑Aufschlüsselung aber eher strategisch statt detailliert.
⚡ Bottom Line
- Für Anleger: ServiceNow stärkt seine Plattformposition durch Governance‑Funktionen, gezielte Zukäufe und vereinfachtes Pricing; dies erhöht Upsell‑Chancen und unterstützt das 2030‑Subskriptionsziel. Risiken bleiben Integration, Modell‑Kommoditisierung und allgemeine Enterprise‑Vorsicht bei KI‑Projekten.
ServiceNow, Inc. — Analyst/Investor Day - ServiceNow, Inc.
1. Management Discussion
Welcome to ServiceNow's Financial Analyst Day 2026. Thank you for joining us today. Before we begin, I want to remind everyone that today's event will be webcast and recorded for future playback. Information pertaining to our forward-looking statements and a reconciliation of our GAAP and non-GAAP results are available on our Investor Relations website at investors.servicenow.com. .
As you can see, we have an exciting agenda for you all. Bill and Nick will kick us off and discuss our vision and opportunity. Amit and team will present the Blueprint for Agentic business, including deeper dives into the key growth areas that unlock AI transformation.
We'll have a 10-minute break, then Paul will go over our go-to-market strategy and lead a panel to showcase the tremendous value customers are getting from ServiceNow. Finally, Gina will close with a financial overview of the company's performance and outlook. So with that, let's get started.
[Presentation]
Please welcome to the stage, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Bill McDermott; and Vice Chairman, Nick Tzitzon.
Wow, nice turnout. Thank you.
It's always great to come out to a video where the Nick character is a useless corporate bureaucrat.
Well, you should tell them the real story.
No, I'm not going to. Nice to see everybody. Anything you want to say before we dig into the content?
Just no place I'd rather be than right here right now with you, Nick and all of you, thank you very much for coming. We're going to give you a lot of insight on the company. The company is in great shape, and we're ready to roll. So let's get it started.
Sounds good. Well, why don't I bring up a few things one by one and ask you to comment on them. So we'll go first to this. I think very few people here in this room, Bill, on either side, on our side or on their side are interested in the past. But sometimes, it's worth reminding everybody where the company's come from. So when you look at the trajectory of the company over the past several years, what comes to mind when you look at this traffic?
Well, Churchill said, the further back you look, the further forward, you can see. We came in, in 2019, building on a great company terrific founder, very good CEOs, excellent board and good culture. And we said we want to be the defining enterprise software company in the 21st century and that we would be the first to get to $5 billion to get to $10 billion.
And then many of you included weren't so sure we'd get to $15 billion in 2026, and we're blowing through $15 billion in 2026. And so the first thing I'd like to say is promises made, promises kept the fastest enterprise software company at scale to hit $15 billion in the time frame we did it and organically.
Right now, this is the hottest brand in the enterprise. We're pursuing a gigantic TAM. We'll talk about that a little bit later. The tailwind is at our back. We have the products. You're going to see the products today. And you're going to see the best team in the industry today. We have the revenue and scale matters because it builds ecosystems and networks.
We have the users and the loyalty of them, our attendance is up double digits. This is the biggest knowledge ever. You'll feel it, I -- who's going to knowledge tomorrow? Great. You're going to love it. And the ecosystem, I mean, the show floor is just amazing. I encourage you to walk through it. You'll see the control tower. It's stunning, and we'll talk about that today. I said we were the platform of platforms in 2019.
And now I'm telling you we're the AI of the AIs. So this is a company that has the loyalty of its customers. It has the inspiration of the most satisfied workforce in our industry, and it's the trusted brand. And I'm not the only one to say it. Fortune says it, Forbes say it. The customer says it with their wallet and you actually know it. So what better time has there ever been than right now for ServiceNow and ServiceNow shareholders.
You mentioned an aligned Board. I see our Lead Director, Sue Bostrom is here; Paul Chamberlain is here from our Board, Larry Quinlan, is here from our Board. So it's great to see the Board...
Yes. I mean you've got a lead director, Sue Bostrom, Larry Quinlan, Paul Chamberlain. These are individuals that have been with me through thick and thin. So too is our founder. We still have our founder on the Board, which is awesome. And our Board is a really great board, very committed to the company, very inspired by what we're building and how we're executing. And hopefully, you feel that the entry point you're getting in at today is just like never going to happen again.
So let's shift gears. The portfolio has obviously evolved substantially in the years that you mentioned. This is the representation that customers will see at knowledge. When you look at this AI control tower for business reinvention, what are the important things for investors to understand?
Well, let's start with the AI control tower for business reinvention. So does GPS signals that will come from language models and other things. but there is only one air traffic control tower for business software in the enterprise at ServiceNow. And so what you'll see today, as you'll hear from our colleagues a lot about the Agentic front door with auto. So any channel you come into, you now have one single agentic experience with ServiceNow.
So if you enjoy ChatGPT or you enjoy Claude or other language models that same simplicity is being brought to you for the enterprise. If you think about industry, we're in all the industries that are featured in this slide. Why that really matters is the moat and industry domain expertise is unmatched by ServiceNow in the enterprise. It also creates more loyalty and net new ACV opportunity, particularly in CRM, and we're going to talk quite a bit about that today.
Autonomous workflows. This is super cool because now ServiceNow goes across the entire enterprise, east to west. So years ago, you knew us for IT. That's okay. We need to remind people that we are the ERP of IT, we are the system of record of IT. And no place has greater permission to grow in this world of AI than IT. And of course, CRM on its way to being a couple of billion business. By the way, we have six of them. And security and risk. We're now in the biggest growth TAM I see in the next decade, especially when you think about the world's third largest economy is actually cyber crime.
So when we made our bold moves, we knew what we were doing, and we'll cover that today. And naturally, when you look at the autonomy of workflows to be able to coalesce all of the clouds, all of the language models, all of the systems of record and all of the data sources into an autonomous workflow that can close an action out. Not give you a recommendation that's probabilistic, but a deterministic outcome achieved.
That's where the world wants to go. And you're going to see something today on employee experience that is second to none. And also app development, not only is it a big business, but we all know, lots of code is getting written by us and by others. The more that AI is generated in the world the more it has to come through the ServiceNow platform. We are the gateway to the enterprise. So more AI is great for shareholders. So we're going to sense and that's any data, we're going to decide that's any model. We love them all, and we have deals with all of them to either build software together, put it in our software or help them get into the enterprise with our unique attributes and then obviously act on any workflow.
And it could be ours. It could be someone else's. It all comes through ServiceNow. So we welcome everybody. And to do this securely. And I think you're going to hear today that we're in the security business. And we think this is a gigantic opportunity for ServiceNow. And you say, "Well, why do you think that Bill?" Well, it's already $1.5 billion business, and we weren't trying real hard. And now you're going to have IT, IoT, any device, critical infrastructure, networks, devices, all coming from one platform that fuses IT and OT, the only one in the world.
And I really think that any system is just like so stunning because, everybody else wants to, I'm reading an article say they want to shut the world out. They want to protect their moat. We're welcoming everybody in because we know we have the winning hand. So when you look at all the hyperscalers and all those systems of record that you know so well, they all integrate with ServiceNow.
So we're still the platform of platforms, that is the foundation, and we're nice. There's no reason to waste time. having skirmishes because we want everybody coming into ServiceNow with their AI, and we're going to grow, grow, grow, and we got a bold ambition for 2030 we'll lay out there today.
So one of the things that Colin and his team have done, acknowledge is the customer's voice is really out there. And I know you're personally inspired by several of those stories. Any that you would pull out just for this crowd as a preview.
Well, I think FedEx to me is one that I'd really like to pull out. Raj will be on stage with me tomorrow, the CEO of FedEx. When you think about FedEx, it's a great company. And Fred Smith was a great innovator, an unbelievable entrepreneur. And he used to talk about the package itself and how it moves throughout the world is as important as what's in the package.
So to think about FedEx teaming up with ServiceNow and Raj coming here on stage, knowing that they're moving 18 million packages a day through over 200 countries around the world and every key business process, things that would sound like core ERP to you is now running on our agentic platform. I mean that's pretty stunning. And then if you want to take something just really interesting, Chipotle is doing great. Everybody likes Chipotle. I like Chipotle anyway. And now they can change in their 4,000 locations, all their menus on the fly. They can be highly creative with their associates.
And you're just changing everything to real-time enterprises. And so whether it's rethinking CRM or whether it's driving a new approach to supply chains, everything now is real-time business processes on the ServiceNow platform. So I think this control tower idea has now manifested itself into a complete portfolio of products.
Love that. Let me do a couple more just to set the stage. So, you mentioned we're nice, and we've taken this posture in an environment where it seems like there's more coming into the enterprise than ever before. You always say trust is the ultimate human currency. What does that mean in practical terms?
Yes. Well, trust is the ultimate human currency. It's the one thing you can't trade on. You could trade on just about everything else in life, but not trust. You earn it and drops and you lose it in buckets. So we don't lose it. We want to win more and more every day. So I think we all know that the net present value of a loyal customer is every business's greatest asset, which is why I think you should all be excited that we have the highest retention rate in the enterprise.
And we are continuing that push to make sure it stays that way. And we're transforming our company to make sure of it more on adoption go-lives and the use of AI. And that's really where that hockey stick formation is going to kick in big time. We're open. And when I say trust, open AI, Anthropic, Google, NVIDIA, Microsoft, Amazon, we have deals with every one of them. They like us. We make a lot of money together.
The language models are coming to us because they know what they do is very important and so do we. But they also know the context that we bring to the unique data position that we have in the enterprise and the process position and the relationships and the ecosystem is going to be a gateway for them to prosper and grow and bring their amazing intelligence to the enterprise, and we warmly welcome them.
I also think you should know that we're getting really good at AI. And now we're even going to make a guarantee. A total satisfaction guarantee on AI go-lives in less than 100 days. Some of them could be a few days, but all of them are going to be less than 100 days. And we're going to make that commitment on stage. You're getting the first preview. We're excited about it. We have the forward deployed engineers, we have the customer excellence group and we have partners that are lined up and ready to roll with us to make that happen. And so we're going to make that offer and make that offer tomorrow on center stage.
I think customers are going to like it a lot because the pipeline is huge. And if they see, we're going to now offer them something on the control tower. That's a pretty special offering as well to get them started, getting them using it, landing and expanding with is something you know we're good at I think you'll know that we're well on our way to being a truly gigantic enterprise software company.
We're not slipping. We're growing. And I also want to make it clear that we are also using our own platform. So if you think about the positioning that we have right now, we have our own AI running on Now on Now, and we're achieving enormous productivity gains. What do I mean by that? Gina has already told you in earnings calls that it's been good for $0.5 billion and overachievement on the productivity curve.
But I'm telling you that we took a couple of really smart moves with what I call tuck-ins based upon the size of our company and the fact that we never bought anything for revenue. If we did, we would have bought companies that you would have recognized a lot better with a lot more revenue. No, we bought the future. And the beauty of that is, we're going to leave this year with the exact headcount that we entered this year.
And what you can take away from that is that our platform is resonating in the way we run our company, the fact that everybody has AI in their pocket to take care of customers, run their business and run our company. That's why 9 out of 10 customer cases are now managed by agents in our company. The same is true for HR and all the questions around running a business that used to be done by people are now being done by agents with people still in the process only when it's absolutely necessary or when it's a high-touch minute where you have to really touch an employee and make the heart of a human come through or in the case of a customer, a white glove treatment because they're exceptionally special. Other than that, the agents are doing the work.
Let's see if we can do two more in two minutes. So you've talked a lot about the growing opportunity. It's not controversial to say there's some skepticism about is the opportunity in fact, bigger. I don't want to litigate the entire thing, but when you look at the prize in front of us, what is your takeaway about the trajectory ServiceNow is on?
When I started in my career at Xerox Corporation, it was a great CEO named David Kearns, and he always said, "I can absolutely handle and empathize -- I can absolutely handle and empathize the folks that are a little skeptical, but not to cynics."
And I think what's cool about people in this room and around the world, they like ServiceNow a lot, and they're rooting for ServiceNow. So you might have a certain skepticism, let me take that away from you real quick so we can get back on to track that we belong on with the rules and rails of today's corporation. We have clarity around the TAM. I think we've taken you through this ride together from IT to multi-workflows to an enterprise platform.
Obviously, the AI platform we brought in and Now Assist across the enterprise. But now we took you some place very, very special. And I empathize with you because we waited 9 months for Moveworks to close the regulatory process. And then on the back of that, Veza came in okay? And Armis came in like within 3 days. So it's probably like, hey, what are they doing? Are they buying growth? What are they doing? No, we weren't.
We were buying a ticket to a bright future. And so now you have an AI control tower for business reinvention where you have your agentic front door and you have your identity management. Now this is key. Does anybody here actually think that the working population of corporations around the world is going up? Well, it's not. It's flat.
And the birth rates around the world are actually going down. And the good news is at that moment in time, here comes the agents. And here comes the robots to make the lives of people better and to increase the productivity of every company around the world. 2.2 billion agents in the next few years, robots, and we own the identity of not just our agents, but the agents that come from other companies in the flow of work, they'll come through our control tower. And then ultimately, we will coalesce all the clouds, all the language models, all the data, and we'll do it all in a highly secure IT and OT environment. You never heard that before because there's only one company in the world that's built to do it and it's ServiceNow. $600 billion TAM, we're going for it.
Maybe we'll have a robot moderate this conversation next year.
Maybe have a robotic CEO.
No, I don't think so. So let's leave it here. So I don't want you to steal Gina's thunder, but she did review this slide, so she knows we're going to show it. It's not about rhetoric, it's about results. We've heard that before. What's the promise we're making about the results trajectory of the company over the next several years.
Okay. Very clear. This is a sub revenue $30 billion plus commit between now and 2030. I want to be very clear. This is not the bill ambitious number. They wouldn't let me put that up there. Do you know what I mean? That is the one that you can say, okay, like the whole management team bottoms up across the board believes in that number. 60-plus is the revenue growth plus the free cash flow margin is going to be a 60-plus number.
Right now, it's 56, it's going to 60-plus, and we're not taking our foot off the accelerator. We're going to grow the top line and you'll see the acceleration of that, and we're going to expand the margin profile of the company and, we're going to take down stock-based compensation down around the 10% mark in 2029. So you'll be dealing with a 50-plus GAAP company, GAAP, G-A-A-P. So I know what you want and we're going to give it to you.
So bottom line, high level, we're going to double the company. We're going to be masterful on our execution across the world globally and through industry. The verticals are really good. We're actually also going to take a platform down market a bit because we have 90% of the Fortune 500 now. It's not a marketing slogan. I actually have people go through the math 9 out of 10 Fortune 500 now, fact, and so we know that we are going to expand with the Global 2000, but we're also going to take it down a little bit, where we could go into new markets in the upper mid-market and take care of business on folks that really aren't in our league.
It's time for that now. And so we're going to run a very efficient ship. And when I started telling these stories to you a while ago, we were climbing a mountain and it was tough, and we are climbing and climbing and climbing. And there's three things that stand out in the core values of this company. Number one, we're hungry and humble. And we're hungrier than ever. The chip on our shoulder is tougher than it's ever been, yet there's a humility and a kindness and an openness about us that never will be in question.
We're here to wow our customers. Customer satisfaction and loyalty is job one at ServiceNow. And ultimately, you're going to see a team today. When I tell the Board about this team, I tell them this is the absolute best team I've ever run with in my career, and I mean it. And so I don't have a second story. We got the best team in the business. So win as a team is the way we roll. And so what you're going to see today is unbelievable leadership.
Amit, our great engineering leader. Obviously, the COO of the company as well, has done some extraordinary things in architecting the product portfolio. It's really amazing. It's so exciting. And Paul Fipps, on the go-to-market side has engineered the AI control tower for business reinvention across the world. And Gina, obviously, is going to give you what she always does, right from the heart, the truth and the belief in this franchise. But I also want to call out the folks that report to these individuals and how great they are.
Too many in name, but I do want to call out one in particular. When we acquired Moveworks, we also acquired a great management team. And instead of having a great leader like Bhavin report into somebody at ServiceNow, we actually said, we think you should be the boss and let the people at ServiceNow report into you. So we're really making account given big businesses to people we believe and trust. So we wouldn't have acquired it if it wasn't a cultural fit in the first place, oh, we didn't believe in the leaders and they believe in this mission as much as we do.
So we now have a great team. We're going to win as a team and you're going to see the best days to ServiceNow are now and in the future.
He'll be back for questions, but that's a great way to that.
Thank you very much, everybody. Thank you.
Please welcome to the picture President, Chief Product Officer and Chief Operating Officer, Amit Zavery.
Great vision by Bill. I'm here to talk to you about how we're going to execute against it. It's great to be back to my -- for my second Financial Analyst Day since joining ServiceNow. During FAD last year, I shared our vision and plans for an enterprise agentic platform, and I'm really excited about to show you what we have accomplished so far. The last 12 months for us have been marked by innovation and growth.
Our autonomous workforce of AI specialists are already delivering impact with customers like FedEx. EmployeeWorks launched just two months after acquisition of Moveworks, beat Q1 expectations by 5x. One of our data analytics products exceeded $100 million in ACV in its first full year of availability and data analytics is on track to be a billion-dollar business for us.
The next evolution of our CRM products expanded into omnichannel, intake, sales order management and CPQ, which will help our CRM business cross $2 billion in ACV. And our security and risk business crossed $1 billion and expanded further into our AI identity governance and OT cybersecurity, helping to differentiate our core. Our AI products are nearing $1 billion in ACV, and the momentum only continues.
And the AI control Tower became a marketing -- market-defining solution. So all this innovation and level execution enabled us to beat and raise our guidance in all the quarterly results last year. We also stayed true to our principles by continuing to expand our open ecosystem and the platform by partnering with partners across the tech stack and all industries. And we have taken also an AI-native approach to transforming every corner of our own business as well as building AI into every product.
And we delivered a new conversational experience across our workflows, launched monthly releases and automate automatic upgrades as well as powered more innovation by using AI tools and AI-native approaches across all of our portfolio. But let's talk about today and fast forward to what we're going to be delivering as we go forward.
Every analyst, including all of you probably are covering as you cover software is asking if AI is going to replace the platform or AI needs the platform. A recent headlines are answering that question better than I could. At Meta, for example, an AI agent exposed sensitive data, which is an enormous security incident with no external attacker. The own AI agent was the failure more here. An AI agent at PocketOS hit a credential error and delayered the entire production database and all the backups of customer data in just 9 seconds.
And the industry has been trying to put Band-Aid on all these issues using agents and spawning more and more agents. But none of these stand-alone AI products can solve the core fundamental issues because none of them can govern the system as a whole. And there's an important distinction here to think through. Autonomous work is not just powered by one new innovation. It's really two essential capabilities coming together, working together to drive real outcomes. It's probabilistic AI, which is what generates the answers and deterministic execution is what runs the enterprises.
And every enterprise needs both of those. That is what it means for AI to be an operating system with enterprise context. And thanks to our CMDB and context engine, we know why a particular decision was made, we can encode the real-time relationship between every asset, person, service dependency and policy. I know many will say nowadays, I'll just build it myself. I'll stitch together the frontier models, take some open source models as well because I've been told that the next best SaaS application is just a prompt away.
But that idea falls apart when you test against three things. First, time-to-value is drastically underestimated. What should save a customer, time and effort only ends up costing them more. Second, the total cost of ownership is very complicated. They compare a build versus buy decision with the cost of API, typically and an engineer's salary.
But that misses the point. You have to add model selection and the constant updates, which happens with the new and new releases from the model companies, prompt engineering, security and compliance validation, managing new requirements by also not breaking the hundreds of systems, which you are already connected to, which run the business itself. And that's just the start.
Go back, please.
The third failed test for build versus buy is the security and governance gap. Autonomous AI agents that take action inside enterprise system without a harness will create an infinite risk surface. One compliance error from a homegrown agent would cost millions for a business. And we'll be also looking at research around this. customers building their own LLM-based solution, typically spend 5 to 10x more than using ServiceNow, depending on the complexity of the business they have and the different systems they have to connect.
And all of the solution will take longer to build and it's usually less secure. So the ROI and the TCO is not even proven if you want to do it -- go down this path. And the ultimate trap of build versus buy is this. The building an app is definitely not the same as running a business. And that is why we made it possible for customers to both build and buy full solutions on our governed platform. At the core of that platform are four integrated pillars that create a complete sense, decide, act, secure loop for AI, which is built on a modern AI native stack.
And this gives customers visibility, context, intelligence, automation -- automated actions, governance, all on one platform. The Gartner projects that 40% of agenetic AI projects will fail by 2027. But not because AI is incapable, just because the AI is in governed. And that's what we are here to fix.
Our platform is about more than helping customers, not just fail. It's about powering the success and growth. And we have proven that we can do this at scale. Today, ServiceNow runs 100 billion workflows and 7 trillion transactions annually, growing at 25% year-over-year. And that scale creates a flywheel. Every Action on our platform deepens our operational context and enriches our CMDB and context that makes our AI better. Our new UI has higher repeat usage, and we only grow more with the launch of auto. Unified AI experience, you will hear more about later.
So basically, actions which creates outcomes, outcomes which create new actions. The flywheel continues to accelerate. And every step makes our ITAM, ITOM, SPM, ITSM and all of our core products more valuable than ever, which is triggering more customer conversations and continue to expand our IT business as well. And humans usually need nowadays agents and agents definitely need guardrails.
You get both through the platform we have delivered. And this is a durable advantage we built first in IT and now expanding even further into many new domains. And if customer is also feeling this compounding value in real time, I'll give you an example, like CVS has taken hundreds of millions of actions now on ServiceNow supporting our 170,000 colleagues of theirs across 9,000 stores. Robinhood is deflecting 70% of employee requests before human intervention, saving over 2,000 hours a month.
TridentCare achieved 96% scheduling automation with our AI-powered CRM, improving care for millions of patients while also increasing revenue. So the question becomes what does it take to enable and govern autonomous work for the enterprise. Today, my team will show you how it's done through the four pillars of sense, act, decide and secure. But the first, let's start with the AI platform that everything is built upon.
Jon, over to you.
Thank you, Amit. As Amit said, we're going to spend the next hour or so talking about five sections. I'm going to start with the ServiceNow AI platform. And we have reimagined and reinvented our platform. And you're going to see a lot today. You're going to see autonomous workers. You're going to see the power of AI control tower. You're going to see new AI native experiences, conversational experience. And we have reinvented our entire platform for the agentic era.
Now to be clear, we're still a system of action. We are the workflow platform. And things are evolving. We're seeing patterns in the market that I'm going to address as we go through this presentation. But what I want to talk about first is that we have reimagined the platform from the bottom up. And what that means is that we have recreated the AI stack, and it allows us to do things like innovate at the speed of innovation, which -- or at the speed of AI, which is very, very important because the expectations of our customers is changing rapidly.
They want to see these innovations come very, very quickly and want new experiences very, very quickly. Now the things that you're going to see around multi-modality, and voice, and new conversational experiences, those are all part of the native platform. They're not bolted on. And the first area that I want to dive into that Amit talked about is this idea of context. And the context is extremely important to any agentic system. It drives the AI.
But The first, I want to play a video of Boris, who is the creator of Claude Code at Anthropic. And Boris is going to talk about how important context is to an AI system. And why the ServiceNow platform is uniquely positioned for context, could we roll the video, please?
[Presentation]
So as Boris said, context is the driver of AI. And we have a context engine inside the AI platform at ServiceNow. But what is context? Well, context is not data. Context is not a decision. It's not an outcome. Context is actually the history behind an outcome. It is the decisions and what made up those decisions that are important to context and that important to the AI system. That's what our context engine delivers.
Now it doesn't just stop there, though. Because there are new outcomes and new decisions that are created every day inside of our system. And so the context engine gets better over time and in turn, the entire agentic system at ServiceNow gets better.
Amit talked a little bit about this earlier. And some of the industry would have you believe that every single process inside of the enterprise should be an LLM call. There's no need for structured workflows anymore. It's all about the LLM. Well, that's not very smart, it's not very efficient. And it is not the way that we want to drive our platform.
Now you're going to see a lot on agenic AI and generative AI today because it's extremely powerful. It's extremely flexible. So things like our -- and our AI agents and the things that you're going to see today are based off of that. However, all the context in the world doesn't fix the predictability of AI, meaning the power comes from the idea that you could ask the same question twice and get two different answers.
On the right-hand side is structured workflows. We've been doing this for decades. These are things like flows and approvals and catalog items. And they are what drive the enterprise today. And the trick here is not to offer one or the other. You need to offer both. And what we're going to do in the reimagined platform is to harmonize those two things together. So that agenetic systems and activities call into structured workflows and structured workflows can call into AI agents, and we bring them together in a way that nobody else can do to provide the most efficient, effective outcomes.
Now as I was saying upfront, things are changing around us very, very rapidly. And our customers want broad access to our system. And we're seeing others in the industry, exposing their system of records through APIs and through MCP to allow for reading and writing of their system essentially becoming a database, a system of record. And while that's very exciting, that's not what we're going to do.
We're going to expose the system of action. And we're going to do that by opening up this layer to the Cluades and the OpenAI's and the Gemini of the world. What is the system of action? Well, that's where the true power of our platform comes from. That is our workflows, our flows, our processes, our skills, the context engine, playbooks. All of those things that is the system of action that is ServiceNow.
But we're not just going to expose that. We're going to monetize it. And we're going to do that by introducing something called the action fabric. And there are a few things you should take away from this it is any protocol, any tool. So you can use your tool of choice and you can talk to the action fabric headlessly and kick off the autonomous work that is so powerful within our platform and it's governed.
So all of the business rules and everything that's happening, you can call into it and those actions are taken and workflows are triggered. But we're not going to stop there because we are now going to monetize that process. And as Amit said, we have a monetization model today for generative AI. It's called NowAssist. It's a $1 billion business. This will be $1.5 billion by the end of the year. And what we're going to do is plug directly into that system.
So now that any time that an outside human being, machine, AI agent, third-party agent calls into the action fabric, we're going to burn assist, the flywheel is going to spin faster. And this is a tremendous TAM opportunity for our company because now anything and any one and anybody can call into the action fabric and take advantage of what ServiceNow is known for. Automation.
And what's going to end up happening is we're going to have this universal action layer, where all of these systems are calling directly into our action fabric and spinning our flywheel even faster than it does today. Now there are other things that are going on in the market and that we want to address with our platform, one of them is autonomous agents, these long-running agents. And they work on your desktop and they help you do things.
They write code, they will handle your schedule. They will monitor your e-mail. They're great. They're assistants. And we wanted to build one of those and we did. And the first stop was talking to CISOs and security, and they said, "Absolutely not." You're not going to be able to deploy those things, they're unsafe. They're not governable, we don't want them.
So we started [ Project ARC ] with NVIDIA. Our partners and friends from NVIDIA, we got together and we said, well, how do we fix this? And what we ended up doing is using one of their technologies to secure these agents in essentially a sandbox mode. What that did was give us the ability to tell these agents what they can do, what they can't do, please don't delete my entire inbox, what systems they have access to. And it gave us the control to allow us CISO to say yes. But we are the automation company, so we wanted to expose our agent and many, many others.
I think today, we just have signed a partnership with Anthropic for Co-work to talk directly to the action fabric. And what that does is it allows your assistant now not just to manage your calendar or plan a trip for you. But it can also ask for time off and kick off these headless workflows that are going on in the background. So I can do things like take time off and change my HR or my benefits and request a new laptop, all from these agents that are running on the desktop.
Now there's going to be a lot of these agents. You might have 4 or 5 running on a desktop, you might have tens of thousands of desktops across your enterprise. So the last thing we wanted to do with [ Project ARC ] was plug it all back into the AI control tower. Each and every one of our agents is talking directly to AI Control Tower telling you exactly what actions is taking, what system is trying to get to and allowing somebody in the enterprise now to look holistically across the enterprise, not only at our agents that are running on the desktop, but at all agents, giving you that holistic view.
Now the last piece of this puzzle for the action fabric is build anywhere. And again, our customers, the ecosystem, our partners are saying, "Look, we want to use the tool of our choice, but we love your platform. We want to build net new applications. We want to build primitives that run in your action fabric. " And in turn, what that does is it makes us a system of action. It gives us a tremendous consumption opportunity across the board, and it drives the flywheel in ways that we couldn't have imagined before Action Fabric.
And so what we want to do today is show you how easy it is to use your tool of choice and build net new applications, net new workflows on our platform. And to do that, Jithin is going to show us an awesome demo.
Thank you, Jon.
Super excited to be here. Some of the incredible innovations Jon just spoke about, I really want to show you how it all comes together on a demo. AI and vibe coding has fundamentally changed how applications are built and how agents gets imagined into existence as autonomous specialists in the app. I'm a developer. My HR team -- that's the job I'm going to do today in front of you. My HR team asked me for a brand-new addition to our employee benefits app.
So typically, I have few tool choices. I could be using Cursor, Codex, Gemini. Today, I'm in the mood for Claude Code. Here I am getting on to the next screen, which is the clock code, and what I'm about to do is in the cloud, I'm going to ask to help me build a pet insurance module for the Employee Benefits app. And the first thing I would do is in simple natural language, I'm going to say, add pet insurance enrollment to the Extra Care benefits app, which I just spoke about, tap. And what you're seeing right now is Claude is starting to get to work. You are seeing something called Fluent. It's our ServiceNow's AI-ready platform language.
We have open-sourced our build agent skills and platform knowledge directly to agents like a Claude Code via our SDK. That means the whole thing, the UI, metadata, access controls, business rules, all of it. And the last screen you saw was the app is almost built by the Claude. Now I'm going to actually jump in and show you how it actually lives in our own native ID, which is actually ServiceNow studio.
Now let's jump over. Right here, you can see on the top of the list, the benefits app. Let's go ahead and click into it. And the moment any application, which lands on our platform, like Amit was talking about and John was talking about, it elevates the app to an AI-native application. Automatically, when an application is built on our platform, our platform will actually recommend a set of agents who will live and breathe every day with the humans in the loop day-to-day 24/7.
You can see our application has already recommended that we create an enrollment agent, right? Let's take a look at the agent. And in that you can see the enrollment agent, it's all set up. It can qualify, understand and manage the end-to-end enrollment with minimal human intervention. Insights like this are possible only with the CMDB, the context engine, and the action graph, which John spoke about earlier.
And you can see I'm already on my way to actually create an agent and every assist which is delivered in the app is a run-time assist for the user. Imagine every application, having 3 to 4 agents living in it, every interaction is a monetization moment every day, 24/7. And now we'll jump into the actual building of the agent.
Let's go ahead and build it. You can see with the click now the Claude Code with the ServiceNow Studio and the SDK skills, the agent is already getting built. And once the built complete, it's ready, it has its own roles, instructions, autonomy, it can actually sense, decide and act every day within the application, but we are not shipping it just blind.
Let's make sure we run the right automated testing and scanning so that it's ready for production and overall. Now it's actually running through the scan process. It's going to come up with the readiness score. This is how our platform is built. It has run through its own evals, come up with the score. Great score, 90%. Now I am ready to actually submit for deployment.
Now what are you seeing is App Engine Management Center. This is the product or the platform where every application goes through to make sure it has the right security controls and the access controls, everything built in. And by default, any app, which runs through any agent or an asset, AI asset would run through, it automatically gets registered as a part of the AI-control tower. Let's do -- this is where we do one more last review of the application. Everything looks good. And let me make sure I have the right readiness, which comes through with a release note and all of it you can see. I'm ready to now deploy the application right here.
Now this is the actual app, which is live, ready for you to prompt. Now I'm going to switch my hat a little bit. I'm an employee, and I would like to actually understand what are my benefits from my pet insurance point of view. Right here, I'm going to actually prompt and type in. You can see it's pulling a massive amount of user awareness and context at the back end. It looks very simple, but in order to qualify and make sure this agent delivers the right accurate information, it's actually bringing in CMDB context engine every one of those process mining capability you can think of.
The last point I have a 2-year-old frankie, which I want to make sure I can actually get the insurance set up, right? There you go. It's now going towards making sure I have my frankie getting access to the coverage, what it needs to be. beautiful, isn't it? So what you just saw is the actual agent is live in action.
Every app built on our platform will get autonomous agent embedded within, and that's how we are fundamentally changing the way AI apps and agents are built within our platform. I'll say it one more time. It's like Jon shared earlier, it's about you can build in anywhere, any tools and any choice, what do you have run and govern in ServiceNow with the enterprise-grade controls and security. Every app sits with an autonomous agent embedded and running the AI assist meter at scale. So that's the end of my demo. And I would like to now bring in Gaurav, who's going to talk about the sense part of the overall value prop.
Thank you, Jon and Jithin. So you just saw why the ServiceNow AI platform is the system of action for autonomous work. And now I'm going to show you and talk to you about how we bring the sense and decide pillars to life on that same platform. We do that by helping our customers achieve four things. First, connect all their data wherever it lives; the second, control it with enterprise-grade governance; third, contextualize it with enterprise-wide intelligence; and then converge that contextualized intelligence right into the flow of work.
And our customers are responding strongly to the strategy, making it one of the fastest-growing product businesses in ServiceNow history. Workflow Data Fabric now has over 4,000 customers, driving more than 3 billion monthly data transactions. And we've recently added consumption-based pricing and more than 700 customers have already consumed more than 0.5 billion credits. And then there's RaptorDB, where our new premium Pro SKU has seen explosive growth. We've gone from 0 to $100 million ACV in 5 quarters flat, with an ASP well north of $0.5 million.
Okay. So let me step you through the four Cs of our strategy. First, Connect. Workflow Data Fabric is fundamentally architected for the agentic era. See, most data fabrics are primarily built for decision support for insights. Workflow Data Fabric, on the other hand, is built for insight and action with read and right capabilities, and it supports all types of data wherever it lives. And that's another crucial distinction. You see we embrace the system of record and the data platform choices our customers have already made.
You Can, but you don't have to move the data into ServiceNow. I know the others who are playing for data gravity. But for us, what really, really matters is knowledge gravity. And Workflow Data Fabric already offers 250-plus connectors and we are expanding our reach even further. With 100-plus new zero-copy connectors, so customers can access data wherever it resides, no replication required. With full support for MCP clients. So our AI agents can work with any MCP-enabled source. And with auto for Workflow Data Fabric, our customers can describe what they want in plain English and let AI build the new integration.
But look, connected data is not the same as AI-ready data. Today, teams spend more time finding, cleaning and preparing data, rather than using it, slowing down AI adoption, limiting AI accuracy, and it's leading to some pretty frustrated data analysts.
I can't imagine the AI agents are too thrilled about it either. So to ensure AI decision accuracy, you need data that is fully visible and governed throughout its entire life cycle. You need tight control of your data. And this truly needs to be non-negotiable. So that's why we're introducing the ServiceNow data catalog, which delivers native metadata management, data lineage, privacy and ultimately, trust. So humans and AI agents alike can now instantly discover and use curated data products, safe in the knowledge that these data products have their enterprise's seal of approved.
That's great. But getting your data AI ready isn't a one-time activity. Enterprises have to keep it AI ready. And so to ensure the ongoing AI readiness of data, we'll be taking our data control capabilities even further with a complete AI-driven autonomous data governance solution. And we'll be delivering data quality, observability, enrichment and policy management. All unified inside the ServiceNow AI platform.
We'll deliver this through a combination of ServiceNow products and partner products in our massive workflow data network, which now spans data quality, observability, MDM security and integration partner products. Because just like we do with the data lakes, we want to embrace and extend what our customers already have. And that's how our strategy is fundamentally different. We're going to take that a step further by introducing partner passport. So customers can procure and consume select partner products using ServiceNow consumption credits.
On to contextualize. With more than 100 billion workflows a year running on our platform, no one is better able to understand our customers' business context than us. And as Jon mentioned, we bottle that magic up into something we're calling the context engine. So the platform of platforms, as Bill referred to, now has a living graph of graphs. A graph that brings together our knowledge, action, access, asset and decision graphs, all anchored on our powerful CMDB.
Built right into this context engine is our market-leading analytical semantic layer. And we've used that as a foundation for a new product that we're announcing called Autonomous Data Analytics. And so I think conversational analytics to guide the -- what happened, what will happen, what should I do type of decisions that need to be made by both humans and AI? And it's fully autonomous.
So think embedded, think always on, AI analysts working tirelessly on your behalf, surfacing insights, interpreting enterprise-wide data in context, spotting outliers and issues, providing recommendations. Even taking action. And soon we'll be packaging this capability into autonomous data apps, easy button solutions to bring the power of this insight to action, capability right into our technology, customer and employee workflow areas.
And so as an example of such a data app, customers will be able to combine product usage, support, contract engagement data from ServiceNow and let's say, Snowflake or Databricks, data lakes and then identify churn risk to then trigger autonomous customer retention actions in ServiceNow immediately. Finally, converge. Today, enterprises typically analyzed in one system, act in another. We decided to unify both at the database level with RaptorDB. We have RaptorDB standard, which is freely available to everyone and a premium version called RaptorDB Pro that delivers even greater scalability and performance through advanced database features.
Now we're adding 2 important new capabilities to RaptorDB Pro based on feedback from our large customers as well as those in regulated industries. So the first is Live Archive, which is a cost-effective archival solution for ServiceNow that then also allows you to seamlessly query across hot and cold data; and second, Live Connect, which allows you to point your existing BI tool against RaptorPro for real-time analytics with no ETL or data movement. Together, we feel these expand RaptorDB Pro's addressable market in our installed base by tenfold. So there you have it. Four foundational capabilities to power and deeply differentiate ServiceNow's autonomous AI strategy by bringing data and intelligence right into the flow of work.
Next, I'll hand it to Bhavin Shah to cover employee experience.
Thank you, Gaurav. I see a few familiar faces. I know some of us have connected over the years. I'm Bhavin, and I'm responsible for ServiceNow's employee experience products and AI Front Door. I want to cover the third part of this, chart here that you see or the fourth part, where we're talking about this employee experience and the acting upon different systems on behalf of employees.
And essentially, what we're doing is building on the ServiceNow Data Fabric to drive this employee experience and drive values on top of that for our customers. When Moveworks was acquired, Bill, Amit and I got together, and we felt that we were uniquely positioned to take ownership of the AI Front Door for the entire workforce. The reason for that was by combining the Moveworks employee experience with the ServiceNow workflows and Data Fabric, we are creating a powerful front door for work across every system and every employee.
Now we've been busy. My kids call it integration maxing at home. But we've rolled out Moveworks to every ServiceNow employee. We've launched the Front Door to called ServiceNow Employee Works, and we've integrated that Front Door into our new commercial model in just four months. So lots of activity, lots of work going on there. And we're moving fast because there's actually a gap in the market.
Consumers are validating this in every conversation I'm having and in every deal now that we're winning. Now in the past 2.5 months alone, we've seen a 10x pipeline build for our go-to-market efforts, right? That means that demand is here, and we're now so ready to capture it given the two companies and what we both afford and it can produce together.
And I'd say this, if there was an M&A award, I think Bill and Amit deserve it because both of our teams are on fire right now. The AI Front Door is also moving fast. And the frontier is moving fast as well, not just with the models but with enterprises, too. I'm sure you guys know this talking to customers, talking to different organizations. And to build an effective experience across all employees, you need the ability to execute. And this is really critical and hard to do. Now we started off with everyone being sort of captivated by AI Smart and generative capabilities. But then we transitioned in 2024 into what I'd call co-pilot chaos. And this is when every sort of functional AI was being introduced every platform, every offering with no real large-scale enterprise impact. When we saw these various studies come out, people were wondering where is the real value going to hit.
And so today, what business leaders are looking for is what we characterize as enterprise AI. That means it works across the business, right? End to end, not just middle to middle, right, east to west, not just north to south. So I think the differentiation here is that ServiceNow and us together have been able to execute so fast because we can bring these capabilities end-to-end, east to west, all to these enterprise customers.
Now the thing to understand is that for an enterprise customer, a user isn't just a user, they're actually an employee. And this is where our differentiation goes even deeper. Employees have to navigate a complex journey, right, spanning peers, managers, executives, countless systems and unique business contacts, right? This is what it takes when you're running a large organization.
And so these employees have a need that sort of expands beyond just the end users that a lot of the sort of offerings think of people [ as ]. Now we have a deep understanding of the workflows, the context and the action. And we're the only platform really that meets these demands of the enterprise with the employees in mind to get work done. And this is really resonating. In these meetings, we're having in the conversations and the deals we're winning. They understand that we can see this as a lens of actually an employee throughout the year, throughout their month or throughout a week.
And in order to execute this end-to-end obviously requires another formula, right? The fully probabilistic Yolo model of personal AI isn't sufficient, right? We've tried that, we've talked about it earlier. And there's parts of the business that are not open for negotiation. They demand reliability. Right? Think about payroll adjustment, HR investigation and escalation. These are all things that have to be done in a certain way based on the company's policies, based on the company's culture, based on how the company was created over the years that it's been around.
And so not everything will be agentified immediately. And frankly, some processes, according to our customers, will never be agentified because they always wants -- they always want to make sure there's a human in the loop. And so that need for human loop is something that ServiceNow does a really good job of unifying across for these organizations. Now my personal conviction of joining ServiceNow comes down to this, right?
Personal AI gives you outputs. But EmployeeWorks and this new product that we've now rolled out really delivers outcomes end-to-end. And ServiceNow and like harnesses this and executes these plans in a way that gets work done for a company. Let me give you an example here, right? Sending you to this conference becomes less labor intensive for your company. And that is what real enterprise ROI is. Businesses want AI that can deliver outcomes similar to human labor.
And to do that, you have to go end to end. You have to go across all of these systems very effectively. And so in a world where everyone's token-maxing and that's seen as a flex, right? Enterprise AI is actually maximizing token efficiency. And that's on everyone's mind, as you know. And so what customers are really seeking is how can companies do this. And this is ultimately how they will pocket the benefits.
Now this brings us to a unified experience. It's something that I spend every day working on thinking about the whole team is rallied around this. And with EmployeeWorks, we're able to deliver a seamless experience across the patchwork enterprise. We deeply understand the company, its employees. We bring together different platforms and workflows and that's what transformation for a real business comes down to.
That's how we deliver real outcomes. But there's more. So if we actually have an AI marketplace that allows you to build deep into the ServiceNow platform but also along with thousands of prebuilt agents, popular apps like Workday, SAP, Coupa and more. And this actually lowers the cost of ownership, right? The old model of expensive implementations, specialized developers, long time lines, it's gone.
The new model is vibe coding, customized experience in minutes. And so this is how AI scales, not by adding more tools, but by empowering more people to build on a governed platform. Let me give you an example here, CVS Health, Fortune 10 company, you guys know well, 220,000 active users, 2 million conversations, 0.25 million [ fewer ] calls and chats to IT and store service centers. This is real money to the bottom line, 40% year-over-year live Agent chat reduction.
And so this is just one example. I'll use another one Honeywell, they're an industrial giant, 80% of the inbound requests and work, the deflection, if go to service desk has been handled by the AI. The human mediated workflows are actually happening 60x faster because the AI is doing the intermediation and we're seeing -- they're seeing about equivalent reduction in labor costs.
Now in closing, like, I've been selling to this market for about 8 years to the ServiceNow install base. And one thing that we've seen and that was revealed each time we would roll this out was that when you roll this out to all employees, there's actually an impact on the number of workflows and automations that get consumed because you lower the friction to get help. You lower the fiction to find what you need. You lowered the friction to do an action. And what that does is causes usage to climb.
On top of that, what makes us really excited is that ServiceNow has 25 million active users on their employee center. And this becomes the install base in which we're going to be building the future of EmployeeWorks. So I think it's going to be a really great year. And we have a lot of other exciting product announcements and releases coming up for the rest of this year. And so real quick, I just want to give you a quick preview into what you'll hear more tomorrow with regard to ServiceNow Auto.
So you'll see this and you'll learn more about it at the keynote that we'll have in the morning. But ServiceNow Auto is really the combined intelligence of Moveworks and now assist coming together in a new unified experience. You'll be seeing this, obviously, in action shortly as we talk through it a little bit here. But also, I want you to understand that we'll be handing this off to Pat to tell you more about autonomous IT. And from there, we can show you some more.
All right. Well, thank you very much.
Good afternoon, folks. And thank you for coming to this. Like I know we're hoping to educate, share some information here, but hopefully, I can add to that. Bhavin mentioned, I'm going to talk a bit about autonomous IT. I'm going to take a bit of a general statement up at the beginning. We're going to talk a little about just workforce automation, and then I'm going to dive more specifically on how we're applying that to the world of IT because that's kind of relevant to us because it's still the biggest part of our TAM right now.
It's the biggest part of our current revenue base. This has been an automation company really since the get-go. I was one of the founders of the company. I worked with Fred Luddy in the early days. That was always his mental model. He wanted to build a general case workforce automation platform. And that's what's been driving value for our customers for 20 years. You take a process, you put it on service now. It's more efficient. And that efficiency and that productivity is we've been paying us for. That's the fundamental deal here. We make you more productive, if you pay us. There has been a big change in the tools we have available to solve that problem though.
AI gives us a new tool in the toolbox to apply. We do think, though, that we have a bit of a different take on how to apply that to the world of workflows than the traditional enterprise. And I'll start by saying that we absolutely believe there's a value in what I'll call horizontal AI. Bhavin just talked to you a lot about our Moveworks and EmployeeWorks product. We bought a company here because we think it's a real value for our customers and for us.
But fundamentally, horizontal AI is about interacting with you as a requester of services. It's your unified place to ask for things to get information, to kick things off to check on statuses, it makes you more productive as an employee. Behind the scenes though, you still have a variety of, what I'll call vertical processes. If the thing you actually requested is a pallet of steel for a factory in Milwaukee, there is still a purchasing process, which goes through before that pallet of steel actually shows up in Milwaukee.
Those vertical processes are where the actual black letter savings are for AI because that's where people have a job. I'm a purchasing specialist. I'm a sourcer, I'm going to work cases for a living. That's where the big value is for our customer base. It's in the verticals. If you can solve the verticals, it lets you get out of the game of reporting things and asking for things and interacting with things and into the game of actually solving a problem, actually resolving something executing a business process.
So you're not reporting that your e-mail is broken. We actually fixed your e-mail for you. You're not asking for a pallet of steel. You may ask for some automation, we'll actually make sure the right steel, from the right vendor, show up at the right factory, right day and you can build a car. Fundamentally, that's a business process. This, however, is hard. It's hard because most of these processes today are human mediated and many of them will probably remain human into the foreseeable future.
Human beings take part in these processes and a lot of them span multiple systems as well. There's various steps, there are state changes, there's technology shifts in there. And our industry has tried to work around this complexity by frankly, throwing bodies at it. We will throw FTEs at your project, and we will try to wire up your purchasing process with some little sim here and some duct tape here and a little bit of bailing wire here, and we probably get it working. But we've done one of your many business processes at a big investment of FTEs.
We fundamentally believe there's a better way to do this. We want to get out of the game of one-off bespoke process automation and into the game of giving our customers autonomous workers. This is a new paradigm. You saw Bill mentioned it. You're going to see all over the stages here. We are rolling out autonomous workers first inside our IT departments, but also inside other workflows and ultimately beyond ServiceNow.
The idea behind an autonomous worker is very straightforward. It's just like a human being. You assign it work, it approves things. It produces the same audit rules. It follows the same logs. It lives in your user record. You don't have to do business process re-engineering do one of these autonomous workers. It gets us out of the game of saving 5 minutes for a customer here and 10 minutes here and 20 minutes here and into the game of going to a customer and saying, "Hey, you've got 100 people doing that job. I can help you do it with 50 or maybe even 80, whatever the number is, it's less than 100. Let's talk." That's the real value behind the automation and the age of AI.
If you look at where we're going more specifically, we have got a path to zero touch. You will see about 20 of these in the hopper, but 4 of these we want to talk to you about today, Level 1 service desk specialists. I'll dig into this one a little bit more in one slide, so hold your questions. junior IT operators, asset analysts and product managers for PMO. The idea is these are all jobs that our customers have that we feel like we can do some subset of that work with automation. So we can go to our customers and offer them that value.
And the first one we have, which is -- this is live. This is not hypothetical. I've got 6 live pilot customers now. I've got about 50 customers in the hopper, who want to get live with this very quickly. We've actually had to turn people away because the oversubscription is so high here. But IT specialists. You put them in your user record. If you've already bought ServiceNow, you assign to a team, just like you onboard a new human being, and they do stuff. They answer questions. They take basic actions. They solve cases. And they do so in lieu of a human being, but they follow the same rules the human being would.
And this is important for our customers because it will help them get value, and it will help them get more efficient, and it will help them, frankly, save headcount. Fundamentally, that is the game they are in. It's important for us because that's how we grow as a company, as we offer that value to our customers. And fundamentally, it is important to all of us here because this is the productivity that AI is bringing beyond just the technology industry and the society as a whole. This is the promise of AI. We will help make the overall economy more productive. We're going to start with IT, but it's not the end of it.
With that said, enough of me talking about this, let's bring Amy up, she can show it to you.
All right. Great. I'm already here. Thank you, Pat. It's fantastic. Okay. I am incredibly excited to be here and share the product with you and share how -- what Bhavin and Pat talked about really come to life. And we're talking about both individual employee productivity, which then transitions to the productivity of a team, which then goes into the productivity of entire workforce when you look at autonomous workers. So with that, I'll show you how this all works.
Okay. So I'm going to start off here with EmployeeWorks. This is our new unified front door to work. And imagine I'm an ITSM manager at [ Electri ], and I've got a lot on my mind as I start my day. First off, I just moved from California to Washington. I've been getting some physical therapy for my knee, and I don't know if I'm going to get covered for that in my new state and if my current plan will do that for me. And I don't know who to ask because the kind of -- it's the kind of question that might stump us all at work. Do we go to our insurance provider, our benefits, our doctor? We don't know.
So today, I'm going to go in and ask Auto what to do here. So I'm going to type in this prompt and see if I get coverage in Washington. So Auto immediately gets to work. It's checking my plan, verifying that this life event qualifies me to change my benefits, and it's summarizing the answer for me. But not just that, Auto tells me what I need to do to kick off the process. And apparently, I have not changed my address yet. So I'm going to go ahead and put in my new address and enter that in. And now Auto gets to work, updating my address across various systems that work like Workday, which just saved me a huge headache. You didn't have to go in there and change my address. And it's also telling me everything I need to know to change my benefits based on the policy, based on the context of who I am and what's available to me.
So I can assess it's a minimal change in coverage. This looks like it makes a ton of sense for me. So I'll go ahead and enroll in this plan. So Auto can go ahead and finish the process for me. Everything is done. So in about a minute, I went from a complex benefits question to a completed solution, which is amazing. So it's not just about me, though, I'm also thinking about my team at work and what they need. So I'm going to start a new conversation. And I want to see if there's anything I need to do to unblock my team, if there's anything kind of pending my approval. So Auto can go through all the different requests and things sitting in multitudes of systems and pull that together for me at a glance, looking across any tickets that might be open or things that need my review. I see that summarized for me here and also prioritized, which is really helpful. And I can see that Alex is asking for a hardware refresh. And this is actually stalling his productivity because it's gone for quite a while without my action taken.
So I'm going to dig into that and ask a little bit more before I approve this new computer, I want to understand what's going on here. So Auto can bring up his request, and then I can go in and actually click into that request and have it surfaced right here. This is a really cool part of our new AI experience. We can bring the information to you. You no longer need to hunt, navigate, go other places. I can see everything I need to know like Alex's machine is clearly out of date. Everything is maxed out on it. I'm going to go ahead and approve this for Alex. Fantastic. Always feels really good to unblock the team.
Now from there, there's another pending conversation, something that I've been asking about recently that has an update that I can jump back into. In this case, I have a couple of my engineers that provide VIP exec coverage and they have a shift that I need to give them specific access for. Now one of these team members, Jordan, I have to go in and actually review the access. But before I do that, I want to make sure that I can also revoke that access when their shift is over. So I'm going to ask a couple of questions here. When does the shift start? When will this access be revoked? Can we do that automatically?
And Auto goes to work one more time. And so the first support engineer is provisioned automatically, but the second one, Auto can go through and provision and also make sure that their access will be revoked at the appropriate time, which is super cool. And so let's go in there. I'll go ahead and improve it. Everything looks great. Okay. So I just did stuff for my own personal productivity as well as the productivity of my team, which is fantastic. And it's a totally new employee experience, which is so exciting. So we're really excited to have this in our customers' hands and get that available to everyone, as we have so much demand for it right now, which is super exciting.
So next up, though, although that was a lot about employee productivity, we also know that sometimes despite everything we do, a team can get swamped. There's too many inbound requests. So I'm going to go over to my ServiceOps work desk and see how my team is performing overall and go into my ServiceOps dashboard. So unfortunately, even though I did all that great work for my team, there's still some bad news here. Our backlog is up, CSAT is dropping down, and we're still overwhelmed by the volume of work coming in. And like Pat talked about, that's where an L1 IT service desk AI specialist can come in.
I'm still learning about what this can do for my team. So I'll ask Auto what I need to know about it. Auto, again, goes to work summarizing everything that this IT agent can do for my team. It's reviewing specialized capabilities. It's also projecting how many incidents this could solve for my team, brings up an entire profile right here on how well this AI specialist will perform, including the eval score, which gives me high confidence that this will perform at a level that I need for my team. I can look through and see everything set up, including the skills that this AI agent will use and also escalation path. So in case there's a really complex issue, it can get routed to a human.
So this looks pretty fantastic. And based on what it's going to do for the CSAT of my team, there's no question, I'm going to activate this AI specialist. All right. And just like that, it was added to my team. That's incredibly easy for any manager, who's feeling swamped or that they don't have enough resources, they can activate these AI agents and add them to their team. No admin, no configuration, no deployment, just a few clicks, and it's there. So we'll fast forward in time. And I come back to that same dashboard and I see, great, everything is tracking on time now. We've got our AI specialists on the team. Things are progressing well. CSAT is back up. But I also want to audit how this AI specialist is performing.
So I'll go in and ask Auto to give you an analysis on this AI specialist. Go through, it looks at all the past activity, looks at the metrics, CSAT scores for this individual. And it pulls together again, an awesome comprehensive briefing for me. I can see that the specialist is handling 52% of all requests, CSAT of 4.6. This is fantastic. But I also want to audit exactly what it's doing in a particular incident. So I'll click into one. And I can see a full record here of exactly every step that, that AI specialist took. So I have no doubts about how it's doing this work, how it's resolving these incidents and the effectiveness it has, not only for my team, but for those that it's helping.
Great. So everything is working really well. This combined team of both humans and AI specialists working together. This is truly the future of work, not just AI that assists, but AI that acts and resolves, delivering real business outcomes. So very excited to share that with you. Next up, John Ball will be joining us to talk about our innovation in CRM. Thank you.
So I'm going to be covering the fourth key step to unlocking AI transformation, Act, and I'm going to do it through autonomous CRM. And so let's get straight to it and start by recapping just how far and fast we've come in CRM. In 2023, I was up here and telling you that we have become the fastest CRM player ever in the history of the industry to get to $1 billion in ACV. And now just 3 years later, we're going to blow through that -- double it and blow through $2 billion. So we've massively expanded our functional footprint to deliver awesome experiences across the entire customer life cycle from lead and opportunity management to configure price quote and order management, all the way back to where we started in customer service and field service.
And we're doing this at scale, managing over 1 billion cases per year, over 1 billion order and work order tasks. And at peak times in CPQ, we're configuring 100 times a second, every single second at peak times. We're recognized as a leader in CRM by analysts like Gartner, Forrester and IDC. And last, we have industry-specific IP that speeds time to value across multiple verticals. And this growth and success is driven by our deep understanding of how to solve real challenges in delivering great customer experiences. And I'll give you a hint folks, it's not about tracking interactions in the database.
In service, you have to provide great omnichannel intake of requests and you have to make resolving those requests easy and efficient. In sales, you have to go beyond just tracking leads and opportunities. You have to make it fast and easy for sales reps to configure, price and quote those opportunities. And all of that, you need workflow, powerful workflow. You need the ability to model the products and services a company sells as well as the types of requests, orders and changes their customers are entitled to because without workflows and without the ability to model this declaratively or you're just writing a bunch of custom code.
And a Vibe-coded app on top of a shaky foundation doesn't resolve the requests. It just makes disappointment happen faster. So whether it's handling a warranty claim, disputing the Visa transaction or ordering a new telecom service, all of these examples require powerful deterministic workflow at the core. Now what AI does change is how customers, sales reps and customer service reps interact with these systems to get the job done. With conversational AI, you can talk and chat with the system using natural language. So that's cool, but it kind of reminds me of some great Elvis lyrics, a little less conversation, a little more action please because you don't reach out to a contact center or a customer service center to have a conversation.
You reach out because you want action taken to resolve your request. And understanding this point is crucial because the vast, vast majority of customer service requests are not how-tos, the web and YouTube solve that. And I'll use a simple example to illustrate my point. Say you want to change an existing order. This seems simple and straightforward, but to deliver this, you need to understand the intent request order change. Then you need to understand all the specifics. Is it a change of the delivery date or of the quantity or of the actual product being ordered.
Conversational AI is great at capturing all those intents, but then workflow is required. If it's a change in quantity, do we have enough inventory? Or if it's a change in the product being ordered, you've got to rerun the CPQ process to check for compatibility and then generate a new quote. That's CRM workflow logic, and that can't be solved with AI alone. And here's my most fundamental point. You have to get it right every single time. You're certainly not going to run refunds, disputes, orders or anything else mission-critical in the stochastic process that might hallucinate.
In sales CRM, CPQ is a great example where AI can really turbocharge productivity. So imagine sending a draft quote to a prospect just minutes after a Zoom call with that prospect that is tailored to the specific requirements they described in the Zoom call. That's now possible with AI-powered CPQ as long as you have headless and speed of thought CPQ engine that enforces all the compatibility rules, bundling, discount policies, et cetera. Luckily, we do. Now this is not theoretical. We're live in production with sales, service and CPU use cases with amazing customers like you see here, driving better customer experiences and millions of dollars of savings. And several of these customers are presenting here at Knowledge, so you can hear their stories firsthand, not from me, from them. From NVIDIA, who reduced time to quote from 5 days to 5 minutes. It's just an amazing stat, 5 days to 5 minutes or Rossmann, a large European retailer, who deployed our Agentic CRM for retail store support, saving a massive amount of time and allowing store associates to focus on the customer, which is their real job.
Now there's no better way to understand this all than through a demo. So please welcome Chris Shutts, CEO and Founder of Logik.ai, who now runs all of sales CRM for us. Chris, take it away.
[Technical Difficulty] Pretty complex generator. It's got dozens of options, dozens of different pricing rules. It's a pretty complex piece of equipment, and he wants to change his order. So what he's going to do is he's going to call into [ Electri ] generators, and he's going to interact with one of our CRM voice agents and see if he can get his order changed. So let's see how Marcus does.
[Presentation]
Okay. So here, you can see Marcus has interacted with our voice agent. She's asked a couple of questions about his order. And behind the scenes, the AI agent querying our order management system and finding possible orders that might be for Marcus that he placed a month ago. She then clarifies the correct order and then finds it. And let's see what Marcus wants to change on this order.
[Presentation]
Okay. So what's happening here is the AI agents interpreting what Marcus is saying in the large language model and then mapping it to options in our configure price quote application. So this is what John was just talking about with this concept of speed of thought and 100% accuracy. So we've got an agent that's querying the option availability in CPQ and then making sure that all of these options fit together real time. In this case, Marcus needs an automated transfer switch in a maintenance plan and the agent is making sure that all that will work for his order.
[Presentation]
This is a pretty typical case for a complex expensive order like this, where there's a lot of back and forth dialogue with the customer, especially when you're doing order edits and order changes in manufacturing systems typically. So not only do we have the voice agent interacting with CPQ to make sure all the options fit together, the performance is really important. So we put a lot of work into our solving engine that runs inside of our CPQ app to make sure that, to John's point, we can get answers that are speed of thought so that Marcus has a good interaction with the AI agent real time.
[Presentation]
So now that we know exactly what Marcus wants, the AI agent can take all those options and then rerun the manufacturing bill of material rules because this is an engineered piece of equipment, so the bill of material is dynamic based on the options. She also needs to run all the pricing rules and then perhaps most importantly, figure out when they can actually produce it and manufacture it and she needs to give that information to Marcus before she can close out the order.
[Presentation]
So now that we have the product configuration, the bill of material correct, the sales bill of material that goes with this machine. Now the agent is taking all that information, putting it into a customer-facing document that she can then send to Marcus real time so we can confirm like billing address, shipping address, payment terms and things like that.
[Presentation]
So now Marcus has the e-mail on his phone.
[Presentation]
Great. So now you can see Marcus in a couple of minutes was able to interact with a voice agent and actually make some pretty complicated order management changes using the agent interacting with our configure price quote and order management applications real time. So thank you.
All right. Great job, as always, Chris. So hopefully, for those in the audience, that demo helps you understand how we're combining AI, data and workflows to really change the game in CRM. We're delivering better customer experiences, while improving our customers' cost structure, which is really something that every company on the planet wants. And so that's just a huge tailwind for our business. And with that, it's time to pass to my colleague, John Aisien. John should be coming up here. Take it away.
Thanks so much, JB and Chris. As JB mentioned, my name is John Aisien, and I'm responsible for our risk and security products. And what I'm here to do is to walk you through the fifth layer of the 5-layer cake that Amit and my colleagues have stepped you all through. I'd like to start by making a bit of a bold claim. ServiceNow is a security leader. We spent the last 5 years already establishing significant preeminence in the governance, risk and compliance market, growing that business tremendously, nearly 4x greater growth over the last 5 years than the market itself is growing.
My primary goal of the next 10 minutes is to essentially provide you with the proof points that back the claim that I'm making on this slide. Let's start by grounding you on the foundations. As Gina and team shared at the end of Q3 last year, our Security and Risk business, a bit of an unsung hero within our portfolio, surpassed $1 billion of CACV at the end of Q3. We grew our business, Security and Risk organically 40%, 4-0 percent, in 2025 versus 2024. What has this growth been powered by? Two foundational anchors that have enabled us to achieve the results that we've achieved.
First, our IT asset data gravity, right? For 20 years, we've been the preeminent even provider of IT asset insights and the workflows built on those assets that enable compounding in terms of the asset gravity that we have for a typical enterprise. You combine that with the east-to-west coverage that we have across so many buyer persona and user persona, back office, human resources, supply chain, source to pay. I promise I won't go through all of them, but essentially 10 primary persona that we address across the enterprise. And if you believe, like I do, that all enterprise data is ultimately security and risk data, you could see how that provides us with both the right and the responsibility to achieve the preeminence that we've already achieved.
But what we realized is as we're building the next-generation architecture for this platform shift that we're going through, the agentic AI platform shift, we needed to add to the IT asset data gravity that we already have. So over the course of the last 2 quarters, as you probably have heard, we've been a bit busy inorganically. So one of the first things we did was acquire Armis. In one sentence, what is Armis to a CISO? Armis is a cyber asset graph. It enables us to take our IT asset dominance and provide a comparable view of that same data to the CISO, while adding incremental attributes and asset types that we previously did not cover exceedingly well.
Code, unbelievably powerful in this age of AI, OT, IoT, medical devices. But all of that is our cyber asset graph. You combine that with what we did in March by closing on our transaction of Veza. And at its bare essence, Veza is an access graph. It's a way for a typical enterprise to gain insight into who and what has access to what. And then you build extremely high-value applications on top of that. Agentic or not, that is extracting insight from that data play. And of course, the third dimension in the multidimensional core that ServiceNow Risk and Security is our Knowledge Graph, essentially the enterprise context that can take the exact same set of assets and access in Deutsche Bank, and that will generate a different outcome from the exact same set of assets and access in Allianz because the context of both organizations are different, different policies, procedures, rules, regulatory frameworks, people, et cetera.
So it's this combination. If you want to leave with anything from this presentation, our core in ServiceNow Risk and Security is powered by cyber assets, the things, access to those assets by humans and other things and enterprise context. All of this furnished across all of the platform building blocks that my colleagues have been talking about. And this combination is already meeting at the customer. We're not the only bright folks that have this insight. As an example, a global international financial services leader, whom I might add, has a representative in this room, is using ServiceNow Risk and security today, has combined that with Armis for capturing connected asset information across their building management systems and then able to extract potential vulnerabilities from those BMSs and essentially automatically remediate prior to any incident occurring.
This same customer also uses Veza to enable visibility and intelligence by both humans, systems and agents across the 50 or 60 AWS services that power a subset of the cloud estate. And it's a comparable story that we see across an international consumer packaged goods leader whose story I won't step through for brevity. What are the growth drivers, both current and future, that are powering this business? There's 4 that I'd love to leave you with. As we become a full-blown workflow to use the ServiceNow parlance, I expect my colleagues in finance to begin to share insights about this business over time.
Here's 3 leading indicators that I want you to remember. One, how is this business doing organically? How are we growing usage as a key leading indicator to then growing ACV? That's one. Two, as many of you saw in our April 9 announcement around our AI native packaging, we did something super interesting. We enable the entirety of our customer and our partner base with the rights to AI Control Tower, the delivery mechanism for all of this IP. So one of the additional leading indicators that you should watch for is our effectiveness in building net new IP and driving our existing IP to market as an attach to AI Control Tower.
The third. I've been in the cyber industry directly and indirectly for about 26 years with Brad. I remember him from 25 years ago. And one of the dreams of the CISO ecosystem through this time is collective defense. The attackers are actually collaborating on the deep dark web, as you all know. The economic and the architectural prerequisites, enabling the defenders to actually collaborate, have been, shall we say, lacking. I believe that the machine speed by which agentic workloads can identify code defects, change them into vulnerabilities and do [indiscernible] with that requires a next-generation architecture.
And the Action Fabric that Sig talked about earlier is the enabler for collective defense in the enterprise all up. And I'll describe why in a bit more detail in a minute. This is the architecture by which everything comes together. The data plane I described earlier, powered by assets, access and knowledge, manifested through the context engine and delivered through the Action Fabric to both ServiceNow Risk and Security workloads and third-party workloads.
So imagine a circumstance where even though we're now a fully-fledged provider of exposure management solutions post Armis, a customer is already using CrowdStrike for exposure management. They're using Microsoft for endpoint, but they want incremental value arising from that 3-axis core that I described, powered by ServiceNow. We can serve that up in Action Fabric and CrowdStrike agents, Microsoft agents can take advantage of that derived insight for both decisioning and for action. That's the next-generation architecture that we're making real, all of which spin meters for ServiceNow, as we're delivering value to our customers.
So to wrap, our enterprise data intelligence layer that's unparalleled in its coverage of buyer and user persona in a typical enterprise requires us, provides us with a responsibility to enter this market in a material way in the way that we have and to become a participant in the primary table by which the next-generation architecture gets built, as this platform shift becomes increasingly mainstream. Action Fabric is the collaboration layer, the enabling architectural building block that enables all custom risk and security workloads and third party ISV workloads to collaborate with ServiceNow workloads to reduce security -- increase security outcomes, increase risk outcomes and generate business outcomes as a result.
And the last thing I'd like to wrap with, remember the role that Zero Trust played as an architectural north star for the cloud world as workloads moved on mass outside of the firewall. A comparable next-generation architecture is needed for the agentic world. And I will posit that the notion of permanent access privileges in systems is going the way of the dodo. It just doesn't make any sense. And so we're going to play a role in making that vision a reality by taking the IP that we have, the IP that we've acquired and the people that we've assembled to contribute to this zero privileged architecture becoming a reality.
So to provide you with some insight into why I believe this claim continues to have credence, I'm going to have Nenshad Bardoliwalla, our AI platform product leader, demonstrate this through a simple demo scenario. Nenshad?
Thanks very much, John. You've seen a glimpse of what the AI Control Tower can do. But today, we're going to dive into the secure, risk and compliance capabilities. So first off, let's look at CVS Health. They serve over 185 million people a year, and AI powers all of their operations. With hundreds of models, agents, tools and prompts, the greatest unmanaged exposure for CVS' security team is the speed at which AI is increasing their attack surface.
Today, I'm going to be the security admin in CVS' AI center of excellence, focused on securing our AI investments. The AI Control Tower gives me a single view of our AI security posture. Now the moment I log in, I'm going to go ahead and check out the governance page, look at security and what I see is that AI asset security score has dropped overnight to 28%. Now I just need to figure out why. And sure enough, a new alert gets flagged up here that the Aetna Benefits AI agent has anomalous privileges. This agent helps millions of members understand their coverage in plain natural language, and it's at risk of leaking PII, member names, addresses, phone numbers. They can all be inadvertently leaked to other members.
So let's go ahead and start the remediation process. I click remediate and immediately, Armis' early warning flags agent vulnerabilities and active exploitations targeting health care. And while this agent was built with good intentions, Varonis detects it's gained elevated permissions and can share PII with other agents, requiring immediate action to stop a potential data leak. In addition, our asset intelligence here on the right shows how this information can be shared between other systems and agents.
So going back to this overprivileged state of the agent, I'm going to approve the recommended access permission adjustment and multiple things are going to happen simultaneously as a result. Let's go ahead and do that. Yes, please reduce my agent access. So we're going to temporarily disable the Aetna Benefits agent. We're going to work with Veza to remove permissions. We're going to update the AI Control Tower inventory and then the exposure record is automatically created in the unified security exposure management application created for my team to review when debriefing.
Now this agent's elevated permissions and its connection to other critical assets were caught because it was under continuous monitoring. So I ask myself, what other risk, vulnerability or active threat may be out there that we don't know about. Let's go take a look. So I can see here that I've already gotten my score up to 78%, which is exciting. But I can go ahead and use the power of Armis' shadow AI detection and find that there are 3 other AI agents running in CVS Health's business units. This is shadow AI without any visibility or governance.
Each one could be the next compromised or overprivileged agent. So I'm going to change these to managed. And AI Control Tower opens up 4 new use cases in USEM, 1 for the original agent and 3 for the additional shadow AI agents that our asset discovery capabilities identified. I mark them and once they're managed, now continuous security, governance and controls, monitoring happens across every managed agent. So here's what I just showed. We caught an agent with elevated permissions serving 37 million members, and we contained it with a full audit trail in a single operation. Number two, we uncovered shadow AI agents that no one previously knew even existed. And number three, we created incidents for all of these findings with audit-ready documentation.
In this representative example, I am firmly the human in the loop as CVS' current policy for agentic execution requires. But the AI Control Tower can also operate fully autonomously from continuous monitoring to anomaly identification to remediation. And with that, we're going to hand it back over to Amit to take us home in the product section. Thank you.
All right. Thank you, Nenshad. Thank you, John, and to all the speakers. That was just amazing, I think. I'm sure you can see how proud we all are of what we have built and our strong innovation road map. The world-leading analysts also make it clear that they agree. In the last few years, our analyst recognition has grown from 6 -- just in 6 categories to leading in 39 categories, and that number continues to grow. And our recognition isn't just limited to our traditional products. Across the new categories, especially agentic AI, ServiceNow is now consistently recognized as a leader.
And our future road map is also accelerating. That's partially because AI is not just empowering our customers to build and work faster, we also are leveraging the same AI technology to speed up our innovation as well. What you see behind me is the breadth and depth of what's coming in 2026 alone. Across every area, we're shipping AI native capabilities and autonomous workflows to power our customers' agentic enterprises. And underneath all of this is a platform that continues getting stronger and more powerful every day.
And the one key piece of our road map strategy is acquiring specific features and functions that accelerate how we deliver value to our customers. I know there are a lot of questions about our M&A and the investments we recently made. So let's talk about it directly. Bill also alluded to you earlier that we're making strategic decisions to acquire both tech and talent that strengthen our platform and also further differentiate our core. And we already have proof that, that is already working. You heard that in terms of the big bets we have made from Bhavin, Amy and John Ball in terms of how successful our products have grown and how well we are getting differentiated in the market because of those acquisitions getting integrated into our product portfolio.
For us, these acquisitions are not just about buying growth, they're also -- they are about delivering the critical pieces to power our customer agentic capabilities and agentic enterprises. They fit right into our platform, making it stronger and more relevant. We've also taken the same AI native mindset that has reimagined our products and our road map to evolve our commercial model as well. As many of you know, seat-based pricing does not reflect the value of AI. So we have moved beyond it. AI is now embedded in every tier of our products from foundation to advance, to prime.
Another shift is how we meter value. The unit of value is the work that gets done in real time. And we now have hybrid as well as consumptive meters across all of our entire portfolio today. And this gives customers something predictable like a subscription commitment and something which is flexible, so it scales with their actual adoption. And we're using different meters across the whole portfolio now. AI Assist, for example, for AI and data-related products, human and nonhuman identities for Veza, assets for ITAM and Armis.
And over the last year, hybrid and consumptive meters accounted for more than 50% of our net new business, and that number will only grow. Innovation in our commercial model and our products also go hand-in-hand. For example, we're building an AI native service management product designed for the mid-market. It will be entirely consumption-based and conversation first. This will be one of the first of many ways we're taking the strengths of our platform to entirely new customers through new channels as well.
And with our shift towards autonomous workforce, we're also going beyond traditional software budgets and tapping into the labor market. Our customers can now hire, manage the performance and retire digital equivalent of human workers for a fraction of the cost. And these autonomous workers can be added or removed on demand and are constantly expanding their skill sets, as they learn more and more as part of our platform. And this is the hybrid workforce of the future, which we are now making it available today.
Our AI specialists capture at least 6.5x more value, while saving the customers over 80% compared to the cost of human fulfillers, which it replaces. And beyond the numbers and beyond the market recognition, at the end of the day, customers are the biggest proof points of our success. The enterprises that run the world have trusted us with their most critical operations at one of the highest renewal rates in the industry today. So we have covered a lot of innovation in the session today. So I want to come back to our 4 pillars of everything we do: sense, decide, act and secure. And of course, the AI platform that everything is built upon.
Here's what we know to be true. We are in the midst of the most significant enterprise transformation ever. Every company in the world will leverage autonomous work. The only question is how and who helps them get there safely. We have the platform, the architecture and the track record. We have the customer relationships, the partner ecosystem and the talent. We know how to execute it at speed and scale. And we have a commercial model, as you heard before, to capture the true value of AI. And we have done this before. We know what it takes to lead a market through a generational shift, not just participate in one.
Thank you for joining us today. I hope you are as excited as I am for what's ahead. Now I know you guys noticed that we're running a little late, so we're going to take a short 5 minutes break before Paul walks you -- go through the go-to-market strategy. Thank you all.
[Break]
Please welcome President, Global Customer Operations, Paul Fipps.
Okay. Welcome back, all the great innovation from Amit and the team. That was fantastic to see. Now the last time when we were together, we laid out a strategic thesis, platform, industry and global scale. And today, that thesis is working. First, AI platform-led. AI data, workflow, all united on one enterprise platform. Not theory, but real execution. Customers are live, partners are building and the platform is delivering. Now just as important, deeper industry relevance, solving complex mission-critical challenges across financial services, health care, manufacturing, retail and public sector.
And third, global expansion. We said we would invest with intention internationally. And today, Europe, APAC and Latin America are proving that strategy right. We have made real progress. But the bigger signal is where the market is going next. Across every boardroom, in every industry, in every geography, the market is converging around 3 realities. Enterprises want to identify workflows. They don't just want to automate tasks. They want AI that can reason, they can decide and they can act. Critically, they want speed. They don't want value in 18 months. They want value now. And to do that, they need orchestration and control, one platform to govern AI across every model, every workflow and every function.
This is no longer about experimenting with artificial intelligence. It is about operationalizing AI at scale securely. And at ServiceNow, we were made for this moment. So today, I'm going to focus on 4 ways that we are driving agentic growth: one, workflow identification; two, autonomous implementation; three, AI-powered ecosystem and four, our strategic expansion. So let's get started with identification. Now let me show you what this looks like at one of the most advanced technology companies in the world, NVIDIA. So NVIDIA didn't come to us with a single point solution or challenge. They came to us because scaling AI inside the enterprise requires orchestrating multiple complex systems simultaneously.
So let's take a look at all 4 areas. In field engineering, AI agents now triage and troubleshoot in minutes instead of hours. Configure price and quote, those times for some of the world's most complex AI infrastructure quotes dropped from 5 days to 5 minutes. In customer success, AI is enabling proactive management at scale and in knowledge management, altering agents continuously create and maintain critical documents. So here's the punchline. This is not isolated automation. This is platform-level agentic AI, multiple AI agents operating simultaneously across multiple business functions. And NVIDIA isn't the only place this is happening.
Across our customers, our 4 deployed engineers -- our elite 4 deployed engineers that you saw before are powering the Now Next AI program that I spoke about last year. They are doing the work of business reinvention, identifying workflows on-site, inside customer production environments. I'll give you an example. NTT Data. Our 4 deployed engineers are shoulder to shoulder using AI to ensure 70,000 configuration items are fully under compliance. At PayPal, we're helping process trillions of payments faster. And at Robinhood, we're ensuring seamless onboarding, as they scale headcount 26% year-over-year while integrating all of their acquisitions. Workflow identification, that is only what ServiceNow can do.
Let's turn to agentic implementations. Deployment velocity is no longer a services differentiator. It is now a strategic growth lever. And we now have 2 paths: self-implementation, AI-guided deployment built directly into the platform or services-led implementation, AI agents embedded in ServiceNow's delivery process. This dramatically compresses implementation time lines and time to value. So the result is some customers are going live up to 2x faster.
Let's take the State of Hawaii. In one of the most regulated environments imaginable, we move from workshops to go-live readiness in just 6 weeks, 6 weeks. Historically, this could take many months. Now that's not incremental improvement, that's enterprise deployment velocity that's completely redefined. Now let's talk about one of our most important stakeholders, our partners. Partners are no longer just extending reach. They are accelerating implementations, they are expanding category adoption, and they are compounding platform value for ServiceNow. Here's some data points.
Consulting and implementation, 34% year-over-year increase. Managed service providers, 43% year-over-year increase. Resellers, 35% year-over-year increase in sales certification growth. Why do I talk about that? Because it's a powerful increase in the number of sellers positioning ServiceNow with our customers across the globe. Our hyperscalers. This year, we were Partner of the Year in 5 categories of the hyperscalers. Microsoft's Partner of the Year for ISV Innovation, Google's Partner of the Year in not 1, not 2, not 3, but 4 different categories. And the first one was agentic innovation. Second one, business applications, platform and then financial services.
So hyperscalers are important partners for us because they accelerate revenue across all segments, particularly net new logo acquisition. If you think about it, they give us access to millions of pre-committed cloud buyers, faster procurement cycles and a co-sell motion that's at scale across the globe. And our tech partners and builders, we now have 2,500 applications in the App Store for ServiceNow. These apps are built across CRM, risk and security, technology and EmployeeWorks.
Okay. Let's move to the fourth bullet and talk strategic expansion. This is not adjacency for adjacency's sake. This is disciplined category expansion from system of action to system of autonomous enterprise execution. Starting with ServiceNow EmployeeWorks. You heard earlier from Bhavin. The power of Moveworks and ServiceNow completely unified. Let me give you a customer example. At a customer I talked to recently, the CHRO told me she said, "Look, I have mandated a 10% year-over-year reduction in operational cost through 2028." She said, to get there, I have to have AI handle routine HR inquiries, employee self-service and ticket deflection.
Now ServiceNow EmployeeWorks then became the conversational AI front door for that project with auto identifying the workflows in the background. Result, $55 million in projected annual cost savings, 3.5 million productivity hours returned annually. That's business reinvention. Now the same is true for risk and security with Veza and Armis. Our customers now can see every asset, govern every identity, both human and nonhuman and secure all assets and agents through one platform. ServiceNow AI Control Tower is complete.
Finally, our customers are no longer buying AI as separate solutions. And as many of you know, there's a lot of conversations in the marketplace around seat-based pricing versus consumption. But the future of enterprise monetization is not binary. It's hybrid. Customers want the predictability of platform commitments with the flexibility of consumption where agentic scales and creates asymmetric value for them. ServiceNow's new commercial model ensures AI is built into every offering from day 1. And this model is designed exactly like our platform, predictability where it needs to be, flexibility where it should be and scalability where it matters.
So when I back up and I just kind of take a step and look at the whole landscape, here's what I see. We help customers sense what's happening. We help customers decide with intelligence grounded in enterprise context. We help them act through agentic workflows, and we help them secure everything through AI Control Tower. So now I have the privilege, and I'm super excited to bring out 2 fantastic customers, who are visionaries in their industries, Vishal Talwar, who is the EVP and CBIO at FedEx Corporation and the President of FedEx Dataworks; and Oliver de Wilde, who is the Head of ServiceNow COE for Hitachi. Gentlemen?
Right. Well, thank you both for joining us. Oliver, I'm going to start with you. So you're modernizing Hitachi's IT operations globally. Maybe you could just share with us what's so hard about deploying AI at the enterprise scale of Hitachi. I mean it's a massive complex organization.
So it might be a bit of a controversial start, but the problem isn't just in the technology. That's not the hard part. The problem is in changing the organization. And when I talk about the organization, we're talking about the people, we're talking about the governance and we're talking about the processes. So all of these parts really is where companies struggle because they have to get all of those pieces in line and then the technology actually comes quite naturally and quite easily.
You can always find very smart people to build something, to find a workaround to make it work. We've had those problems in our deployments, and we work through them. That was okay. But really, the harder part was getting all the stakeholders on board, working out what processes you wanted to keep, what data you wanted to keep and how it needed to operate. So I'd say those are the harder things. The technology actually, you guys have made it quite easy for us. The technology is there.
On that change management and basically the operational capabilities of the people...
Absolutely.
So Vishal, I mean, we all know FedEx. FedEx moves 18 million shipments per day across 220 countries and territories. I mean it's an amazing operation, an amazing company. The operational complexity is extraordinary. But from your perspective, what's hard about deploying AI at scale?
The stakes are just significantly higher. I mean if there's -- to put that in context, and you just said it, right? So we operate in 220 countries. We move about 18 million packages daily. And we manage that through multiples of tens of millions of workflows. It's very different if you're playing a 1-person band or a 2-person band. You can sort of get the music right. But now if you're playing an orchestra, you have to get that right across 50, 100. Take that at the scale of an enterprise, for every decision, every workflow, every task to be seamlessly coordinated, to be seamlessly executed, takes a lot of precision.
And to have the right data available at the point of insight and action that it's needed, that data you can trust and then try and bring the entire organization, along to the point that Oliver just made, around talent and change management. It's an entirely different operating mindset for the enterprise. You can't do that with a 1 or 2-person experiment on the side. You can't do that when you know that on the receiving end of your execution is life that is waiting for that parcel to get delivered on time. I mean, health care is our largest segment. Aerospace is a pretty big vertical that we serve. These are high-stake businesses.
You can't introduce risk in an environment. You have to be able to trust that anything that you're doing, whether it's AI or otherwise, you can introduce it responsibly across the breadth and the depth of those workflows. That's the hard part.
Great point. And you often refer to us as the digital backbone, which I think is a really great analogy. So Oliver, Hitachi and ServiceNow have been -- we've been collaborating for multiple years, particularly early on in the AI side. And together, we've seen some incredible outcomes from strong user satisfaction to rapid adoption. But what do you think has made that success possible?
So I think it's always been a partnership. I think we met sort of 4, 5 years ago. And I think the partnership started really there with customer success, and then we were invited to participate in the Lighthouse program. And that was really where we and Hitachi Energy specifically got to help design and build some of the components that we're now seeing today. And really, that allowed us to help you shape it. It didn't come without its road bumps, and there were definitely some technological challenges that we had to overcome, working with the customer success teams, working with the product teams to actually get these things fixed then deployed at scale because as Vishal just said, this isn't just about 1 or 2 people. We deployed it to 60,000 people overnight.
And when we did that deployment last year, we saw like the real benefits instantly. We saw a 25% reduction in our service desk in people contacting it. We saw a 10x like increase in self-service on the service desk that just was not there before. So we saw like market changes, but actually being able to work with you and partner with you to help develop it and change it. And one of the biggest areas that we really, I think, helped with is on the whole value creation. And this is, I think, something that we're seeing in elements of control tower, but really then the value sort of estimation and generation because it's something that I was always getting challenged by my CFO on is, how are you proving that the investment that we're making in the time and in the licenses is actually returning a positive value for me.
So being able now to see that and to quantify and you have all the data in the system, you can see what is being done faster, what's being done slower, what's even not being done at all. And that now you can see it a lot more easily. We went through the spreadsheets, the Power BIs, the manual ways of calculating, and now we have tools and products to do it. So I think that part of the partnership, and I do treat it like a partnership, has always been there, and it's really helped us become successful and see those sort of results that we've had.
I would say you really drove a vision early on of a value-based almost zero-touch IT organization. So incredible partnership.
It should be something that we could all strive towards. And we're definitely not there yet. We're not finished.
Yes. So Vishal, FedEx has a bold vision to make supply chain smarter with everyone. I mean this is one of the most exciting things you and I have done, I would say, over the past year. But maybe share with how your team is unlocking the new value with FedEx Dataworks, which I know you run as well and our strategic collaboration around AI-powered automation across the enterprise.
Sure, Paul. As we just outlined, FedEx operates one of the most complex supply chains in the world. And we've been doing that for about 50 years. And the one thing that we've come to acutely understand is the amount of fragmentation that exists in supply chains. And that amounts to about $1.8 trillion of value that's leaked annually because of that fragmentation. So what we want to do now through FedEx Dataworks is make sure that we bring solutions to market that allows for that inefficiency to be trapped. We want to make sure that we bring orchestration solutions that fill the void and connect all the elements of this fragmentation inside the supply chain.
So starting with Source-to-Pay announcement that we just made, we want to make sure that the insights that we generate -- the first-party data that FedEx network generates, which is about 2 petabytes of data, we want to release those into signals that is -- that benefits our customers so that they can go from a reactive to more a predictive posture in the interventions that they want to drive inside their environment. Source-to-Pay is one example. We want to then extend that to building workflow solutions that allow our customers to more seamlessly orchestrate supply chains inside their enterprise. And that's where the partnership with ServiceNow and FedEx gets pretty exciting.
It's super exciting. You'll see more of that tomorrow with you and Raj on stage. So very excited to see that. Okay. So I think we're going to get to probably one of the harder questions here. And one thing we constantly hear from boards and CFOs right now, I know you all hear it, is why can't we just build this ourselves? The whole build versus buy, particularly with all of the large language models. So Vishal, I'll start with you. What's the build versus buy conversation look like on the inside of FedEx?
Just because I can, doesn't mean I should. I mean, for me, it boils down to that. I said the stakes are high. And it doesn't mean that we will not build stuff. You have to take a more nuanced approach. We are very keen on making sure that the core of our value chain, where we want to have the differentiation, where we want to go and help our customers more deeply are areas where we will want to own IP and we will want to build. But I don't want to be known as the best HR system company in the world, the best IT system company in the world or the best finance system company in the world.
I will shamelessly take that from folks that have much more experience than FedEx will ever have in this enterprise and bring best practices inside and build the digital backbone that you can help bring with speed and channel my energy instead into the core parts of our value chain. So for me, it boils down to just because I can build, I go back to 1 or 2-person band, it doesn't mean I should. There are areas where we will build and there are areas where we will partner and increase our speed to market.
It's a great answer. Just because I can doesn't mean I should. So Oliver, how about you? I know -- I'm sure you've had these debates inside of Hitachi.
Of course, I mean, Hitachi is an engineering company. We're not short of people who want to build stuff, which is a great thing. But I think as Vishal said, it's like just because you can build it, does it mean you should build it. And I think I completely agree with that sentiment. Take the best fits from everywhere else. We're not a software sort of predominant house. We build -- in Hitachi Energy, we build huge transformers. We build switchgear. We build trains. There's loads of stuff that Hitachi builds. Let's keep building that. Let's keep building what we're good at. Let's buy what we haven't and what we don't build ourselves and then integrate it together.
So I think it's maybe slightly less of a build versus buy comment and actually more of a build versus orchestrate and how you assemble this into your digital backbone or your digital core, whatever your company sort of refers to it as, but how do you bring the pieces of the jigsaw together into something that then works for your organization and helps drive your organization forward. And you can buy things from ServiceNow, from Salesforce, from Microsoft, from Google, like pick, whoever it is, but you've got to bring the best parts of that together for your enterprise.
And every enterprise is different. Your needs are different to my needs. I'm not shipping hundreds of thousands of packages around today. But then we do have mission-critical infrastructure that operates in a different way. So we have different needs. So take the best parts that other people make and build it into your best solution.
Fantastic. I know we could -- I could probably keep asking you questions for the next 30 minutes, but I know you guys are both on time. So thank you for joining us. Thanks for coming and sharing how we collaborate together with ServiceNow and FedEx and Hitachi. And maybe everyone give a great round of applause for Vishal and for Oliver.
Please welcome to the stage President and Chief Financial Officer, Gina Mastantuono.
Thank you, Paul. What incredible customers, and hello, everyone. I've been really waiting backstage for a while to get out here, and I can't tell you how excited I am. So not only am I excited to be here, but I'm really excited not only about where ServiceNow is today, but about the scale of the opportunity that we see in front of us. Listen, I know there's questions swirling out there in the market, and that's healthy. Great companies to be able to answer hard questions such as, will the growth of the foundational models come at the expense of budgets for the incumbents? Will seat compression shrink revenue? Do software stocks become only margin stories. These are questions I get all the time.
In ServiceNow's case, the answer to each of these questions is an emphatic no. We are a unique platform company. We're the AI Control Tower for business reinvention. And as you've heard throughout today's presentation, ServiceNow is not a traditional SaaS company. We're the orchestration layer, AI agents run on, not software they replace. We're the AI operating system for the enterprise. We are truly in a category of one, where AI makes us both more competitive and more profitable simultaneously.
We have a clear path to grow the top line and drive continued margin expansion to deliver durable shareholder value. We'll look at this next. But first, I want you to walk away remembering 3 things: one, our structural advantage is ours and ours alone. AI only reinforces it. The AI super cycle is a revenue tailwind for ServiceNow. Two, ServiceNow is the AI platform enterprises are already buying. It's not a bet on future potential, but a flywheel that's already spinning. We're the best-in-class workflow and governance layer where enterprise AI value accrues.
And three, margin expansion and AI growth are not at odds. They're the same story. AI-driven internal efficiencies fund the innovation and bring focus to our growth investments. Let's dig deeper into the growth opportunity. Our core business is strong.
It comes down to execution. As Bill talked earlier, this is a company that executes. In 2025, we grew 20% year-over-year to nearly $13 billion in subscription revenue. We're looking at a 5-year CAGR of 24%. And we added more than $2 billion in revenue in 2025 alone, which is more than the entirety of our subscription base in 2017. Now Assist ACV crossed $600 million last year, more than doubling year-over-year. That momentum carried into Q1 with ACV crossing $750 million.
Now Assist isn't separate or distinct from our core workflows. They are our core workflows. This kind of organic innovation is a powerful growth catalyst for it, much like how AI fueled customer demand in the upgrade cycle from Standard to Pro. Our Better Together story continues to strengthen. In 2025, 91% of our net new ACV came from deals with 5 or more products, up from 86 the year before. This includes a 7.5x increase in Now Assist deals with 5 or more products.
Customers are not experimenting with one AI solution in one corner of their business. They're deploying AI across the enterprise. Customers are going all in, in our core technology workflows, where we saw over 50% growth in deals with 5 or more tech products.
Also, we have three key growth accelerants. Security and risk is the next growth vector for technology workflows. In 2025, net new ACV grew 40% year-on-year, and at less than 20% penetration from the base, there's plenty of room for expansion. With AI control tower, customers govern AI across the enterprise. Its ACV has quadrupled since launch. Armis and Veza further extend the TAM. CRM represents a massive market opportunity, crossing $1.8 billion in ACV in 2025. Sales CRM is leading the way with ACV more than doubling year-over-year.
We win because of our single platform across the entire customer life cycle connected natively to service and operations. Data and analytics is a multiplier, which more than doubled net new ACV year-over-year. As you heard Gaurav say earlier, RaptorDB has already surpassed $100 million in ACV in just its first year. Every AI agent deployed and every custom workflow built pulls demand for data connectivity and performance. All of these growth vectors also have underlying tailwinds created by the proliferation of AI, data and assets. More agents deployed means more governance, more data connectivity, more platform usage.
That's why half of our net new ACV has already shifted to non-seat-based pricing models as they catch those tailwinds. Those underlying units, including assets, infrastructure, platform usage are seeing significant growth. We don't count seats here. We count dollars. With the strength of AI adoption, we're also seeing a growing mix shift towards consumption. That's why we're democratizing access to AI with our new AI native packaging. Every new SKU has a bundle of tiered capabilities across the core product AI, Workflow Data Fabric, Moveworks and/or AI Control Tower. As our customers purchase those higher-value bundles, we expect to see an average price lift of 20% to 30%. This new packaging also unlocks customers' AI consumption journey earlier. Now at every level, consumption becomes an incremental growth driver as enterprises scale usage of Assist, connectors and the underlying assets being governed. Then as customers look for more advanced capabilities, they upgrade to Prime for our most premier offering.
AI consumption is already showing up. Existing Now Assist customers who renewed in 2025 expanded their ACV by an average of over 3x. It's not just about Assist packs. Every cross-sell, every subscription purchased is adding Assist and is part of the consumption story.
As I'm walking you throughout my growth story, you may be asking, where will the budget come from to pay for these incremental consumption costs? AI spend is expanding budgets for ServiceNow. Customer conversations we're having today are focused on reducing labor costs to fund ServiceNow's advanced AI capabilities. Let's play this out. If you had a team of 20 support analysts today, the team would cost over $1 million annually. About 90% of that is labor, 2% is ServiceNow. Now what happens when you move into an agentic AI world, as enterprises look for efficiency, they'll naturally target their largest cost center, labor. ServiceNow's autonomous AI agents can resolve 75% of the team's work, reducing the necessary headcount to just 5.
The customer wins. Their total cost to get that work done drops 65% and resolutions happen in a fraction of the time. At the same time, these 15 freed-up seats convert into 6.5x more in AI agent consumption, just like Amit talked about earlier. Even after accounting for license reduction, total ServiceNow spend grows over 5x. Lower cost for the customer, better experience, faster outcomes, that's the definition of a compelling value proposition, and it's driving the shift we're seeing today. AI consumption compounds as workloads get more complex.
Generative AI laid the foundation with each task consuming 1 to 10 assists. Agentic AI deepens the value curve by completing multistep tasks, consuming significantly more tokens. Autonomous AI specialists represent the next step change, purpose built to perform specific job functions end-to-end with the two layers combined consuming over 15x the assists of generative AI. As AI solves more complex workloads, usage rates climb and so does the value we capture. This is just the beginning. Our autonomous workers will cover all corners of the enterprise as the platform scales.
DocuSign is a customer exemplifying this journey from GenAI to their first agentic use case and, now, to zero-touch service desk, their first step towards autonomous workforce. Using ServiceNow, DocuSign has a target of autonomously handling 90% of all IT tickets so human agents can focus on the most critical work. They expect to save millions, and the opportunity is massive. DocuSign is realizing their vision of true workflow transformation and creating a playbook that they can replicate across their entire business.
This is just one great customer example. You've already heard directly from FedEx and Hitachi earlier about their incredible AI journeys with ServiceNow.
What does it mean for ServiceNow at a larger scale? Let's look at IT incident management, just one use case within ITSM. We see over 100 million incidents per month on the ServiceNow platform today. If 75% of those incidents can be processed by an autonomous workforce, this translates into a $3.5 billion ACV opportunity net of any seat licenses that go away. Multiply that across other ITM use cases and then across the entirety of our platform, we power 100 billion workflows and 7 trillion transactions annually. And you can see the incredible opportunity in front of us.
How long does it take for a customer to realize autonomous outcomes at scale? With all new technologies in the enterprise, it takes time. But as you heard from Paul and others, we're finding every possible way to help our customers accelerate that journey. Let's look at an example. When a customer purchases agentic capabilities, they receive a generous Assist allocation, meaning Assist coverage tends to be relatively more limited in the first couple of years. What starts as a strategic deployment across ITSM, CSM, HRSD becomes a foundation for enterprise-wide AI transformation. By year 3, they're taking on more complex agentic use cases, inflecting consumption. Year-over-year AI ACV compounds, driven by the deepening adoption across the enterprise as the customer naturally graduates up the value chain to autonomous workflows.
The result is a fundamentally different revenue model with fewer seats, but far greater value. We anticipate by year 5, this AI customer would be spending 4.5x the initial Assist entitlement. These journeys have already begun. As Bill teased it earnings, we're raising our 2026 AI ACV target from $1 billion to $1.5 billion. The demand we're seeing is real. These are not features bolted on to existing products. They are built in. They're solutions with strong adoption and measurable outcomes already. When AI attaches to existing workflows, it doesn't just add revenue today. It makes the platform stickier and expand the ACV opportunity for each and every customer. This is a flywheel that's already spinning, not one just being built.
And looking further out, by 2030, we expect 30% of our ACV from ServiceNow AI. When the unit economics work, when trust builds, when complexity scales, this is what happens. And I really just love that math.
Okay. That should give you a sense of our growth story and trajectory. Now let's turn to profitability. AI is structurally expanding ServiceNow's margins. I'm going to repeat that. AI is structurally expanding ServiceNow's margins. I'm often asked whether AI inference costs will compress our gross margins. That framing doesn't apply to us. AI reasoning is less than 10% of our cost to serve. If inference costs rise, the margin impact remains modest. Customers aren't paying us for tokens. They're paying for a resolved outcome. Reasoning is one input. Workflow orchestration, governance, context, cross-system action, that's where the other 90% of the value and costs sit. We're differentiated and our pricing reflects the full platform, the CMDB, the workflow engine, the governance layer, the business service map, 20-plus years of operational context.
That competitive positioning is what sets us apart from the stand-alone AI providers and why our gross margin profile holds. This allows ServiceNow AI to continue to ramp with subscription gross margins remaining above 80%. While our move to hyperscalers is impacting gross margins in the short term, the ROI on that strategy has paid off as net new ACV from public cloud partners nearly tripled year-over-year. We're also not just selling AI solutions. We're using them ourselves. AI is driving meaningful year-over-year gains in output from our fully ramped reps. We're growing the top line while getting more efficient with every sales dollar invested.
We're also seeing an acceleration in the incremental savings from agentic AI flattening the hiring curve, with $200 million in savings in 2026, that's on top of $100 million that we saw in 2025, for a total of $300 million in expected annualized cost savings from agentic AI flowing to the bottom line in 2026. AI agents are doing 90% of the monotonous work. ServiceNow's own support and service operations have been rebuilt on our agentic AI. This margin expansion is structural, not cyclical. We are the proof of concept. Every customer is being shown what ServiceNow has already built at enterprise scale.
All of this allows us to return to normalized margin expansion in 2027. We expect 100 basis points of non-GAAP operating margin expansion and 100 basis points of free cash flow margin expansion in 2027, inclusive of Armis. We can commit to this because operational discipline is a core muscle. And now AI is compounding that discipline with $300 million of hard savings flowing directly to the bottom line. The message is simple. We are not trading TAM expansion for margin expansion. The model enables both, and you'll see that in our numbers in 2027 and beyond.
Turning to our long-term targets. I know you're all waiting for this. All day, we keep you here for this part, right? Okay. Bill gave you a little preview, but I've got a little surprise, so hold, wait, please. In 2021, we established a long-term target to achieve $15 billion in subscription revenue in 2026. Many were skeptical then. I see a few of you in the room. Fast forward to today, we're on track to beat that target by $0.5 billion organically. I know the guide is higher than $15.5 billion. Organically, we're beating that by $0.5 billion. Not many executive teams can say that about their long-term targets. I know you all know that, too.
Our momentum puts us on pace to double that target in 2030. That's $30 billion plus in subscription revenue, and it's not blue sky scenario. It's what a durable platform growth story delivers. As you heard from Amit, though, we haven't been standing still, we've accelerated organic innovation to catch the tailwinds from emerging opportunities made possible by AI. We've expanded the TAM with recent acquisitions. And while we're not asking you to underwrite this upside today, we see a strong path to it, a higher 20% CAGR from our current 2026 guidance and $32 billion of subscription revenue in 2030. Pretty impressed that I got to say that number, right? And he didn't take it.
But this is not blue sky. There's a road map of real defensible growth engines, and they are not heroic assumptions. Security, supercharged by our demand for AI Control Tower and the new TAM unlocked by our acquisitions of Armis and Veza. Data becomes even more critical as enterprises deep in their AI investments. You heard that from customers today. AI has upended the market and we are taking share. Together, these three vectors compound at over 25% growth year-over-year through 2030. Most importantly, cutting across all of it is AI, agentic workflows, autonomous workers, unlocking value in ways that simply did not exist 2 years ago. And I would note this does prudently bake in a deceleration in some of our more mature products.
In this environment, it's a show-me story. I get that. We get that. That's why we're ensuring your top line growth option with a commitment to continued strong profitability. Combining top line growth and profitability at a level a few companies achieve at any size, let alone ours, puts us on a trajectory of achieving the Rule of 60+ by 2030. This is what we're building, a business that delivers accelerating value for customers and shareholders simultaneously year after year.
That means focusing on GAAP profitability as well. Two years ago, we committed to getting stock-based comp below 15% of revenue by 2026. We did it in 2025. We also told you that sub-10% is the longer-term destination. Today we'll tell you when, 2029. It's the same playbook: revenue scale, disciplined equity practices, a comp philosophy that allows us to attract the best talent, but doesn't over-index on stock. Let me put a finer point on how we're returning capital to shareholders. We doubled our share repurchases in 2025. In Q1 alone, the $2 billion ASR represented nearly double the shares we repurchased in 2025, all in 1 quarter. The results? We expect to be dilution net neutral for 2026. We still have $4.2 billion in authorization remaining, so we have plenty of capacity to keep managing dilution going forward.
We're always evaluating the best use of capital to maximize shareholder value. Our framework is clear. First, we reinvest in organic growth at high incremental returns, products like AI Control Tower, Now Assist, workflow Data Fabric show what strategic internal investment delivers. Second, we deploy capital into acquisitions of technology and talent with a focus on tuck-ins that open new TAMs or meaningfully accelerate our product road map. Third, we are committed to returning capital to shareholders, balanced against the significant growth opportunities we see ahead. We will continue to be thoughtful about that trade-off. With the sizable free cash flow generation that will come with our significant margin expansion, we'll also have tremendous flexibility as we think about capital allocation in the future.
So let's end where we started. I know there's questions swirling in the software industry, and it's easier for some people to put us in a box with others. The fact is we are in a category of one. ServiceNow is the orchestration and governance platform that AI requires more of, not less. The AI supercycle is a revenue tailwind for ServiceNow. We showed you the math today. It works. The margin expansion is structural and we are living proof. Our own AI transformation is the strongest customer reference we have. We bring growth and profitability, two engines of shareholder value, both powered by AI. That's how you get to the Rule of 60+ at more than $30 billion in revenue.
Thank you all for joining us today. And now we're going to welcome back Bill, Amit and Paul to the stage for Q&A. Just give us a minute.
2. Question Answer
Kirk Materne from Evercore ISI. Thanks for a great presentation, both the technology depth and the long-term vision. It was great to see. I think my question is somewhat maybe for everybody on there on the panel. But I think one of the debates going forward is going to be at sort of the orchestration or at the agent control plane. I think every big enterprise, the LMs all understand that a lot of the value might accrete to that layer. It's also super early days in terms of agent deployment for most big companies.
So as investors, what should we watch for? What are the milestones that we can see from you all to know that you're hitting on that strategy? Because right now, I think, everybody it's sort of a land grab and I think everybody is asking the question. I think most people understand you have the right to win there, but what are the metrics, the KPIs we should be watching for to understand your strategies playing out?
Yes. No, thanks for the question. So I think the way I see it, there will be a lot of pieces being orchestrated by different, different parts of the technology providers. But the idea of an autonomous worker takes away this requirement to do individual work by each of the vendors. So what we're doing with autonomous worker is taking away the effort you have to put in to create individual agents, manage them yourself, figure out orchestration, the reasoning and all that thing, which is not really very conducive to a long-term way to manage a business.
So the metric I would look at is how many people are now going to start adopting autonomous worker and how we see that kind of proliferation of AI specialist inside the enterprises so that they can now get away from their dealing with individual pieces themselves, but getting the full value of a solution. So what we're seeing now with the AI specialist, for example, what we introduced is 20 AI specialists, especially the L1 support specialist, we're seeing a lot of customers who don't want to do that building and managing and taking care of the spare parts themselves. They want to elevate that and get a full solution. So I think that, that will be a trend over the next few years versus what is happening now.
Same thing happened with cloud. If you remember, everybody used to buy -- get to the LAMP stack, they wouldn't want to build themselves. Then eventually, they realize keeping and maintaining that stuff is not easy. Dealing with changes in the technology is not easy. And they line up going to hyperscalers, somebody who provided the full stack. And then you can build an application with it, and you don't have to deal with all the different pieces. And I think the same thing will happen with us now. And that's what the metric I'm watching for, and I'm seeing that already play out with a lot of customer conversations I'm having.
Obviously, very impressive to see all the progress you guys have been making and the targets coming out. I think seeing that ACV target of 30% coming from AI out just a few years is really amazing. But I guess on the other side of that is kind of implicitly, it would suggest the non-AI components are going to be growing much slower. Back of the envelope, I did was 10% or less CAGR during that same time period. I think I've had an argument to investors about how that's the wrong way of looking at this.
But I'd love to hear from you all as you receive that question of like, but what about the rest of the business and that seems to be growing slowly? Is that a worrisome sign? Help back me up on like why that's maybe the wrong way to ask the question?
You love that one.
So AI is the core. You're exactly right. Customers want to buy products with AI built in. And that's why we introduced our AI native pricing and packaging. It's why even if people don't want to go full in automatically all the way up to Pro Plus, which is now Prime, they can start with foundation. They can taste it. They can start to about working because who really wants to buy any software today that doesn't have AI embedded in it? So it's 100% the wrong way to be thinking about it.
And remember, you all remember when we first launched Pro, right? No one said, well, the core standard is declining and Pro is doing so well. They said, oh, my goodness, Pro adoption is fantastic. This is wonderful. And you get 25% price uplift. Show me more. That's exactly what's happening today. Only now, it's 30% on top of Pro and now we're embedding actually AI into even the foundational pieces so not everyone has to go full stack right away, but they can really start utilizing the AI, understanding the benefits.
We firmly believe that once they start seeing the benefits in a small scale, they're going to much more rapidly proliferate and grow with us, and that's when the consumption wheel continues to fly. But you're already seeing pretty incredible growth in $750 million in Q1, up to $1.5 billion. This is remarkable growth and we are just getting started. And so it's wrong to think about, well, if AI is doing so well, it must mean the core is not. It means AI is pulling the core. And that's what we continue to see. We're driving all of our customers to be wanting to consume more AI. That is what the benefit of the ServiceNow Platform. It's going to help our customers, and we really see the value accrue over the next year 2, 3, 5 years.
Alex Zukin with Wolfe Research. Wonderful presentation, obviously, would expect nothing less. A couple of competitors out there are saying, hey, we're taking some share from ServiceNow. You have two targets out there, and I would say none of your competitors have the security angle. And it seems like the kind of variability of the upside is kind of partially driven by executing on this new I think, Bill, you called it the largest new TAM is cybercrime. So maybe just talk about how do you see the competitive narrative and the landscape evolving. And how does the security component of your portfolio drive that maybe higher target that you laid out there?
Go ahead, guys.
Maybe I'll start, Alex, on that one. I think on the competitive side, some of those competitors have been loud in the marketplace. We just don't see them in the competitive stack. Now it might be in a different segment that's much smaller than a ServiceNow customer, our target market. There might be some edge case areas. But I think for us, we're very focused on the segments that we serve and innovating and delivering great value for those segments. And any time that comes out, we dive into the research and look at the data and figure out what's working? Are we missing something? So we're very cognizant of what they're talking about.
I think on the security side, just from a pure customer and go-to-market standpoint, we really think about Veza. I've never seen anything like it. Well, I shouldn't say that. I think CPQ is like it. I think when we bought Logik, it just started to really take off because it actually filled out an entire part of the stack with CRM, and John Ball and the team have done an amazing job there. I think with Veza, just the identity, securing human and nonhuman agents and understanding the identity, of course, has given us an incredible extension of AI Control Tower. So I thought the AI Control Tower is complete.
And then with Armis, every customer that we talk to around operational technology, where we're discovering, managing and securing operational technology assets and bringing that back into the CMDB, it is just like a very compelling story. And whatever industry I tell that story in, they need it because they don't have it right now. So I think it's a very close fit with ServiceNow, SecOps, vulnerability response. It's a beautiful extension.
I'll just add one thing. The other part, which is also important is the data part. So the stack we have built, having an AI platform, which as you saw today, is very deep, has very, very critical functionality required to run any kind of AI systems out there, including all the workflows we've been talking about. Now having a data platform, which can bring all the information together to do the context engine work we talked about and be able to make decisions very quickly and predict a better outcome really drives our workflows and outcomes much better than anybody else can do today.
And you bring security on top of that where you ensure no nefarious things will happen in your platform, really changes the game when you go and talk to the customers. They don't have to bolt on all these things separately. They don't have to bring all the signals from separate areas and manage all that stuff in a different environment. So when we bring security and data on the same platform and then you have workflows, gigentic workflows, the autonomous worker, it's really -- I don't think there's anything out there in the market today. There's no competitor who can do that. They can talk about pieces of it. So if you hear the noise out there, they're talking about pieces of technology and maybe mid-market or somewhere else.
In the enterprise space, there's nobody like us. And when I talked about earlier about bringing the same technology now to mid-market, that also takes that business away for them, right? So you'll see a lot more of our capabilities being delivered, AI native, completely consumption-driven, right, and conversational experience now delivered for AI native -- for mid-market with AI native mindset and bringing ITSM and other capabilities to mid-market, which we didn't do before. That gives us another opportunity we've not talked about earlier.
Keith Weiss from Morgan Stanley. Two questions. One real quick question on timing. Gina, you mentioned the Pro SKU, and we saw a really nice adoption of the Pro SKU. Can we expect Now Assist or Prime or I'm not quite sure what we're calling it now, to ramp similarly to what we saw from the Pro SKU? Number one.
And number two, more strategically, you guys are bringing agents to your customers. You're bringing the autonomous worker. You're bringing the AI specialist. But you also have to open up your platform for your customers to build their own agents or let other people bring their agents. So when we're thinking about like the 5x uplift from autonomous worker, what's the uplift when you're just opening up your platform and letting other people build agents on top of your platform like they're going to request?
I'll take the first one and then I'll hand it over to Amit. So on the first one, actually, we're conservatively building in a similar ramp with our AI that we had with Pro. I actually think -- and so far, it's actually been slightly accelerated to what we saw with Pro, but our numbers that I showed are building in the conservative estimate of similar penetration glideway as we saw with Pro.
Yes. On the agent stuff, I mean, I think there is the architectural evolution, which is happening where there are going to be agents interfacing into applications. They're not just going to be users or humans just interfacing. So having an ability for us to provide that access in a governed manner with monetization is the right way going forward. So I do expect more and more of that kind of use cases emerging. And what we have done is we've been very careful about how we expose it. So we have an MCP server. We allow agent-to-agent capabilities as well communication. But we heard about Action Fabric. The idea is that we will wrap this thing with a set of APIs, which are governed, but also monetizable.
So we measure every assist -- using the Assist kind of metric, measure any access, and we meter that and people can burn down. So it makes our Assist more fungible, not just be able to do Now Assist kind of use cases, but also now accessing data. But we can get to manage it and make sure that you register for it, you have what kind of requirements, the SLA, the security. So we're bringing all that stuff into this thing. And one of the announcements we did is with Anthropic to be able to also do things with their cowork, but it's also in the governed and measured and measured capability so that it doesn't allow people to just get access to it without any kind of permissions.
Arjun Bhatia with William Blair. Actually, I wanted to follow up on Keith's question about Action Fabric. And I'm curious if you worry that customers might push back that you're essentially introducing a gate for their data. And I'm curious how much of it is theirs versus yours? Or does this all not matter at all because the ROI is going to be high enough that they are going to come out -- customers are going to come out winning on top of this?
And then one question for Gina. I'm curious when the pricing model evolution might take place such that most of your revenue, not net new ACV, is consumption or non-seat-based. How do you see that playing out throughout 2030?
Yes. I'll address that. I think we have been talking to customers about how they want to access our environment and what ways they want to -- one, what the volume they would need, what is the different kind of metering we would require for that and what would that metric cost would look like. And so far, it's been pretty well understood by them. They realized they used to access things, but there was no guarantee of SLA. There was no way to know who was accessing and what security issues you would run into.
So when we provide a much more governed platform, they seem to be very comfortable with it so far. And when we've been introducing this concept, we've talked to many customers already, and there's never been an issue in terms of worry about having this kind of metric being delivered. And given that it gives a fungibility within Now Assist, it also makes it much easier for them to think. It's not a separate thing, which we're introducing or creating a new kind of metric, which would be confusing otherwise.
On your question with respect to non-seat-based when we think net new ACV would be more -- listen, I was really thinking that you all would be pretty impressed that we're already at 50% so far. And by the way, it's been increasing pretty rapidly over the past couple of years as Now Assist has been driving a flywheel. And so we haven't given time lines for what we expect that to look like long term.
I do expect the 50% will continue to increase. I don't think it'll ever be 100%. I think some of our business will always be seat-based. And if you think about kind of the new AI native pricing and packaging, just by virtue of the initial subscription, you're getting a large chunk of assists in there. So there is consumption already baked into that initial seat. And so consumption will continue to be a bigger portion as we go forward.
I think it's probably also worth noting that nobody buys software from a major enterprise market leader because they have seats or consumption or based on the value. It's always based on the value. And then it's how you back into the value in the way the customer is most interested in it. In our case, we have no problem with seats one way or the other because we have consumption, but it just so happens that our active users aren't going down because we go east to west. And so if you think about the 2019 ServiceNow, around $3.5 billion, we pretty much add a new ServiceNow every year.
And I would just -- sorry, were you finished?
No, I was just going to say, and the active users because now you've gone from IT to the employee, to the customer, to the creator, to the data, to the Control Tower, to the security, the number of human beings and machines and robots are all going to expand. So however we mix the formula, it's a great formula for shareholders. .
I was just going to add, the hybrid pricing model of subscription plus consumption has been really resonating with customers. They like a bit of predictability as well as if they exceed, being able to understand how much consumption is coming through. And so we'll stay on the forefront of where the customers and where the market is leading. And hopefully, what you're seeing in all of the announcements here is that we're always on the front foot of how customers are really thinking and how they're thinking about driving value from the platform.
I think this is such a hot and important topic. I think, Paul, you would agree that a lot of customers are getting a little bit surprised on the tokenization of models and how that is surprising their budget landscape, which is forcing them into more predictability with enterprise leaders like ourselves, where they want the seats. They want to be able to predict their budgets and they're getting highly surprised in some cases. So as Gina said, this hybrid model seems to be like the Goldilocks formula right now, but we're open to anything.
We're seeing a lot of vendors copy that now, right? I think it's becoming the industry standard where we introduced last year -- a couple of years ago.
Yes.
Exactly.
Brad Zelnick, Deutsche Bank. Really appreciate the very compelling presentation today. Bill, I wanted to follow up on your comments about now being the right time to go further down market. Why now? And why might it be different? Because in the past, it seemed the medium-sized enterprises didn't really value the platform the way that large enterprises did. And I'd be curious as well what your view is on AI readiness in kind of medium enterprise? And relatedly, what does this mean for partner leverage? Does this create an opportunity for a whole new set of partners?
Brad, first of all, thank you for your kind remarks. The team really put a lot into it, and I'm glad you saw the innovation today. Thank you so much. I'll give my color on it. And then, of course, Paul is very close to this each and every day. But we have a more complete story now than we've ever had before. And with AI, the autonomous implementation, because if you think about implementation risk and the time to get things off the shelf for mid-market customers who generally don't have the staffs of a large customer, if we can do that through autonomous implementation, all of a sudden, that's a much more attractive conversation.
And I'm not suggesting that we're going too far down because we want to be where the money is and we want to be where the retention is. So it's not just the number of new logos you get. It's being thoughtful in getting the right one so they stay with you and you don't lose your retention leadership. But the offering can be lighter weight. It can be autonomously implemented. And when you think about all the things we have now, we have so many different ways to come into the mid-market customer that we didn't have 2019 to, let's say, even 2024. So I think we're a new company. We're transforming even as we roll.
Paul, anything you want to add?
I think it's great, Bill. And I think during my presentation, I talked about autonomous built into the product. So Amit and his team are really innovating on self-implementation there, but then also leveraging AI on our services implementation standard, which we'll be launching tomorrow and really compressing that time to value. I mean, we see a massive opportunity.
On the AI readiness part, what I would say is these mid-market companies, which I think is where you're going, Brad, in that segment of the business, I think the innovation that we've done over the past couple of years really lends -- enables them to be AI ready with their data. So things like RaptorDB Pro, Workflow Data Fabric, all the things that the teams have innovated on that we didn't have even 2 years ago. Now you can go in, you can kind of plug that in and get the data ready because we know AI success is going to be all about the data and grounding these models inside of that data.
So the new innovation capability, combined with what Bill is talking about on the self-implementation, but also just the autonomous implementation work, we think is right.
Brad, if I just could finish, just as one further comment. We have built quite a network now in the ecosystem of resellers and partners that care a lot about the platform. And some of them were born for the mid-market. We have one that's a $23 billion market cap company that actually serves the mid-market with great expertise. So if you talk to a large-scale account executive that's managing General Motors, the likelihood of them calling on a $300 million mid-market company is pretty low. They're going to spend their time at GM. So it's important to have the channel and the indirect partnerships, both from an integration and a sales perspective to make a lighter weight implementation, especially if it's autonomous, really rock for the mid-market.
And frankly, we're getting a little annoyed. Alex brought up a question about the competition. I made a promise to myself this morning. I was only going to say nice things today, and I wasn't going to get into it. But I have to just tell you, we've had some people say some things, a lot of people say things. But then when we do the research on these things, we find out that it doesn't necessarily tie with what they said. So please be advised that what they say in a certain way is a complement because if we're the target, we must be the leader.
The other thing is I want to thank some of you who sent me letters how you always know what's really going on. And you send me letters, "Hey, Bill, can you believe this that or the other one is now copying Control Tower? Hey, Bill, can you believe -- so we're always like one step ahead of them anyway. And so we'll come up with a new idea next month, and we'll always be one step ahead of them. But in the case of the smaller ones that have the loudest microphone, I think we've got some ideas for them. We want to meet them.
Gabriela Borges from Goldman Sachs. Back right. I wanted to ask Paul a follow-up to some of the case studies that you showed earlier, like the Level 1 ITSM case study. So it strikes me that the outputs of some of these case studies are really beautiful. But when we actually think about what a complex enterprise environment looks like, it can actually be pretty heterogeneous in practice. And you're coming out with this 100-day guarantee on ROI.
So maybe I think, Paul, for you, and Amit, maybe, how are you able to bridge that gap? Tell us a little bit more about what the AI FDEs are doing in practice because it seems like there's a lot of technical milestones to go from garbage in, garbage out to something that looks like the case studies that you're showing us here today.
No, thank you. It's a great question. And the way we think about it is really kind of twofold. One is, and I talked about it a little bit during the presentation, but our 4 deployed engineers, truly led by John Aisien in the front row here are truly elite. And they work with customers on really the high value, I'll call them high-value workflows. So things like massive usage outages at a huge bank and the cost per outage is incredible. The volume is not that high, but super critical and important to that bank. Then we think about how do we actually agentify the existing workflows that they have.
In some cases, customers want to redesign those entirely. You may have a process like an incident management process if we're talking about ITSM that you've just had for years, and you now want to redesign it, optimize it and then agentify it. So that's the high-volume part. And that actually, the high-volume part drives a lot of the assist consumption and drives that asymmetric scale from a value standpoint that I talked about during the presentation, the high-volume use cases are where that comes from.
Now the great news is the product team is innovated across the autonomous workforce now, which you saw a little bit of today, you'll see a lot more over the next 2 days. So we now have autonomous workers that you kind of plug in based on the products that you own, and they work side-by-side the human workers. So autonomous workers actually help us drive the high-volume use cases much faster while the FDEs look at the high-value use cases. And so we're attacking it from both angles. And the receptivity from the customers has just been incredible.
Don, do you want to add anything on the FDE model we have? Today, I think the FDE model is only for very selected. What we do with FDE is to identify very high-value use cases, as Paul was mentioning, but also kind of help customers reimagine the business process for those complex use cases and understanding where the integrations are required, what changes you need to make. And then really, the product takes over and then lands up being what you implement and the FDEs usually move on. So it's not a continuous FDA engagement like many other vendors have typically.
If I can add one more thing beyond on what Paul and Amit described. I think two other benefits of this FDE motion that we're seeing, and we're super excited to scale out these benefits into our field organization as we rearchitect and refine our go-to-market. But the two benefits are, a, kind of accelerating the innovation flywheel itself. And even when you go in with a completely comprehensive kind of basket of IP, you're going to find stuff that you didn't predict.
Let me give you one example. Unfortunately, I can't use the customer by name. But we deployed a sort of investment management, user and portfolio management agentification in 12 weeks for a Northeast-based customer. That customer actually had their own AI guardrails, like no kidding. They actually had a customer implementation of AI guardrails. So Now Assist Guardian did not support the ability to plug in a third-party guardrail in the same way we support any model or any identity, et cetera. So the FDE team literally extended Now Assist Guardian to support BYOG, so bring your own guardrails.
And now as an example, Palo with the Protect AI acquisition, which is essentially an AI guardrail, has plugged into that BYOG, extending TAM across both joint customers and prospects. So I'd say it's a virtuous flywheel that we're seeing, where the FDEs are building that last mile, but adding it to core product, which, in turn, is lighting up incremental capabilities and many of them sort of partner-driven as we meet with the customer with that IP.
Samad Samana from Jefferies. Thank you for spending time with us today. If It's great to hear from you as always. I could maybe dig into 30% AI ACV that implies roughly like $9 billion, right, in 2030, plus or minus. If you think about unpacking that, how much of that is from the portfolio as it exists today versus what you think you have on the road map? And I guess the related question in that is how much does the change in the pricing and packaging influence that? And does that require any changes for the existing installed base when they come up for renewal? I know it's a several-part question, but I'm just trying to learn from Alex.
So a couple of things. So first and foremost, I want to be clear on the new pricing model. So Prime is basically the same pricing as Now Assist Pro Plus, right? So we're not increasing pricing in our most premier offering. The customers who are all in our Now Assist are not going to expect to see increased pricing. Where the increased pricing comes is when people in lower tiers and lower levels continue to adopt and grow their AI usage by bundling products or by going from standard to foundation, foundation to advance.
And so what I'd say is that, obviously, the pricing model is baked into that 30%, but it's not a huge differential from where we are today. It will mean that it's really about penetration, how many more customers are driving upwards to those higher level pricing packages. And what I said earlier is that we're expecting a similar penetration trend as we saw from standard to Pro, which I think is actually quite conservative as you think going forward. So that was the first part of your question. You had a few in there. Is there something else that I need to answer?
Sorry. I think you kind of answered it already. But just for customers that renew, it sounds like if they're already on Pro or Pro Plus, it would be the same migration no matter what, but it doesn't require any changes. That's all I was kind of curious about, that there wouldn't be anything on renewal, any impact.
No.
Probably this came across, but just in case, there are no options at ServiceNow that are not AI. It's just degrees of the offering and how advanced it becomes with the autonomous prime. But everything is AI-enabled. So there's only one ServiceNow, and it's an AI ServiceNow. So I think you probably already knew that. But just in case customers have asked that question, we only have AI.
But to be clear, we're not counting every single dollar of revenue as AI as some others are.
Right.
We are only counting that incremental. We are being very consistent with how we've always been and how we've always treated it. There's AI in everything, but base subscriptions, we're not counting in that AI revenue. That's why it's only 30% and not 100%.
It's Tyler Radke from Citi. Continuing on the theme of multipart questions, I'll try to keep it to two. But Bill, for you, just on M&A given that's been a huge topic I guess, first, clarification. There's no M&A in those $30 billion and $32 billion targets. But philosophically, how do you think about what you have today? Do you need to do similar size or larger deals compared to Armis and Veza and whatnot?
And then, Gina, I think this is the first time we've seen two different kind of scenarios for the revenue. As we think about 2030, like why is there two? Can you help us understand kind of the differences between the upside and the base case?
You're lucky, I didn't give you the real, real upside numbers. That would have really confused you. I'll let Bill start.
I think we're trying to be respectful of this environment we're in, and I appreciate everything you guys got to deal with. But we're stronger than ever and feeling fantastic about the company. As it relates to M&A, first of all, I think you should know in the $30 billion and the $32 billion or however many 30s, we did not put large-scale M&A in there. So we typically do these little tuck-ins or aqui-hires and very small companies for us. I recognize it was new for you to think about the Moveworks and the Vezas and the Armis.
But believe me, if you had a management team that doesn't have the courage to do smart stuff, that's the ones you short. And when we did Armis, it was at a time when the market was most confused as to what was going. And our conviction never wavered down and it still isn't wavering now. We know we got our version of Instagram. So I want you to know, like we put a lot of thought into all those things. And all those leaders that were running those companies as independent companies, and you saw Chris and the sensation he brings to us with CPQ or Bhavan on Moveworks or Tarun on Veza, all of these leaders Yevgeny on Armis, are running big pieces of ServiceNow, and they wanted to be here in this culture to build this masterpiece.
So that's real important to us. And it was never about the revenue, and none of it hit the revenue line in our last report. So let's just make sure we square up on that. Right now, our position is organic. It has always been organic. Those were very unique opportunities to get us to a $600 billion TAM. If you asked us, do we think we have what we need to achieve what we said we would today? The answer is absolutely. And I don't think there's anybody on this stage that does not believe that.
And on the question on the $30 billion to $32 billion, given the uncertainty in the market, we felt that it was prudent to give a range in not just one number. We feel highly confident in that $32 billion, but also are taking into account just market sentiment at the moment and wanted to assure you that there's a real strong glide path. And we presented it to you, 25% plus CAGR on our growth engines, really driving to that $32 billion. But if you're a little hesitant in this market, you want to tie your number to $30 billion, I'm okay with that, too.
And that will actually conclude our Q&A session today and our webcast. We invite all of you to join our executives at Chica for a drinks reception after that, and you can ask them any additional questions there. Thank you.
Thanks, everyone.
Thank you, everybody.
Thank you.
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ServiceNow, Inc. — Analyst/Investor Day - ServiceNow, Inc.
ServiceNow, Inc. — Analyst/Investor Day - ServiceNow, Inc.
ServiceNow stellt sich als „AI Control Tower“ der Enterprise‑IT dar: Agentische Plattform, Monetarisierung über Consumption und konkrete 2030‑Ambitionen.
Financial Analyst Day 2026: Produkt‑Roadmap, Kundenfälle, kommerzielle Umstellung und konkrete Ziele (AI‑ACV, 2030‑Revenue, Margen) im Fokus.
🎯 Kernbotschaft
- Positionierung: ServiceNow will das Orchestrierungs‑ und Governance‑Layer für autonome Workflows sein – Sprachmodelle, Daten, Workflows und Sicherheits‑Kontrollen in einer Plattform.
- Skalenvorteil: Plattform betreibt laut Management ~100 Milliarden Workflows/Jahr und verknüpft damit Kontext (CMDB), Daten und Aktionen, was Netzwerkeffekte erzeugt.
- Kommerz: Hybrides Preismodell (Subscription + Consumption) und neue Metriken sollen Monetarisierung der Assist‑/Action‑Nutzung beschleunigen.
🎯 Strategische Highlights
- Agentic Platform: Action Fabric, AI Control Tower und Workflow Data Fabric bündeln Probabilistic AI (LLMs) mit deterministischen Workflows für reproduzierbare Ausführung.
- Produkt‑Konsolidierung: Moveworks → EmployeeWorks, NowAssist, RaptorDB und eingebettete autonome Spezialisten (AI specialists) sollen End‑to‑end‑Use‑Cases liefern.
- Sicherheit & Identity: Armis (Asset‑Graph) und Veza (Access‑Graph) werden als Differentiator für OT/IoT und Identitäts‑Governance herausgestellt—Security als eigener Wachstumspfeiler.
- GTM & Partner: Kombination aus „self‑implement / AI‑guided“ und services‑led Rollouts, starke Hyperscaler‑Partnerschaften und Ausbau des Channel‑Playbooks; Forward‑deployed engineers (FDEs) beschleunigen Umsetzung.
🔭 Neue Informationen
- AI‑Ziel 2026: Management hebt AI‑ACV (Annual Contract Value) von $1,0 Mrd. auf $1,5 Mrd. an.
- Produkt‑Meilensteine: RaptorDB > $100M ACV; Security & Risk > $1B ACV; NowAssist ACV berichtete Q1‑Momentum (~$750M ACV).
- Langfristhorizont: Ambition für 2030: ~ $30–32 Mrd. Subscription‑Revenue und Rule‑of‑60+; Stock‑based‑Comp <10% bis 2029.
- Operativ: Management kündigt eine Zufriedenheitsgarantie für AI‑Go‑Lives <100 Tage an; 2026 sollen ~$300M jährliche Einsparungen durch agentische AI wirksam werden.
❓ Fragen der Analysten
- KPI‑Fokus: Analysten forderten klare Beobachtungsgrößen: Anzahl live‑gestellter autonomous workers/AI specialists, Assist‑Verbrauch, FDE‑Pipeline, Action‑Fabric‑Transaktionen.
- Build vs. Buy: Mehrere Fragen zur Kundenentscheidung; Management empfiehlt Plattform‑Buy wegen TCO, Governance und Time‑to‑Value, nannte aber keine universelle Schwelle.
- Pricing & Mix: Nachfrage nach Timing der Verschiebung zu konsumptionsbasiertem Umsatz; Antwort: Hybrid bleibt Goldilocks‑Modell, inkrementelle Verschiebung erwartet, keine exakte Zeitlinie.
⚡ Bottom Line
- Fazit: FAD 2026 liefert ein klares Produkt‑ und Kommerz‑Narrativ: integrierte, agentische Plattform + Monetarisierungshebel. Auf Sicht erhöht das gehobene AI‑ACV‑Ziel und die 2030‑Ambition den Upside‑Case.
- Risiko‑Check: Wichtig sind nun Proof‑points: schnelle, wiederholbare Deployments (<100 Tage), Messung von Assist‑Verbrauch und autonomous‑worker‑Adoption sowie Margenrealisierung; Investoren sollten diese KPIs beobachten.
ServiceNow, Inc. — Q1 2026 Earnings Call
1. Management Discussion
Hello, and thank you for standing by. My name is Tiffany, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the First Quarter 2026 ServiceNow Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions]
I would now like to turn the call over to Darren Yip, Vice President of Investor Relations and Market Insights. Darren, please go ahead.
Good afternoon, and thank you for joining ServiceNow's First Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference Call. Joining me are Bill McDermott, our Chairman and Chief Executive Officer; Gina Mastantuono, our President and Chief Financial Officer; and Amit Zavery, President, Chief Product Officer and Chief Operating Officer. During today's call, we will review our first quarter 2026 results and discuss our guidance for the second quarter and full year 2026.
Before we get started, we want to emphasize that the information discussed on this call, including our guidance is based on information as of today and contains forward-looking statements that involve risks, uncertainties and assumptions. We undertake no duty or obligation to update such statements as a result of new information or future events. Please refer to today's earnings press release and our SEC filings, including our most recent 10-Q and 10-K for factors that may cause actual results to differ materially from our forward-looking statements.
We'd also like to point out that we present non-GAAP measures in addition to, and not as a substitute for, financial measures calculated in accordance with GAAP. Unless otherwise noted, all financial measures and related growth rates we discuss today are non-GAAP except for revenues, remaining performance obligations, or RPO, current RPO and cash and investments. To see the reconciliation between these non-GAAP and GAAP measures, please refer to our press release and investor presentation, which are both posted on our website at investors.servicenow.com. A replay of today's call will also be posted on our website.
With that, I'll turn the call over to Bill.
Thank you very much, Darren, and welcome, everybody, to today's call. There's a lot of noise out there, so let's get straight to the point. Here's the ServiceNow update with the AI control tower for business reinvention in the center of a growing $600 billion plus total addressable market. We have a $28 billion RPO business that's growing at 23.5% year-over-year, the most open enterprise platform that protects customer choice with active users on our platform continuing to grow thousands of partnerships around the platform expanding daily. AI, native packaging and pricing on our fully autonomous platform, -- our AI at ServiceNow, a world-class team with a proven track record of building truly global businesses at scale.
Our first quarter results are consistent with a company of this stature once again exceeding our guidance metrics across the board. Subscription revenue grew 19% in constant currency, above the high end of our guidance. CRPO constant currency was a robust 21% growth, 1 point above our guidance. Operating margin was 32%, 0.5 point above our guidance and free cash flow margin was 44%. We had 16 deals greater than $5 million in NNACV and 5 deals greater than $10 million in NNACV.
Now Assist NNACV to date continues to outperform even our expectations. The number of customers spending $1 million plus grew over 130% year-over-year. Deals over $1 million grew more than 30% year-on-year in Q1.
Moveworks closed 7-figure deals in Q1. They closed more deals than they did the entire year last year. Now has merged with our employee experience business and rebranded as employee works. So Bob the former CEO of Moveworks, now runs the whole show there, and that business grew 5x year-over-year. So we have a great story in Moveworks coming into ServiceNow.
Our sales CRM NNACV grew more than 5x year-over-year. That's quintupled with deal count growing over 80% year-over-year. With the surface area so broad, our goals for ServiceNow are clear. Here they are. Fast time to value for our customers, revenue growth acceleration, margin expansion, reduced stock-based compensation and outperforming our own rule of 55-plus standard.
To say we're excited for knowledge and Financial Analyst Day on May 4 in Las Vegas would be an understatement. We have a lot to share with you. And the Board of Directors are very proud to ServiceNow in the way it's performing. and the company is on track for our best year ever.
Since our last print, speculation about enterprise AI has persisted, and that's okay. That's what earnings calls for to clear things up. My answer is always the same. There has never been a tailwind for ServiceNow like AI. Since Fred Luddy started the company, we've always focused our platform on the jobs our customers need it done.
Let me bring this to life for you in 5 hyper growth areas. The first, our core IT business. There has never been a more compelling moment to be the CIO's system of record, were often described as the ERP for IT. When an enterprise fully deploys ServiceNow, it's not just software. It's an end-to-end operating system. And today, an average Fortune 500 company has 100 million lines of custom code to manage their business. And this excludes the code and other systems of record where there are billions and billions of lines of code.
As code volume increases 20x by 2030, the complexity of managing this explosion of code will increase exponentially. The volume of tickets generated by this complexity will also explode. In this scenario, the number of tickets hitting an ITSM system will increase by 50x compared to today. The biggest IT buyer in the enterprise was is and will continue to be the CIO. His remit will substantially expand by the complexity of the Agentic business. ServiceNow's relevance grows in direct correlation with the expansion of innovation across the AI ecosystem. Think of us as the workhorse for workflow.
The second is AI security. We're thrilled that the Armis acquisition closed earlier than expected, which as you'll hear from Gina gives us some nice acceleration in full year subscription revenue growth. You have Genny Debra, the excellent CEO of Armis will run our security business, building on ServiceNow's outstanding foundation. And here's the problem. Companies employing agents with 0 visibility. Therefore, they're unable to see the unmanaged IoT, OT and medical devices, lacking unified access control with no coordinated way to remediate vulnerabilities before they become breaches. Today's ServiceNow addresses this challenge holistically.
As the Asset Intelligence Foundation for the AI control tower, Armis solves visibility, real-time agentless discovery of every asset, IT, OT, IoT, medical devices, shadow IT, a continuously updated map that traditional tools can never achieve, 9 out of 10 Fortune 10 companies already rely on Armis. We're excited to deploy it throughout the Top 2000 and beyond.
Veza solves the identity governance. Patented access graft technology maps access across people, machines and AI agents in real time, dynamic context aware permissions that are governed continuously not set once and forgotten. This is the active directory for AI agent identities. This business will continue to be run by the excellent CEO of Veza, Tarun Thakar.
ServiceNow is the biggest piece of the puzzle. Our existing $1 billion plus security business ties everything together as the action layer for the Armis' asset visibility plus Veza's identity governance plus ServiceNow's business context, CMDB, equals a unified end-to-end security stack that could see, decide and act across the entire technology footprint. Nothing else in the market does this nothing.
With Mythos as one example, Security activity is skyrocketing. The actions run through this platform, alerts, tickets, actions, resolutions, they're all revenue drivers for ServiceNow. Enterprises can't afford experiments in today's risk environment they need ServiceNow as the strategic defense shield for the enterprise.
The third is AI native CRM. We say AI control tower for business reinvention because there's no more immediate need for reinvention than legacy CRM. It's a little ironic that a category promising a 360-degree view of the customer has left most enterprises spinning around in circles. Best-run businesses need a dramatically different and better way. Customers tell the story better than we can. A multi-market European telco faced 85-plus fragmented applications, no standard quoting process and a CPQ setup, where introducing a single new product took 3 months. ServiceNow sales CRM with CPQ collapsed this to 1 week. A global power technology leader across 190 countries has gone live with Phase 3 of its ServiceNow deployment, replacing legacy CPQ. Using AI-driven Blueprint automation, the company is reducing new product introduction time from 6 months to 6 weeks.
A regional Latin American bank is live with ServiceNow, building a full front office experience for relationship managers. Agentic AI is scanning portfolios and auto generating leads using propensity logic tied to their data lake. Because legacy CRM represents such a significant expense line for enterprises, the demand for an AI alternative is immediate. ServiceNow is not only bringing a technology superior solution, we help customers swap out legacy SaaS vendors and go live fast with AI.
The fourth area is AI native front door and the employee experience. As people use more of their AI tools like ChatGPT, enterprise leaders urgently want their employees to enjoy a clean conversational experience. ServiceNow introduced employee works, combining Moveworks, conversational AI and enterprise search with ServiceNow's unified portal and autonomous Agentic AI workflows. This is available in Teams, Slack, or any browser to turn natural language requests into govern multisystem execution for nearly 200 million employees so far.
We launched midway through Q1 and it's already closed many deals above $1 million. You'll also see some exciting new experiences, and we will announce this in a big way at Financial Analyst Day in Vegas. As more employees converge on our conversational experience, ServiceNow will deliver intelligence from any source, putting AI to work for people.
The fifth area is workflow Data Fabric. We all know that AI is only as valuable as the data itself. Enterprises are frantically organizing and cleansing data from countless disparate sources. Workflow Data Fabric connects data across systems. It adds business context via a unified data catalog and applies policy-based governance controls. With ServiceNow, AI understands how an enterprise actually works so they can take trusted action. I explained the 5 areas for 1 good reason. All of them have the capacity to eclipse the size and growth trajectory of ServiceNow as it stands today itself. And for years, we've strengthened a common platform architecture for these businesses and for others, we're incubating to harness enterprise AI.
ServiceNow has thousands of system connections, a live knowledge graph and real enterprise context. We accommodate any model aligned to customers' policies, permissions and rules, and every decision in ServiceNow is auditable end to end. Our platform delivers workflow execution across IT, HR, CRM and security. It's not recommendations, it's outcomes that matter. Our AI control tower provides real-time visibility across every agent and every workflow because governance has to be foundational, not retrofitted.
This architecture is a big reason why we recently announced the entire ServiceNow portfolio is AI native. AI, data, security and governance are now built into every product and package, not a separate purchase. This is a deliberate break from sidecar AI. We're not bolting intelligence onto disconnected systems. We're combining context with execution on a single platform. ServiceNow's context engine is the differentiated capability here. It learns from every decision ever made in the company, grounding each action in live context, approval chains, asset dependencies, identity relationships and business rules. We've now trained over 95 billion annual workflows and more than 7 trillion transactions and our 22 years at the center of the world's most sophisticated enterprises is really showing up because it brings unmatched intelligence to every decision. And this compounds with every workflow we run, making the platform smarter over time. In fact, in every millisecond.
For example, it knows which asset is tied to a compliance process, which approval chain applies to a given cost threshold and which vendors history should inform how a request should be handled. So when people ask, what's the difference between ServiceNow AI and the foundation models, you can boil it down to one word, context.
I read that one of our customers referred to ServiceNow this way. The control tower is the quarterback. It figures out which agent or LLM to use, merge that with a quote from the Hall of Fame Coach Real Walsh. Chaos is the natural environment.
Ladies and gentlemen, there's plenty of chaos in today's enterprises. You have hyperscalers, systems of record, foundation models, data lakes, homegrown tools and agents coming at you from everywhere. That's why our platform is totally open. We integrate with all of them. Because ServiceNow is the only enterprise AI platform that converts that chaos to control, we would not trade positions with anyone.
Let me give you a quick overview of a couple of announcements we just recently rolled out. ServiceNow launched autonomous workforce. Teams of AI specialists with the defined roles that execute enterprise work end to end with built-in governance auditability and human escalation. Our own deployment in ServiceNow is resolving 90% of employee IT requests with the specialist resolving assigned cases 99% faster than human agents. That's an AI specialist. In the AI native platform announcement, you might have missed build agent, which gives us developer openness another meaningful unlock developers can build from any integrated developer environment, Claude code, cursor, Codex, Windset and deploy them directly to ServiceNow. This expands the addressable builder community significantly. Build agent skills isn't just a developer tool. It's the on-ramp to an ecosystem where every custom agent is automatically governed, data connected and workflow integrated from the moment it deploys. With enterprise service management foundation, we are expanding our opportunity in the mid-market as well. with deployment in weeks, not months, this is the direct expansion of our addressable customer base.
One early example is Robin Hood. Robin Hood is deflecting 70% of employee requests before human intervention, they've already eliminated 2,200 hours of manual effort monthly, and the success just continues. I know many are interested in the progress of our hybrid business model, especially with regard to consumption pricing. You'll be happy to note that 50% of net new business now comes from a non-seat-based pricing model, including tokens and other assets, such as infrastructure, hardware, and connectors. Our hybrid pricing model gives customers the best of both worlds, predictable, foundational seat licenses combined with usage-based scalability. It's the freedom to scale AI adoption without a friction that the customers love.
We continue to see the hockey stick taking shape. One example is British engineering and technology company, 45,000 employees, 50 countries, they're using ServiceNow autonomous workflows, employee self-service and has jumped the usability and the outcome by 3x with 38,000 tickets now deflected, resolution time is down by 2 entire days. A leading online travel company is using ServiceNow agentic AI to deliver 11 million autonomous AI resolutions annually for HR and IT alone. They freed employees to focus on strategic work processes that once took days, now take minutes, the results are transformational. Over 230% ROI, 45,000 hours back to their people and millions saved annually. These and many stories like them validate our hybrid thesis as the business value emerges, refresh upgrades follows. We'll have more on this at FAD. We really can't wait.
We're seeing continued meaningful acceleration in the partner ecosystem. There is deep technical collaboration between ServiceNow engineers and OpenAI technical advisers. OpenAI native voice and text models are integrated directly into the ServiceNow AI platform, and they're using us as a gateway into the enterprise.
If you think about it, ServiceNow AI specialists are working side-by-side with Google Gemini, AI agents. They're doing this across 5G networks, retail and IT operations with 0 data movement and 0 gaps in governance. Claude models are also deeply integrated into ServiceNow AI platform for developers and employees. ServiceNow, NTT, Docomo and StarHub are developing the industry's first inter-carrier autonomous roaming resolution model on the ServiceNow AI platform. ServiceNow and Cohesity announced a partnership to deliver agent resilience by combining ServiceNow's AI agent control tower with Cohesity immutable point-in-time data recovery. ServiceNow and Carisoft expanded our partnership to extend ServiceNow AI platform availability. This opens all Carasoft's commercial channels in addition to its established government network of 10,000-plus resellers.
There's so much to talk about. I want to leave some for Q&A. But a colleague today reminded me of something Warren Buffett often quotes from Benjamin Graham. In the short run, markets of voting machines. And right now, uncertainty is winning the vote, but don't worry. In the long run, they are weighing machines. And I'll tell you, I'll get on that scale with that ServiceNow brand on my chest any day. We look at it. We studied it. We dare anyone to bring a best solution to the market in ServiceNow. We are the rules and the rails of business. When you're faced with these results, trust what you see. You have every reason to believe your own eyes. Don't fall for the that one touch button can replace 22 years of excellence. This is not a company that shrinks from challenges, rises to every opportunity.
To all our shareholders, thank you, for your continued belief in ServiceNow, we will never let you down. I'll leave you with this. There's a perfect correlation between enterprise AI from any source and ServiceNow's expansion. We're letting it whether it's built or bought, ServiceNow will unlock more value out of every dollar spent on AI in the enterprise. That's a guarantee. There are a lot of things AI can do for your business, and we love them all. There's also a lot of things AI can do to your business, and we want to protect it. We have comported this in how we've composed this company organically and with the integration of Moveworks, Veza and Armis. Our platform has gone from land and expand to control and compound AI that thinks workflows that act, all production grade enterprise scaled, ServiceNow is the AI defining enterprise software company in the 21st century. We're just getting started.
I'll hand things over to our President and Chief Financial Officer, Gina Mastantuono. Gina, over to you.
Thank you, Bill. Q1 was another quarter of outstanding execution. The team delivered strong results beating the high end of our guidance across all top line and profitability metrics. Now Assist continues to see incredible demand, which has had a nice pull effect and driven outperformances across emerging products like AI control tower and Raptor DB Pro. Q1 subscription revenues were $3.671 billion, growing 19% year-over-year in constant currency and above the high end of our guidance. This includes about a 75 basis point headwind from delayed closings of several large on-premise deals in the Middle East due to the ongoing conflict in the region.
RPO ended the quarter at approximately $27.7 billion, representing 23.5% year-over-year constant currency growth. Current RPO was $12.64 billion, representing 21% year-over-year constant currency growth, a 100 basis point beat versus our guidance. Across our workflows, we saw broad-based demand Technology workflows had 33 deals over $1 million, including 5 over $5 million. Service Ops and ITAM were each in 17 of our top 20 deals and security and risk was in 15.
CRM and industry workflows were in 16 of our top 20 deals with 16 over $1 million, driven by strength in CPQ and sales and order management. Core business workflows had 13 deals in the top 20 with 12 over 1 million. And creative workflows had 16 deals in the Top 20 with 11 over $1 million.
From an industry perspective, transportation and logistics continued to lead the way with net new ACV growing over 280% year-over-year. Financial Services posted impressive growth surpassing 65%, followed by energy and utilities growing up 45% year-over-year. Telecom & Media also delivered robust growth in the quarter and U.S. public sector outperformed in Q1, including 10 deals over $1 million. Our renewal rate, inclusive of Moveworks, was a strong 97% in the quarter. We ended Q1 with 630 customers generating over $5 million in ACV. Furthermore, we had 5 more customers cross the $50 million threshold versus last year.
We closed 16 deals greater than $5 million in net new ACV in the quarter, including 5 deals over $10 million. The power of our Better Together platform model was evident as 17 of our Top 20 deals included 7 or more products.
Our strategic focus on landing the right new customers also continues to see success. New logo ACV growth accelerated to over 50% year-over-year in Q1, which included our largest net new logo deal ever at over $15 million.
Now Assist continues to outperform expectations, putting it on a trajectory to exceed our $1 billion target for 2026. In Q1, deals including 3 or more Now Assist products grew nearly 70% year-over-year, including 36 deals with 5 or more products.
The signal is clear. Customers are moving past experimentation into full-scale enterprise-wide AI investment. We'll provide further details about these trends next month in Las Vegas. I would note that with our new AI native packages are now with this ACV target will continue to capture only the incremental contribution from our AI capabilities.
Turning to Moveworks. We took their great conversational AI and enterprise search capabilities, integrated them with employee Pro in under 3 weeks and drove it through our incredible go-to-market distribution network, launching employee works as a unified AI front door in February. The results speak for themselves. As Bill mentioned, we've already closed 6 deals above $1 million in net new ACV. We're just getting started. AI control tower also continues to build momentum, with average deal sizes more than doubling quarter-over-quarter in Q1. Customers recognize that as AI agents growing capability, a governed platform to run them isn't optional. It's essential.
With the proliferation of AI across the enterprise, we're also seeing increasing adoption of Raptor DB Pro. Deal volume grew 80% year-over-year in Q1 and included 5 deals over $1 million.
Turning to profitability. Non-GAAP operating margin was 32%, 50 basis points above our guidance, driven by AI OpEx efficiencies. Our free cash flow margin was 44%. In Q1, we executed a $2 billion accelerated share repurchase and bought back approximately 20.2 million shares, double the amount we repurchased in all of 2025. As of the end of the quarter, we had approximately $4.2 billion of authorization remaining. Together, these results continue to demonstrate our ability to drive a strong balance of world-class growth, profitability and shareholder value.
Moving to our outlook. I'm thrilled to announce the early close of our acquisition of Armis, which would significantly expand our TAM and accelerate our subscription revenue growth. While we expect some near-term headwinds to margins as we integrate the business this year, strong AI efficiencies internally from now on now and our underlying platform leverage will normalize our operating and free cash flow margin expansion trajectory in 2027 and beyond.
Our guidance captures that momentum while taking a prudent view of the geopolitical environment, particularly the conflict in the Middle East and its potential impact to deal timing.
With that in mind, for 2026, we are raising our subscription revenues by $205 million at the midpoint to $15.735 billion to $15.775 billion, representing 20.5% to 21% year-over-year growth on a constant currency basis. This includes a 125 basis point contribution from Armis. We now expect subscription gross margin of 81.5% and operating margin of 31.5%, which included 25 basis points and 75 basis point headwind from Armis, respectively.
We expect free cash flow margin of 35%. This includes a 200 basis point headwind from Armis and GAAP diluted weighted average outstanding shares of $1.04 billion. For Q2, we expect subscription revenues between $3.815 billion and $3.820 billion, representing 21% to 21.5% year-over-year growth on a constant currency basis. We expect the RPO growth of 19.5% on a constant currency basis. Both subscription revenue and CRPO include 125 basis point contribution from Armis. We expect an operating margin of 26.5%, which includes a 125 basis point headwind from Armis, and we expect 1.04 billion GAAP diluted weighted average outstanding shares for the quarter.
In conclusion, Q1 was another proof point of what this business is built to do. We exceeded the high end of our top line and profitability guidance metrics, continue to grow free cash flow and return substantial capital to shareholders, all while accelerating platform innovation that will define the next decade of enterprise reinvention for an AI enterprise. I've had a front row seat to one of the most remarkable growth trajectories in enterprise software, and I'll tell you what we are building right now, the combination of agentic AI, workflow orchestration, security and data fabric, all on one platform. This is the chapter that makes everything else look like the preamble. You're all invited to hear more about it at our upcoming Financial Analyst Day on May 4, which will be webcast on our Investor Relations -- Investor Relations website.
Finally, Bill and I would like to thank all of our employees for their continued hard work and dedication. I also want to extend a big welcome to the Armis and Veza teams to the ServiceNow family.
With that, I'll open it up for Q&A.
[Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from the line of Mark Murphy with JPMorgan.
2. Question Answer
So Bill, you had mentioned 90 days ago that the global business was performing well. And at that time, it had included the Middle East during Q4. Can you double click on what exactly you saw during Q1 amidst the Iran war? I'm just curious, are the deferrals related to governments or sovereign-backed or private sector entities -- you mentioned these are on-prem. And where the AI or non-AI? And then just finally, do you think that these would snap back relatively quickly if the conflict is resolved here during Q2?
Yes. First of all, Mark, thank you very much for the question. And let me, first of all, begin the answer with we just beat and raised. So it was a beat and raise, not an excuse that there happens to be a conflict or a war in Iran. We're not making any excuses. Our results are great. What we did explain is that there is a slight impact to the guide in going forward in Q2 as a result of the war because you have to remember, when you're dealing with a sovereign cloud in the Middle East, everything that happens in the Middle East is recognized as on-premise revenue. So it's not linear or ratable. It happens all at once. So when there's a delay, it has a natural impact. And we just mentioned that as a statement of fact that impacts slightly the guide. But I want to be clear, like everything is activated properly the conversations are going on, people are back in their offices now, and we don't have any long-term matter for the shareholders to be concerned with.
And Mark, I would just add, right, that we kept the full year guide. We didn't reduce it for any potential conflict, right? So it's a few on-prem deals that slipped in the quarter, and you know on-prem as a larger impact to revenue. But we feel very confident in the results we feel very confident in the guide.
And just as a quick follow-up, it's great to see the very clear AI traction that the business is carrying. Could you just comment on with the pricing changes and AI -- less, I think Bill's term was not a sidecar and embedded natively with the shift to the foundation in advance of time per -- how will you measure and kind of derive that assist AI revenue stream? Just going forward under the new methodology. Is it simple and straightforward? Or do you have to make some new assumptions?
Yes. I'm going to just give you one headline, Mark, at a respect for your great company and you personally that you might find interesting. Gina will be mad at me because it's something we were hoping for FAD. But in the circumstances we operate in, I think disclosure is a good thing. We had a goal to be $1 billion on our AI commit this year, as you know. And I think we might have understated that a little bit. We're already talking about $1.5 billion now, and it's on a run.
So to specifically answer your question, I think it's appropriate for Amit to give you some G2 on how we structured it and why we know it's a winner. Amit?
Thanks, Bill. Mark, so the way we're thinking about this, and we've announced our pricing capabilities is that, AI capabilities are in each of the SKUs now. And what we did with Pro Plus, which was a higher-end SKU with Assist are now available also for the Foundation and Advanced SKUs. So all of our products now have AI built in. And the incremental assist part of it was going to be counted as our AI revenue. So it's pretty straightforward, very easy to measure, easy to track. There's no confusion there. And we're very clear that it's only going to be AI part, which will count towards the AI revenue that we discuss going forward.
So to be very clear, Mark, we have the exact same methodology, and we will continue to capture only the incremental contribution from the AI capabilities. And so that $1.5 billion that Bill talked about, we're measuring the exact same way as we always measured. We're just hitting our goals a lot quicker than we ever thought we would.
Okay. Great to hear about a $500 million increase on that number.
Your next question comes from the line of Brad Zelnick with Deutsche Bank.
Great. Bill, we've been really impressed hearing from early adopters of Control Tower and how strategic it's seen for enabling the deployment of agentic apps. But we also realized that the agentic orchestration is emerging as a very noisy and competitive space. How do you see ServiceNow's differentiation evolving from here amidst all the noise?
Yes. I'll start and then Amit, by all means feel free to join in. We have data, and that data has been built over 22 years in this "ERP for IT" or that system of record. And as you know, we've expanded the boundaries end-to-end of what this platform can do. So think now about 95 billion workflows and more than 7 trillion transactions, getting trained at sub-second speed for everything that happens in an enterprise to that data. So the context and the context engine that we have built to be that AI control tower for business reinvention managing the humans and the agents and coalescing that in this unbelievable platform is what gives us the context advantage that nobody can match. And I just want to give you one sidecar. Yesterday, we had the Board of Directors in, and we had one of the really great CIOs in the world. And she basically said, we are the control rail for all the key business processes that run through our global corporation. And she said that she would never even think about it. But if you think about the fractional cost that ServiceNow is to her IT budget. She would never even think about addressing that line item because it's so important. But if you did, it would have to be at least 10x more expensive to even try to fix or change it. So there you have it. And Amit, please give some color on the differentiation.
Thanks, Bill. So -- Brad, the way we think about this is that, one, we're going beyond just orchestration. There's a lot of context, as Bill mentioned, and we introduced something called Context Engine, which tracks not what decision was -- what the decision was made, but why it was done. So it brings in a lot of information from the workflows and the systems we've been running for many, many years already. Second, we're also building out this idea of autonomous workforce. You have a full AI specialist, which do the full task of which humans do today and replaces that with end-to-end capabilities. So you don't have to worry about orchestration, AI agent management, figuring out how to integrate them and do the whole heavy lift of security, compliance and control around it, right? With the iControl tower, you have the full visibility across an enterprise-wide while we give you the full capability of doing the actioning end to end, which is very different than just saying take pieces of technologies and build it yourself and figure out a way to orchestrate it. We do provide our orchestration engine, which is very, very comparable to everybody else and very differentiated with the contact data. But we're also up leveling that with a solution, an outcome-driven mindset. So it changes the game for a lot of our customers because they don't have to worry about the heavy lift they have to do otherwise.
Your next question comes from the line of Gabriela Borges with Goldman Sachs.
Bill and Gina, I appreciate all of the detail on the new products. What I wanted to ask you about is the risk that customers start to negotiate you down on the more classic purpose ServiceNow But in order to essentially free up budget or some of the new products. I'd love to hear a perspective on how you're navigating some of those conversations when customers say we're going so much value from the AI part of the stack which means while the topic part of the stack may actually be less valuable to us, therefore, give us more of a discount on that...
Yes. Thank you, Gabriela. The one thing I can tell you from being in the industry for quite some time in running another global corporation that was the biggest in the world. One thing that I've learned is when you innovate on the platform, whatever the platform is, it reinvigorates the core. And when you do smart M&A, it also doubled down, reinvigorates the core. And if you look at any company of size, scale and significance, that's always true. So no, we're not getting negotiated down on the core. Actually, we're redoubling our focus on it because that system of record for IT, where we started and founded the company has now become more important than ever. So there's a higher appreciation for it because of AI, because it's the pivot point by which we extend to all the other functions of a company. It's also the pivot point to our workflow data fabric and the context engine that Amit just discussed.
So there is no great autonomous AI platform end to end. There is no great control tower. There is no great workflow data fabric. There is no great integration layer that ties into the hyperscale is the language models and systems of record without that and the liveable core that Fred Luddy built into the company 22 years ago. And from that, that genesis of strength, everything else has been built. So actually, I see the core having a major resurgence as a result of AI. And remember what I said in this group. It's all about also this increase in code and this increase in AI activity, and I'll finish it with Armis.
Armis is going to be our Instagram, and I'll tell you why. The #3 economy in the world is cyber crime. It's 1 trillion a month. We now have a situation where on the IT and the OT landscape of every major corporation. We are managing the agents and the humans and we are managing the landscape of the threat actors. And if you think about a single intrusion from an AI agent will cost a commercial customer of $5 million and a public sector customer $10 million, you have to look to ServiceNow quickly, and you'll need that core to illuminate the power of Armis. So those are issues that have not even happened yet. We just got Armis on Monday. So you're looking at a tailwind here that has -- I've never seen it. So get ready for major revenue acceleration.
Yes. If I can add to what Bill mentioned about the stack. So we have redone everything in our platform to be AI native. So everything which we do in terms of how we orchestrate, how we manage workflows, how we bring resolution and action out of it, as well as all the things we do with data, it's all been rewritten with AI-native mindset. So that is available today. So existing customers are getting that capability as part of the upgrades. They don't have to do anything. And a platform becomes AI-native for all of our customers. So now there's not really a pressure in terms of any of the discussions. They all want to modernize. And they're getting it very, very quickly and simply and they're getting the benefit of all the new innovations we're bringing into our platform and all the customers get that instantly as we deliver this AI-native products.
Your next question comes from the line of Peter Weed with AllianceBernstein.
I appreciate all the detail on the latest releases. I guess I've got a follow-up there. You announced the autonomous workforce in February, which was really exciting, including the GA of the Level 1 service desk coming here in quarter 2 on with employee works. Help us kind of understand that long-term strategy and vision and how does that complement the existing now assisted products, maybe narrowing in on like one example here, kind of help us understand the richness of where you're going?
Yes. Peter, thanks for that question. So our vision here is pretty ambitious and kind of game changer in the market. What we're doing with autonomous workforce is to really provide an end-to-end resolution for different functions, company run inside their enterprise today. So taking this example of Level 1 support engineer. Today, a lot of tickets get deflected of course, when somebody has an issue or question they asked for. And we help that with our employee works, where we give them self-service and help them resolve that issue a customer or employee might have. But some things they do need to require help and they usually go to human to get that thing resolved. And what we're doing is taking that pain and the burden away from human and putting that into this level 1 support, specialist AI specialists, which you'll now understand the intent and the question and figure out how to resolve it based on the learning they've had for many of the data we provide underneath the covers. And then get that resolution in a very short amount of time. Typically, a human requires around 2 days based on the case volume to resolve it, we are now able to do that in less than 20 minutes.
So the employee or customer is getting their information quickly and the issue resolved immediately without having to wait on a human agent to really do this. And that changes the game for every enterprise, right? Because now you're reducing the workload on the employees themselves. You're getting them -- moving on with the job very fast, as well as now we are just taking away also the human labor cost, which now we can also monetize beyond what we used to charge for just the issue management before. So it opens up and expands our TAM considerably, plus it becomes much more value-driven than just being able to provide your software. So that's really the vision we have, and we have around 20 different roles like this been delivered by May. You'll see that at our Knowledge event. And all the discussions we've been having with customers and quite a few of them are live right now, and they're seeing this immediate value-add by taking this kind of a technology without having to build all the AI underpinnings, doing all the security work, the compliance work and training the models and doing the spare part work and then working about upgrades and maintenance to kind of take all that pain point while giving the outcome of AI completely out of the box in our products today. So that's really the vision. It's really playing out very well and very, very bullish about what we can do here based on the context and the information we've had, which you can't just do with the large language model or any of the technology by itself. Given our historical experience in this thing, we are able to bring that knowledge and resolve it for our customers.
And one thing that's interesting, Peter, just to use ServiceNow as a benchmark. Gina has captured $0.5 billion in productivity on the back of what Amit just said. So the agents are 99% faster than the human. 90% of our cases on employee and customer issues are now resolved by the agents, the Level 1 agents Amit is talking about. And if you think about a company of our size and scale, we're able to go in a year and exit the year into a new year with the same headcount. And that's a company that's growing at the rule of 56 between free cash flow and revenue. There's not too many of them out there. I want to invest in some of the I'm on the lookout.
That's a pretty bullish outcome. Help us understand the pricing that you're able to achieve as a result of the value you're bringing?
Yes. So Peter, the way we -- this is part of our current AI-native pricing, right? So more you use -- it's more Assist you end up using -- consuming based on the Intel wins you have. So over time, we can look at beyond what we do today from the pricing perspective, but today, it kind of becomes much simpler for customers. When they see this issue been resolved or questions been handled and us helping them manage their problems inside the enterprise, we can now easily now monetize that through our assist pricing structure we have. And now it's available across all our product tiers, so we could start any of they want to.
Your next question comes from the line of Keith Weiss with Morgan Stanley.
Excellent. I want to directly go sort of at, I think, a topic that a lot of us are passing around and sort of our initial questions. I'm excited about the opportunity of ServiceNow. You guys are obviously excited about the opportunity for ServiceNow. The stock is down 12% after hours. So something is not getting through to investors. And I would say there's probably 2 parts of that equation. Like one is a lack of clarity on the inorganic contribution to Q1. There was a resin there. There's pyramid analytics in there. And don't quite know how much of a contribution it is. I think investors are wondering whether it really was the Q1 beat on an organic basis.
And then for the full year, outside of adding Armis and currency, the full year number doesn't really move at all. And we're wondering when, like when are we going to see this acceleration? When are we going to see the benefits of ServiceNow's positioning for this generated AI opportunity because we are seeing it in the AI Labs, right? AI Labs added $5 billion in net new ARR in Q1 alone each one, right? And we're talking about $1.5 billion for analysis when we get to the end of the year. It seems like they're getting an outsized proportion of the game. So when does ServiceNow participate in the way that's more analogous to the AI labs that we were actually getting organic positive revisions. Thank you.
So Keith, there's a lot of questions there. I'll talk to them one by one. So -- Veza closed in the middle of March and at a small tuck-in. Pyramid's even smaller. So they had very, very, very tiny contribution, which is why we're not calling it out. So we would have beat regardless. We did talk about 75 basis points of on-prem -- pushouts for Q2. So on-prem year-over-year is a little bit more than 1 point lower in Q1 of this year versus last year. So if you just exclude the on-prem -- and by the way, we want hosted, we love hosted. And so on-prem being lower is not a bad thing, but it does impact the numbers.
We actually have seen a couple of those on-prem deals already closed in Q2, but it was a timing issue. So that's the answer on Q1. We feel very good and strong that we continue to have strong organic growth on top of these great acquisitions that we've added. And so we've been very, very clear on the impact of Armis. I spelled it out across the board in every single metric. So you can see that, yes, we didn't increase the revenue guide, excluding Armis, but we didn't take it down either despite some ongoing conflict. So we held -- and we never really -- even in the best of times, we really increased our revenue guide for the full year after just Q1. It's the smallest quarter that we have. And so we held the guide, increased with Armis. So we're seeing accelerating revenue growth. And I think -- the example we gave of Moveworks of being able to integrate it into employee works within 3 weeks and then very quickly hit it into our distribution network and have more revenue or more deals in Q1 than they had all year last year is a great example of M&A done extremely well. So that's number two.
To the question on acceleration of revenue growth, we've basically said historically that our guide for 2026 was $1 billion. We just told you now that it's 50% higher than that, $1.5 billion in 2026, which is, I think, pretty darn good for a software company that's building AI into our platform, and enables our customers to get the value of AI within our platform with all the guardrail security and governance that they love. I'm hoping that you'll be at Financial Analyst Day in a couple of weeks' time because we will lay out our long-range plan and when we expect to see that flywheel of AI consumption that you're talking about, and I can promise you, I think you'll be very excited about what you're going to see.
I will definitely be there.
Yes. And Keith, I do want to mention, we didn't buy anything with a whole bunch of revenue, okay? We didn't buy what's been on the market for 10 or 15 or 20 years to plug a revenue gap. We bought companies that are adding to the AI control tower for business reinvention. So they are not in a meaningful way and never were intended to be a plug for a revenue gap. We just got them and we're building out the story with them and they're going to set the world on fire with reaccelerating revenue growth.
The other thing we're doing as we're reaccelerating revenue growth. And by the way, above 20% isn't too bad, right, on a $15 billion company. And in terms of accelerating margins, who accelerates margins at the rate that we have. So we're a 56-rule company going up. And we're obviously taking SBC down at the same time because we know the shareholders. I think the bigger argument for the shareholders is something like what's the terminal value of a software company? Is the seat-based pricing going to last? Well, when you have many more seats because the surface area you cover is 80% greater than what you used to cover, you're going to do fine on seats, but nobody cares about seats. We had a CIO from one of the biggest companies in the world, Telesta. She never bought a pricing plan one way or the other. She buys the return on the investment. And so in our case, we give you the goldilocks model, you're going to have it any way you want. You like, see it's great. You like consumption, great. You like a blended a 2, great. You want to split the value with us even greater. We'd love that. But as soon as you show them how big the value is they say, "I'll take the seats."
So we got you covered there. And in terms of the terminal value, see with your eyes, it's kind of a parlor trick. If you think you're going to touch a button from a language model company, and it's going to do everything we just discussed and the complexity of a global corporation. So I think having a sustained growth, a predictable growth and expanding margin company on fire on the global economy [indiscernible]
And yes, we love the language model companies. That's why we partner with all of them the same way we did the hyperscalers and even the systems of record and some of them compete with us vigorously, but that has nothing to do with the fact that we know the customer wants everybody to work nice, and that's why we opened it up to any system. So we're very confident in our position, and we're also mindful that customers are spending a lot on AI, but that is incremental. It is not replacing what they're spending on us.
Your next question comes from the line of Alex Zukin with Wolfe Research.
Bill, maybe start for you, just -- maybe just give us a characterization of the overall enterprise spending environment right now, and not just in the Middle East, but globally, there is a pervasive sense of at least from investors of this AI anxiety where customers are a bit more hesitant to maybe make bigger purchases because of some of the uncertainty, maybe not of what's available now, but what's kind of coming given the rapid pace of innovation. And then Gina, I've got a quick follow-up for you.
No, Alex, you're right. I think the big thing -- and one of our great executives discuss this with the Board. He spends a lot of time especially with the CIO community, CTO, digital officers and so on, AI offices, too. The environment is very excited about AI. These language model companies are great companies. They're very exciting. So they're very excited about AI. The problem is they don't exactly know what to do, so they're somewhat confused. I put together along with our great team here, an agentic business, white paper, that has cleared things up for a lot of customers because we're highly respectful of the great companies and what they do, but we're also well aware of what they don't do. So the customer just wants the truth. And they want to know what they do, meaning it could be a language company, it could be another type of company and what we do. And I think our positioning is really resonating with the customer because they tell us -- the fact that you're so open, yes, you're competitive, yes, you want to win, but you're still open. It's an autonomous platform. You give me the control tower, all the language models are welcome. All the hyperscalers welcome.
All the systems of records are welcome. All the data lakes are welcome because that's the environment, this heterogeneous environment that the customer is operating in. And it's also a chaotic world. If you look at the geopolitical landscape or even wars around the world, it's hectic out there. So I think what you have to do is be highly clarifying very thoughtful with the customer. The customer, in the end, determines who wins or loses. We're not so caught up in the short-term things. We just want to really double down on that customer relationship. When they see our road map to great innovation, that our dear Amit and his team are building into the company. They love the M&As we did. It's a settling effect. It's like, yes, wait here. And we'll be in 22 more years from now taking good care of you. That's really what it is. I tell people there was once the United Airlines commercial where the CEO, walks into the boardroom and start handing our plane tickets and said, go visit our customers. That's what you got to do. You got to get in front of them, you got to help them understand and it's not a time to be anything less than totally empathetic because these customers, just like the shareholders. They have so much coming at them. We just want to give you a solid clean story and then let you make the best decision you can based on the facts.
And then I would just add, Alex, on the numbers and the proof points, right? I talked about 16 deals greater than $5 million in the quarter, 5 deals over $10 million. talked about, again, second quarter in a row, our largest net new logo land at $15 million, right? So customers are spending, they are understanding the value proposition that we're driving and that we're delivering, and it is showing up in the numbers.
For sure. And if you guys knowledge, which I hope you do, and please come to the fab -- our knowledge attendance, okay? This is a live attendance, live audience. They must be interested because we're totally sold out and the seats are up 11% year-over-year already, and we have late sign-ons. The fab, the Financial Analyst Day, we already have Darren telling us yesterday, we're going to have to have a second and third room because the fire Marshall said, you can't put any more people in that room. And so if you get there, and it's not packed, you'll hold it on me, right? It's packed. Everybody cares about the story, whether it's a customer or it's an investor and they know ServiceNow has a good heart. And we also know that you're rooting for us. So we're working hard.
Nobody packs the room like you guys do, Bill.
Gina, maybe just on the numbers for you. Actually, a $10 million beat in the quarter and then reiterating the full year, given the $23 million headwind on Q1 actually seems to be impressive. Maybe what gives you the confidence to be that prudent in the guide? And then just any -- maybe a little bit more specificity on the headwinds from the CRPO dynamics with Armis?
Yes. So listen, I think at the end of the day, the confidence I get is from the incredible team that we have around the table, the incredible go-to-market execution machine, all of the innovation that Amit and the team have been driving and just the environment that we see ourselves in, right? There's not one person in this company that doesn't spend time with customers every single day. And so that gives me the confidence in the guide. Thank you for realizing that is a very strong guide.
And by the way, the acquisition of Armis, as Bill talked about, it's not about buying revenue. It's about buying incredible talent, incredible technology capabilities that's going to make our AI control tower even stronger, right? And so building that in is just really, really strong. I think the headwinds with CRPO dynamics of Armis, so there's no CRPO headwind from Armis. There's a tailwind from Armis, so I'm not quite sure what you're referring to there. But at the end of the day, CRPO is a strong guide as well. And we feel really good about the overall guidance top to bottom.
And Alex, if I may, if you thought about a headwind, if you were referring to the 50 basis points on the margin with regard to Ares Remember, it was originally 100 basis points, thanks to Gina's efficiency in the company is right now on now with Amit. It's 50 basis points, but here's the commitment, okay? By the end of the year, it goes down to 0. That's because of the efficiency we're driving in the company and the great platform that we have. So we can actually acquire a substantially interesting company and not impact the margin at all, which is kind of cool. -- because most companies will make excuses. When you get to FAD, we're going to talk about margin expansion, revenue acceleration. We're going to show you how the stock-based compensation is coming down. And we're also going to show you just how big this company is going to be in the next few years. So we're really ready to roll.
Yes. And on CRPO, Alex, Armis would have been higher. They have a lot of CPC in their contract, the termination for convenience. So not all of it can go into seat -- but they are a strong company. We feel great about the potential there.
That's exactly what I was referring to. I used maybe headwind was the right -- the wrong word.
No problem. We love it, Alex. You gave us a chance to clear some stuff up. That's what the call is for. Thank you so much.
Your next question comes from the line of Samad Samana with Jefferies.
Bill, I wanted to start off with you. Just there's a lot going on, and we've covered a lot on the call, but you guys saw on LinkedIn that there's a new Chief Strategy Officer. You've obviously completed a lot of M&A recently and AI is this little thing we all keep talking about. Just help us think through all the changes that are going on inside the organization and maybe what are the top 1 or 2 near-term priorities is it integrating the M&A? Is it driving adoption of the AI business? And just were there any other changes relating to the Chief Strategy Officer change? And then I have one follow-up.
Yes. Samad, I'll let Gina talk about the Chief Strategy Officer because he's fantastic and he reports to Gina. But just at a macro level, let me just tell you what's going on in the corporation. One is we have a very fired-up company. They're excited and they're really ready to roll. And I think anything that challenges us in the media or talk of software companies and their long-term evolution just puts a bigger chip on our shoulders, so we're totally good with that. I tell them we walked over tougher challenges than this on our way to a fact. So that's one thing. The psychology of the company is in great shape.
The second thing is we're focused on acceleration of our revenue. We know it's all going to be based upon AI and the hockey stick that's forming around our great platform, autonomous managing the agents. They're going to be 2.2 billion more agents in the workforce in the next couple of years, we're going to manage ours and everybody else's too. And I think what we've done here in security to really change the game. It's not because there aren't great security companies out there. They are. We integrate with all of them. In fact, great ones like CrowdStrike, my friend, George and Nikesh and all these guys, they're terrific. They're doing a great job. What we're doing is something very different. We're still integrating with all of them, but we've expanded the boundaries into OT, which is a new area that AI is going to be especially kind to. So we are going to grow a lot.
So think of it on the margin side, we're going to accelerate the margins of the company, too. So we're going to do these really hard things, and we're going to accelerate the margins. And we're looking at a company that's a Rule of 60 company and beyond. We're also taking down the SBC because we want to get it down into single digits because we can because whether you look at it as a non-GAAP or a GAAP, we want you to love it. So we're working on all those things. They're in flight. We're going to give you a story of that, you're going to love it.
In terms of the big picture also, a great company has to build the best products. We got the best guy with Amit, and his team is unbelievable. And with all these acquisitions that we made, again, we didn't buy old hack companies for the revenue. We bought new innovative AI companies. all of these CEOs that came in are running development organizations and businesses for Amit. We have Paul Fits on the go-to-market side. They work like factory to Foxhole. And so these guys come in and there's a gigantic synergy between development and the go-to-market, the FTEs in front of customer and the customer engagement folks that really make sure the adoption of the AI is good. And that hockey stick is in its early days. When that kicks in, it's going to be really sensational. So it's best products provide the absolute greatest service. We have built the best leadership team. The Board said that yesterday, I can't believe the leadership team. It's so stunning. The culture is incredible, and we're expanding the ecosystem at a torrid pace. So if you take all that together, it says one thing, growth company. And that's where we are. And so we're going to sustain it and we're going to extend it.
And then with respect to the Chief Strategy Officer changed, please don't read anything more into it, natural titration. Krishna Gidwani is fantastic. We're very excited to have him on board. He comes from us from Pure Storage now Everpure, and he's been doing strategy venture investing as well as M&A integration for a very long time. And so we're really excited to have him on board. Our #1 priority from a M&A perspective this year is all about integrating and integrating these incredible new companies that are part of the ServiceNow family. And Krishna is going to help me do that and help Amit do that extremely effectively.
Great. And maybe just a quick follow-up. It's a little bit in the spirit of Keith's questions with a lot going on in terms of the business as well in terms of like the revenue streams. And the AI revenue number is exceptional. Just can you help us think about -- and I think this helps address the where is the budget dollars coming from? What have NRR trends look like maybe to the first quarter, just as we as we reconcile that incremental -- or that huge AI spend jump as we think about seats still growing, if you translated all of that or just tilt NRR, how has that trended to maybe the first quarter compared to history?
Yes. We don't give it on a quarterly basis. It's not trending significantly differently. We'll talk more about all of those trends at side. What I'll tell you is that from a budget perspective, we're seeing it come from a lot of different places, right? It's not one place. A lot of people are finding it because labor budgets are coming down. A lot of people are reallocating technology spend and eliminating more point solutions and really leaning into platform consolidation and platforms like ServiceNow. And so from a budget perspective, it's kind of coming from different places. And what we're seeing and hearing from our customers is they are moving full speed ahead out of AI experimentation into full-scale deployment. And so leaning in on platforms that they trust, especially as the proliferation of agents and devices and code is just exploding to be able to build their governance all on the platform that they know and trust for 22 years is a real point of differentiation for us.
And so really excited. Bill did take the headline that was supposed to be in bad. But it's all great. Listen, that 50% increase is real. I think you're going to be very excited when you see the trends that we're going to show in a couple of weeks of what we believe AI at ServiceNow is going to drive. And AI is not the only part of the strategy. We have incredible CRM products. We have incredible and what security and risk is going to be able to do now with Armis and Veza combined with the ServiceNow platform is just incredible. So hopefully, we'll see you in Vegas in 10 days.
You will, and I look forward to those new headlines.
We have time for one more question. Your final question comes from the line of Michael Turrin with Wells Fargo.
I appreciate you fitting me in. Bill, there are questions you've alluded to around whether you're playing offense or defense with M&A. I was just hoping you could walk us through some of the feedback you're hearing from customers initially and help us think through the time it takes to get this all fully in the hands of your sales organ customers? And then Gina, just can you help level set your approach to guiding for the newer pieces we can see the Armis contribution you're assuming. But is there a prudence in terms of how you take some of the new pieces and account for the time to ramp? Or how would you frame the initial assumptions there?
Thank you very much, Michael. I appreciate the question. The company and the customer loves the acquisitions that we did, loves it. ServiceNow has a great relationship with our customers and they count on us for innovation. And if you look at a company like Moveworks, I mean, literally quintupling our employee works business in the first quarter that they're here. That's a testament to the fact that the customers, the ecosystem and obviously, our team have already hit the ground running with that. And we expect enormous success with that.
If you think about Veza, we just got it. And as Gina said, it's a very small revenue buy because we bought the innovation. We bought the entrepreneur's great patented technology. Think about it. to in real-time graph people and the agents in real time and all the rights and privileges that they do and don't have across a global corporation. And second, and actually roll that out across an entire corporation to make sure that AI is doing all good things for you and avoiding all the bad things. Armis is already and 9 of the 10 Top 10 companies in the world and 40% of the Fortune 100, and they don't have a global footprint and sales force like we do. And so this AI control tower vision, it's massive. And it's actually the biggest thing that I've seen the customer react to since I've been here since 2019, okay? That's a fact. So all of that is all upside. We haven't even realized it yet. We're rolling it out. We're having an all hands meeting tomorrow and everybody is just so excited and thrilled here. So I would just say, get excited because the customers are and quintupling of business, meaning during one quarter what they did in the prior year, just gives you an indication when they just joined us. And the other 2 just joined us, and they'll obviously be part of the Q2 print, and that story is still unfolding as we speak, but it's all going great.
So Michael, I tell you, we got this segment. We really got it. And as it relates to all the other participants in the AI universe, this is the part that nobody has accounted for. We love them all. Because everything that they do contributes to revenue that goes into the ServiceNow platform, everything, whether it's an integration point, whether it's a co solution, or whether they're just running with the customer and the customer is running the work through our platform on the execution of the way the world works. It's all hitting our revenue and our growth line. One thing Gina has said, that's very, very important. The idea of moving from the project to actually moving to the AI process, A lot of the customers haven't yet deployed all the AI that they have, not because they don't love the solution, but because the company wasn't ready for it yet. So we're very much in front of the customer with a customer excellence group and our forward deployed engineers. So as that goes live, that hockey stick starts to kick in as they consume the assist and reload the assist packs. So -- all of this and more is part of the story that's yet to be told. And yet the story is a beat and raise.
Yes. And I would just add to your question, as you'd imagine, with my approach to guidance, certainly on being prudent with brand-new acquisitions that have just closed, I feel very confident in the guide. I also feel confident that there's -- as we ramp and as we build -- as we build integration into the body of ServiceNow, the opportunity for incremental growth is enormous. And you'll see a lot more about what we think about that into '27 and beyond in Vegas in 10 days. And so prudence in the guide for '26, significant upside, and we truly believe it's going to help not only accelerate our top line revenue, but also be a pull on the core, as Bill talked about earlier. M&A done extremely well.
Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's call. Thank you all for joining the First Quarter 2026 ServiceNow Earnings Conference Call. You may now disconnect.
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ServiceNow, Inc. — Q1 2026 Earnings Call
ServiceNow, Inc. — Q1 2026 Earnings Call
📊 Quartal auf einen Blick
- Umsatz (Abo): $3,671 Mrd. (+19% YoY, konst. Währung)
- RPO: $27,7 Mrd. (+23,5% YoY cc); Current RPO $12,64 Mrd. (+21% cc, 100 bps Beat vs. Guidance)
- Marge: Non‑GAAP Betriebsmarge 32% (+50 bps vs. Guidance); Free Cash Flow‑Marge 44%
- Verträge: 16 Deals >$5M, 5 Deals >$10M; 630 Kunden >$5M ACV
- Guidance: Jahres‑Abo angehoben um $205M (Mittelfeld $15,735–15,775 Mrd.; +20,5–21% cc)
🎯 Was das Management sagt
- AI‑Control‑Tower: ServiceNow positioniert sich als zentrale Steuerungsplattform für Agenten/LLMs; Context Engine (kontextgetriebene Workflows) als Differenzierer.
- M&A‑Strategie: Moveworks (Employee Works), Armis (Asset Visibility) und Veza (Identity) sollen Security‑ und Employee‑Experience‑Stacks verbinden; Moveworks bereits schnell monetarisiert.
- Produkt & Pricing: Plattform ist "AI‑native"; Assist‑Funktionen sind in SKUs integriert; 50% des Net‑New now aus nicht‑seat Pricing; Management nennt jetzt ~$1,5 Mrd. AI‑Run‑rate für 2026.
🔭 Ausblick & Guidance
- Jahresziele: Abo‑Guidance erhöht; Subscription Gross Margin 81,5%; operative Marge 31,5% (inkl. Armis‑Headwinds: ~25 bps auf Gross Margin, ~75 bps auf Op. Margin).
- Q2: Abo $3,815–3,820 Mrd. (21–21,5% cc); erwartetes RPO‑Wachstum 19,5% cc; operative Marge ca. 26,5% (inkl. 125 bps Armis).
- Cash & Kapital: FCF‑Marge Guidance 35%; $2 Mrd. beschleunigtes Aktienrückkaufprogramm ausgeführt; ~$4,2 Mrd. Autorisierung verbleibend; GAAP verwässerte Aktien ~1,04 Mrd.
❓ Fragen der Analysten
- Middle East: Verzögerte On‑Prem‑Abschlüsse wegen Konflikt — Management sieht Timing‑Effekt, nicht dauerhaften Verlust; einige Deals bereits in Q2 geschlossen.
- AI‑Metrik: Assist‑Umsatz wird nur als inkrementeller AI‑Beitrag gemessen; Methodik bleibt unverändert und soll Transparenz liefern.
- Differenzierung & Integration: Analysten hinterfragten Wettbewerbslautstärke; Management verweist auf 22 Jahre Kontextdaten, Context Engine und schnelle M&A‑Integration (Moveworks) als Schutzfaktoren.
⚡ Bottom Line
- Fazit: Klarer Beat‑and‑Raise: starke Abo‑ und RPO‑Dynamik, frühe Monetarisierung von AI‑Produkten und schnelle M&A‑Synergien. Kurzfristig gibt es Integrations‑ und geopolitische Timing‑Effekte (Armis, Middle East), langfristig signalisiert die Management‑Roadmap beschleunigtes Wachstum und Margin‑potenzial; Financial Analyst Day (4. Mai) bleibt zentral für Details.
ServiceNow, Inc. — Morgan Stanley Technology
1. Question Answer
Hey, everybody. Keith Weiss from Morgan Stanley. I run the U.S. software equity research franchise, and super pleased to have from ServiceNow, Bill McDermott, Chairman and CEO. Thank you. Bill, thank you so much for joining us.
Thank you, Keith. .
So I would say there is no better time than right now to be talking to Bill McDermott about what's going on in the software, right? Because the investors in this room had a high level of uncertainty. They don't have a clear view of what's going to go on with software broadly. They have a lot of concerns about the viability of SaaS vendors over time.
And you are, I would say, the best software salesperson that I've ever met. So nobody better to talk to us about the positioning of ServiceNow, the positioning of you as a trusted vendor of your customers and how AI is an opportunity for you versus a risk. So maybe we could start out there. And like when you think about Generative AI, you think about these innovations, what does it mean to ServiceNow in terms of your opportunity of what you can do for your end customer?
Sure. Thank you very much, Keith, and I appreciate the very kind words. I know, for example, you had Jensen today. I'd like to congratulate Ted and the Morgan Stanley team for really the conference of the century in terms of who you've had. And of course, Satya as well. And I really do think this universal agentic network that ServiceNow has formed should come out in the conversation today because that's an example of 2 great companies, 2 great partners, and we're doing amazing things.
Sever years ago, we started building models with Jensen. We have done some great work to make ServiceNow the AI control tower for business reinvention. And so when you think about this universal agentic network, consider this, ServiceNow is connected to every node in the Fortune 2000. Every hyperscaler seamlessly integrates with ServiceNow. Every language model has been integrated and adopted by ServiceNow for the right industries.
We can turn it on and turn it off based on industry and all the systems of record. And then you say, well, what about the data. All this stuff produces massive data, plus you have data companies that are also very good companies like Snowflake and Databricks they also all integrate. So if you think about that control plane in every major tech transformation, the money goes to control plane. So while AI thinks workflow acts and that's our unique competitive advantage that today as we're having this conversation, we have 85 billion workflows in flight in the Fortune 2000 doing almost 7 trillion transactions. So deeply embedded, deeply durable expanding platform with a deep exciting moat that continues to grow and prosper for our shareholders. So we can get into that today.
Excellent. So if I think about the ServiceNow story, over the past decade, ServiceNow has extended from being an IT solution to automating workflows on top of a lot of transactional systems. You guys have become the system of engagement and where the work is actually getting done on top of the transactional systems, but now we're in an environment where people are worried about the AI labs, not from their models, but what they're doing on top of it.
They look at Cloud Cowork. They see the tool use there. They see an extension in terms of how much work it to do in the time frame. And they worry is that going to become the new service now. Is that going to be where the work gets done and this is going to push ServiceNow into the background. But I'm sure you guys have an alternative view, right, that you have probably even more of a right to play there, probably even more of a right to provide that worthful automation. So what gives you that right? What gives you the better positioning to further automate those workflows versus an AI lab or a start-up coming in fresh?
Right. Well, if you think about anthropic, you had Dario on stage, and he talked about Health Care and Life Sciences as an example of major industries where AI breakthroughs would happen. We team up with anthropic in those industries. And so if you think about a nurse, for example, on a floor today caring for a patient somewhere, the time that he or she has to spend on the medical record is equal to the time that the doctor is actually spending with the patient, which is why we took health care operations and the thinking that Claude can do, as an example, and put it into our health care operations solution where we directly integrate it into the medical record itself.
So let's just assume on Floor 8, aisle 2, there's an IoT device that's down. The nurse instead of having to have somebody create a ticket and create a fiasco can write in the medical record itself, remediate the issue because we're directly integrated. So we take advantage of the thinking power, but we're doing the action in the workflow automation, no paperwork, no forms, rock and roll right out of the medical record.
That's a practical example. Another thing I could have said is like there's payroll issues all the time. There's mistakes made all the time in a company. Today, any land wood model can tell you what is wrong and what you're supposed to do about it. But none of them can actually do it. And why is that? Well, the same reason, Keith, that people have had a mess in the enterprise for 6 decades, legacy systems, lack of integration, you have to take multiple trips across multiple systems and functions to actually fulfill a workflow.
That is why we are the workflow company, and that is a unique competitive advantage because I'm not a feature, and I'm not stuck in one function. I'm going end-to-end across the enterprise to get work done. So we freely embrace incidentally. Anthropic is doing a fantastic job on coding. We actually use it, we are their customer, and it makes our developers more productive.
But OpenAI also does very important things with multimodal and natural language, especially voice, and we have fully adopted that into the ServiceNow platform. So we're not running, we're not heightened, and we're not assuming that they're going to do what we can do because it's really hard to do what we can do. But we're embracing it. Just like if you remember, not too long ago, all the hyperscalers look out, they're going to take over the enterprise. And today, they have multibillion businesses built on the ServiceNow practice.
One of the things that never gets talked about, we all know about the fratricidal relations between countries and things like data sovereignty and stuff like that. Well, just as an example, think about ServiceNow is a unique advantage in single tenancy, where I can run ServiceNow in any hyperscale cloud in any sovereign cloud in anyone's data center. So there are no limitations on ServiceNow that exist in some of the multi-tenant SaaS companies that are operating here in Silicon Valley, which is why I keep saying stop branding things SaaS because we don't live in a SaaS neighborhood. We are a very unique enterprise company.
Got it. So the model providers, you have partnerships with Anthropic. You have a partnerships with OpenAI. It becomes an engine that helps to power the broader platform of ServiceNow. So it's a competition. They're going to try to get into our lines, but you have some deep moats. You have these deep customer relationships, you have the data, you understand the customer problems. And you've already brought solutions to the market. So let's switch gears and talk a little bit about -- no assist. I believe that went generally available in November 2024. So a little bit past the year down the road with this product cycle, what are you hearing back from customers? What are they liking the solution? What's getting taken off? Or what are the initial use cases that are really starting to gain traction?
Would now assist.
Yes.
Yes. What's fascinating about now assist, obviously, it's grown sensationally nearly 3,000 customers now. The big idea is to radically simplify the way work is done. And if you think about agents, we have created the control tower for business reinvention. So what they like about it is this. Not only can they solve big problems, but they can adopt these agents. The workforce of the future is going to be a combination of human and agents and thinking machines with ServiceNow. You don't have to worry about the seat-based pricing model concerns.
I covered that in the earnings call. Our seats are up 25% year-over-year in terms of active users. But let's say that changes over time. And I expect that it will. The good news is the hybrid pricing model has already kicked in because our customers are telling us, we want you to manage your agents. We want you to manage the thinking machines and we want you to manage the agents of other people's solutions so I can have 1 control plane for all the agents. So the human, the nonhuman identities and the machines all managed in this control plane, huge. Another thing that they really, really like is what we did with Moveworks because now you have an a front door to the whole autonomous platform.
So if you think about the workforce of the future, it's like you go into 1 agentic front door, you don't have to swivel chair in and out of, on average, 33 different applications a day. And now all of the work can be tripped into all these systems that exist in the enterprise completely autonomously. So we've actually created new roles on a product that we announced on February 26, not wet paint, where you have AI specialists.
So now I have an IT specialist. I have a systems administrator. I have a security operations agent. These agents are complementing the humans in the flow of this work in running their business processes. So if you look at Honeywell as an example, they have IoT devices, hard infrastructure, manufacturing controllers now, they can manage their IT estate, but they're also very concerned about their OT estate. So think about IoT, think about manufacturing, things about controls, think about everything going through 1 control tower that kicks off all of these autonomous flows in the way work is done and execute it to completion.
We all watch the Super Bowl and maybe most of us did. There's a company that's pretty good at the bedding process and anybody that wants to do an individual bet on almost anything. But just think about having a solution that's mass customized based on the type of better that you have. All this is done on ServiceNow. All this is done with agents. And already, these companies not only subscribe to the ServiceNow service, but they've reloaded the assists. And in some cases, they're on their eighth pack of reloads.
So you're seeing the hybrid pricing model kick in because the business case is associated with these workflows and meeting the customer where they're at are so profitable. So those are among the use cases. And I could give you countless names of customers, but I'll give you 1 since you had Jensen here. We have a $2 billion pipeline right now in CRM. And one of the big things that we did last year is focused on CPQ, configure, price and quote. Because customers today, they want to be able to sell something fulfill on the order they sold and then service the account to have the net present value of loyalty kick in for life. On our platform, they're able to do that on one single platform.
And I believe the customer relationship management has moved to customer resolution management. Everybody can say, "Hi, by what I've got. The question then becomes how do you give them what they bargain for and service them upsell them, cross-sell and keep them loyal for life. I think that's why we have $2 billion now on pipe.
Outstanding. One of my theories right, when I'm thinking about ServiceNow is there's an expanded capability. There's great new things that we can do with these large language models, but it's an evolution of a theme, like you guys have always been about automating those processes and bringing more productivity to your customers. And it wasn't too long ago that you announced the Pro SKU. And the Pro SKU was an IT-led SKU, right? It was about improving automation is improving productivity. Is that a good analog? Like if we think about it in terms of value proposition, but also a time frame of adoption. We saw the Pro SKU got adopted really quickly within the user base. Should we expect something similar with now assist because it is an evolution of that same theme.
It is. And Keith, you're absolutely right. I think it's important that we acknowledge that we continue to have the necessary pricing power to create shareholder value on the Pro SKU of now assist. So that's a 30% uplift. We've held that price line and it continues to grow, and there's plenty of room for that to grow. We have also this hybrid pricing model where we give you a very healthy dose of assist because we want you to be happy.
We want you to adopt it. We want you to use it and derive the value from it. That's the whole point. But once you have exhausted the initial SKU from Pros that includes a very generous portion of these assist, then we reload them and now assist packs. Since May of last year, that is up 55x, and we're only getting started. But we're managing this very, very carefully, very, very closely because it's really now moving to an adoption game because the quicker the customer adopts the more assist they use, the more value they derive and obviously, the more profit we generate for shareholders.
But there's other things to that people are not catching on to. So you have your seat, but there'll never be as many humans as there are agents. So now you have your seats. However, that evolves is fine, but now the agents step in. Now there's agent specialists where we allocate them based on highly specific domain within the workflow and other people's agents, too. So if Salesforce agents or Workday agents or SAP agents or Oracle agents are in the loop we can put them and integrate them into the flow of work of that business process. Now think about the foundational elements of governance, compliance auditability, being able to roll something back and look at the full form of the transaction, every company needs that.
So that model is going great, but we also have assets. So we can price by asset. We also have devices we can price into the devices. We also now, especially as we complete the M&A cycle with Armis stepping into operating technology. So this is also going to deal with shadow IT, IoT, networks and devices, infrastructure managing things like SLAs and being able to bring that into the licensing models, there are so many new developments.
And may I Keith just comment on something that I think you might notice, last year, we made the move to acquire Moveworks, it took 9 months. It was like within 72 hours, we had Veza and Armis announced at the same time. And so I figured the shareholders must be like, "Hey, what's going on over at ServiceNow. I know that we're growing organically did something change? And I said in the earnings call, no, obviously, because we didn't have them in the number, and we still grew and gave a great guide.
But the best part of it all is we didn't buy things that were yesterday's news to chunk in a growth number. We bought the future of agentic business and combining that with the ServiceNow platform has not even shown up in the numbers yet. And so we closed Veza 2 days ago. We have Moveworks now. It's doing phenomenal. And we obviously have a great, great company in Armis in front of us, which I think obviously could be the Instagram of ServiceNow.
So we did it for a agentic business. We did it to make sure we remain a growth company for the next decade, not for the next quarter. So I think that is something for the shareholders to get excited about. And I'll tell you not only should you know that we're going for the growth and the acceleration, the continued acceleration of the growth, but also the free cash flow margin and the expansion of that.
Because we use our own agents, and we use our own platform with now on now, we are taking huge head count cost out of the company and driving that through the productivity of agents ourselves. And I'm tough on this because I tell the company you have to drink your champagne if you want to sell more of it in the marketplace, and that is a highly accepted principle in ServiceNow. So that is going to deliver more and more shareholder value goodness for everyone in this room.
Got it. One of the most surprising things on the most recent conference call was that comment about seat growth. You guys talked about 25% seat growth. When investors are really deathly afraid about seat growth. Can you talk to us about where that comes from? Is that an expansion of the types of customers that -- and the type of employees that ServiceNow is covering and the workflows that you're automating, where does it come from?
Yes, I think it's really important. One thing I want to say in a complementary nature to other companies that have a system of record, I actually think, in many ways, if you have a great system of record, it actually -- AI is actually making your intrinsic value higher because it's very important, the data that's in those systems is very important. .
And those companies are not unimportant companies. But what is quite unique about us is we've been the system of record for IT for 20 years. And what's super cool about that is if you think about the people, the places and the things of every corporation in the Fortune 2000, we are "the ERP of IT. " And in an AI world, that's actually even more important because now you springboard that into the employee experience into the customer experience, into the innovator experience and you're doing that on an end-to-end platform.
So now we've moved the control plane end-to-end across multiple industries, multiple geographies, multiple sub industry verticals and in an expanded ecosystem that's buying into this idea of the universal agentic network. So we are doing more things for more functions in more places than ever before. And that's where you see in the active user growth of 25%.
Frankly, I think we've only just gotten started. And that's not even including some of the business model innovations that I can bring into the pricing aspects that we talked about earlier. So if I had to take one worry off the shoulders of the shareholders of ServiceNow, it would be -- don't worry about the sea counts. There's going to be many millions more of agents than there are human beings. And we're at the control plane, the AI control tower for business reinvention.
And this is the plan that they're going to come through to run a genetic business. We're going to make it happen. So that's what you should be thinking.
Maybe just to dig into that a little bit further because it is a big concern for shareholders. When you're sitting down with the CIO and you're talking about what ServiceNow is going to do for the organization, how important is that C count metric versus talking about the broader value? And if it's not going to be seats, are there other ways or certain how to get paid or fundamentally, is the customer going to pay you for the productivity gains? Are they going to pay you for the value that you add, regardless of whether it's adding or tracking?
It's a great question. So first of all, the sad thing is a side show. That's just something that people somehow got worried about. I'm sure somebody put the fud in somebody's mind and they wrote articles about it. It's a side show. What you have to do in enterprise software to be successful, is you have to know the customer, and you have to understand what they're trying to accomplish.
And everything is tied to a business case. So what I'm explaining to you is you have seats, you have hybrid pricing based on the assist packages, which is a hybrid pricing model. It's already in the market. They're already renewing the assist packs, and that's a completely new way of generating net new revenue. I gave you other things also like assets like devices, like infrastructure, these are all components of net new ACV opportunities in the pricing model of ServiceNow, and it is happening.
The other thing that's quite interesting, and I ran across this in December of last year, I met the CEO and Chair of one of the biggest SI firms in the world and we were working together on a common customer. It happened to be a CRM-related matter and the business case was $682 million. And our take on that was de minimis compared to the $682 million. So I basically say to the customer and to the SI, I'll tell you what the heck with the licensing model just give me a piece of the action. What do you want to give me? I want to give me half. No, I don't want to give you half. Give me 20%. I'll probably get a lot.
In other words, they talk themselves into, no, no, I want the seats because that's predictable, and I know where I stand. I'm good with the assists. And by the way, the SI said, the business case is so good, we're underwriting it. So what I think is a net new possibility that's not even commercialized yet, but I believe we're going to do it is literally saying to the biggest, most important companies in the world we are the AI platform for business transformation. We will take care our view. We will put business cases together with AI that generate unique economic value. give me a piece of the action, and I'll even underwrite it and guarantee it for you.
That is something with big companies that haven't even hit the street yet. But for your imagination, if that doesn't burn you with some pool ideas that get rid of the silly seat conversation, then probably nothing will. So this is what's happening in the real world. Hybrid pricing is where it's at. The agents are going to be priced in. They'll be agent specialists, networks, devices, infrastructure assets. It's all going to be part of the Agentic revolution and the upside for a company like ours that touches every function of a corporation and every buying center of a corporation, it has not even been scratching the surface yet.
That's how much is in front of us. And I tell people all the time, and we just had the conversation with on Backstage. Look, $200 billion is where it should be now. We'll go for $1 trillion, and we're building business models to do that. And so I warmly welcome language models, hyperscalers, systems of record, Anybody that wants to be part of this universal agentic network come to the party because we're going.
Got it. I'm going to feed that to my associate, $200 billion market cap is the base case, bull case, $1 trillion.
$1 trillion is the number to focus on. That's why -- so I signed up to 2030. That's steady. And by the way, I bet the whole comp plan on the stock. So -- and bought some, too. So I'm shoulder to shoulder with you, and it's all going to come true. Don't worry about it. .
That's it. The other side of the hybrid side of the equation is the consumption ramp. And you talked about on the most recent earnings call, a hockey stick of consumption into the second half of this year. So two questions on that. Like one, what are you seeing in usage patterns because there's got to be usage that's kind of going to drive that hockey stick. And from the investors' perspective, like how should we sort of set our expectations in terms of the ability to really start moving the needle for subscription revenues or revenues overall for ServiceNow as that consumption starts ramping up?
Yes, for sure. I think it's real good question because the assist packs just started kicking in now, Q4 and now since May, they're up 55c in terms of the consumption. But that is progressive through this year. May was when things started to really take off. So I think in the second half of the year, you're going to have a real hockey stick in terms of the assist packs kicking in at scale. When managing the process beautifully, you'd be very proud if you saw behind the scenes, how the company is doing it.
There's a tremendous obsession with customers at ServiceNow. You'd expect that from me. I get it, but I'm not 29,000 people. I got 29,000 people that are obsessed with that too. And tremendous adoption skills in the company. forward-deployed engineers in the company. And they're all about getting the customer to adopt use and derive value from.
The software sale is the easy part. That's the part where companies really have to get with us shoulder to shoulder to win the game. And so I think in the back end of the year, you'll see a lot of the assists really kick into the hockey stick formation. The other thing I think you're going to see is we're just now beginning with Moveworks, Veza and soon Armis. Moveworks is with us now. Veza closed 2 days ago.
This is the identity management platform of this generation, is nothing as good as it Otherwise, we wouldn't have done the deal. We only buy the best. And then Armis, I believe, is instagram. And so you're already penetrated in the Fortune 100, 40% penetrated without a sales force. So we have one of those, and we know what to do with them. So all of these things, I think, will form hockey sticks on top of an already fast-growing ServiceNow. Other thing that's happening, Keith, is customers, I first came here, I don't know if you remember this, but I said with a platform of platforms, nobody has to lose for us to win. And I stand by that still. I mean, I have no quarrel with any of these companies, including the systems of record because their win rates would go up. If they adopted ServiceNow, it would be good for them.
But they won't because they feel very threatened by us, but they shouldn't because it would help them if they really teamed up because that's what the customer wants. The customer is going to get with what they want either way. But where I was going with this conversation is we're at a very unique inflection point now where we're 1 company that's coming at the customer with 1 highly integrated platform that's going to be able to seamlessly manage all of your agents connect all of your data in 1 real-time fabric where the work is happening inside of the workflow, the transactions are real time, whether you move it into ServiceNow or at 0 copy. And now you're going to be able to combine your IT and OT landscape seamlessly on 1 platform. And that doesn't mean that the security companies that are out there today aren't good companies, they are we integrate with all of them.
And today, our security business is heading for $1.5 billion. We haven't even worked at it. But what they want is they want 1 vision of their security estate. Now we're not only giving them that, but we're actually giving them the control plane of the operating technology and the information technology that connects with all of their security. And you know why that's really big, and I think this is going to be the big deal is because today, if you look at the world economy, U.S. is #1, China is #2, and the security, fraud is number three.
It's a $1 trillion market a month. So if you think that, that's a problem, you're right. And so in the enterprise, we're going to be able to control that plane and give that visibility and the real-time workflow action necessary to do what you have to do to stomp out that problem. Companies that work with us already know we're good at it. But you add IT and OT and you're going to be of something extremely special. And all the licensing models advance with these new business interests in the agentic world, which are far bigger than the enterprise.
And if you say, well, everyone is going to tell me to buy their agents. Yes. but they're going to tell you to buy their agents either as a feature because we can do 1 feature that ServiceNow does maybe you should buy my agents or a function where someone says, "Yes, but I'm the specialist in HR or CRM, all that might be true. But there's only 1 company that traverses across all of those interests on 1 common platform. That is what makes everything simple. And from my money, the ultimate art form of leading a company is making it simple and simple is really hard.
Okay. One last topic I want to double click on is the M&A strategy. And I remember when you came on Board as CEO at ServiceNow, you understood the investor Angst around M&A and said, "Listen, we don't need to do M&A to grow this company. There is a lot of organic opportunity. What changed? Like was it the assets that you saw? Is it the level of maturity of ServiceNow? What changed that M&A has become a bigger part of the strategy over the last 18 months versus like the first 4 years?
We want to be the best. We want to be the fastest-growing and best enterprise software company in the world. And AI moved the goalpost. And AI is changing the world. Agentic enterprises are the ones that will survive. The other ones won't. And our ambition is to be that a genetic market leader. And the assets that we bought, we could have built it, but it would have taken us too much time.
AI is moving too fast. So to have the Agentic front door to our autonomous platform was necessary to have identity management at a human, nonhuman and thinking machine level was necessary. We bought the Agentic market leader. And with Armis, we absolutely bought the OT market leader in the world and such potential.
So we bought into a TAM idea that is now a $600 billion TAM. The TAM idea that I walked into in 2019 was still a great TAM. It was $90 billion. But $600 billion is better than $90 billion, if you want to build a $1 trillion company as simple as that. And so everything we did is about innovation and progressing the customer's agenda. So ultimately, our shareholders can look at this now a symbol and say, "I'm proud to own that. That guy cares about my money. That man understands what's going on in the enterprise, and he wants to win. And I got 29,000 people around me they feel the same way. So that's where it's at. You're not going to get surprised by us. We don't need to buy the losers. There will be plenty of them. We're just going for growth.
Outstanding. Super exciting story at ServiceNow right now. Thank you for coming in.
Thank you for having me, Keith.
Appreciate you.
Thanks, everybody.
Thank you very much.
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ServiceNow, Inc. — Morgan Stanley Technology
ServiceNow, Inc. — Morgan Stanley Technology
🎯 Kernbotschaft
- Kernbotschaft: ServiceNow positioniert sich als "AI‑Control‑Plane" für die Fortune‑2000: tiefe Verankerung in Workflows, breite Integrationen zu Hyperscalern und Sprachmodellen sowie hohe Nutzungsdaten (ServiceNow nennt 85 Milliarden Workflows und fast 7 Billionen Transaktionen). Management sieht AI als Beschleuniger, nicht als Bedrohung.
⚡ Strategische Highlights
- Integrationen: Partnerschaften mit Anthropic, OpenAI sowie Datenplattformen (z.B. Snowflake/Databricks) — Ziel: LLMs als Denk‑schicht, ServiceNow als Aktions‑/Orchestrierungsebene.
- Now Assist: ~3.000 Kunden, Hybrid‑Pricing mit "assist packs", aktive Nutzer (Seats) +25% YoY; Assist‑Packs laut Management seit Mai stark gewachsen (55x‑Verweis).
- M&A & TAM: Zukäufe (Moveworks, Veza, Armis) sollen Agenten‑, Identity‑ und OT‑Fähigkeiten beschleunigen; Management revidiert TAM auf ~$600 Mrd und zielt langfristig auf deutlich höhere Marktkapitalisierung.
🆕 Neue Informationen
- Produkt/Adoption: Now Assist general availability wurde zuvor erwähnt (Nov 2024); McDermott berichtet von schnellen Reloads der Assist‑Packs und einem deutlichen Verbrauchs‑Upswing seit Mai, plus einem $2 Mrd CRM‑Pipelinebeispiel.
- Closing: Veza wurde laut Aussage vor zwei Tagen geschlossen; Moveworks ist integriert; Armis als strategischer OT‑Zukauf hervorgehoben. Finanzielle Guidance wurde nicht neu quantifiziert.
❓ Fragen der Analysten
- AI vs. Threat: Analyst fragte, ob LLM‑Labs Workflows ersetzen — Management argumentiert mit Integrations‑/Sovereignty‑Moat und End‑to‑End‑Aktionsfähigkeit.
- Monetarisierung: Kritische Nachfrage zu Seat‑Wachstum und Pricing; Antwort: Hybridmodelle (Seats, Assist‑Packs, Asset/Device‑Pricing) und sogar Erfolgshonorare mit SI‑Partnern als Option.
- Consumption Ramps: Nachfrage zum erwarteten "Hockey‑Stick" — Management erwartet stärkere Consumption im zweiten Halbjahr, dank Assist‑Packs und integrierter Akquisitionen.
📌 Bottom Line
- Fazit: ServiceNow verkauft ein klares Narrativ: AI macht das Unternehmen wertvoller, weil es Workflows ausführt, nicht nur Empfehlungen gibt. Zahlreiche Monetarisierungshebel (Seats, Assist‑Packs, Geräte/Assets, Performance‑Fees) plus gezielte Akquisitionen erhöhen Upside, bringen aber Integrations‑ und Adoptionsrisiken, die Anleger beobachten sollten.
ServiceNow, Inc. — Citizens JMP Technology Conference 2026
1. Question Answer
Thank you all for coming. This is a huge treat for me. We're just delighted to have Bill McDermott, the Chairman and CEO of ServiceNow, joining us for a fireside chat. We'll go 40, 45 minutes, something like that. Thank you so much for coming, Bill.
Thank you for having me.
It's a real treat. I was trying to get Bill to come to this for so long. And this time, he sent me an e-mail. And he said, I would be honored to speak at your conference.
Thank you and I am. It's great to see you...
Fantastic. When did this book come out?
2013.
So I was reading it to -- just parts of it, like plenty parts of it to my wife and daughter who were home last night. And then this morning, when we were prepping for this meeting, I made all the associates come into my office. And I made -- who was reading -- was it Nick? Nick had to read it out loud. So I'm going to just share a little story with you, and I'll try to do it reasonably quick. So what year is this like? '83, something like that when you're at Xerox?
Yes, I got -- this was 1984, the story.
Yes. And your territory was from like 57th to 59th and then from like Park to Madison?
To Fifth Avenue.
It's four square blocks, and that's your territory. And it was a long time ago, but you're selling electric typewriters and what else?
Copy machines and facsimiles and some laser printers.
Yes. And Bill is new at this, right? He's the new guy. And you're with this guy, Bob, right? And Bob is like a year older than you. So you're like...
He's a lot older. Yes. Yes. A lot older than me. I was the junior apprentice learning from Bob.
Okay. And you got -- when they go to the buildings, if there's no elevator, they got to lug the typewriter-- I can't take a copy machine...
I got the copier on my back in a backpack. I got an electronic typewriter in my hand. And those weighed about 40 pounds, just you know. And then a briefcase with brochures filled to the top and the other one. So I'm like a mule. We couldn't get a cab. So we were working at a 9 West 57th and sometimes you can get a cab, sometimes you can't get a cab at that time. So we couldn't get a cab. And one thing I've learned about a lead, if you don't respond to a lead within the first hour, the probability of you getting the deal drops tremendously. So we respond quickly, couldn't get a cab. It was August, it was hot, and we were walking from 9 West 57th to Madison in like 59th. It might not sound like a lot, but in that kind of heat with that kind of weight. It was brutal.
Brutal.
Okay. Here we go, right. I'll try to do this reasonably quickly. So we go into a building and the elevator opens up in the person's office, right? And so there's a large wood desk, some filing cabinets in the middle of an elegant living space. A professionally dressed woman in a suit and heels walks out from the back room. I'm about to say hello when a cat attacks, leaps off the couch, flies at me and lands on my chest. I feel its claws sink in through my suit and into my skin. This cannot be happening. The lady is staring at me. Bob is staring at me. I'm sure his lips muttered a 4-letter word. And even though an instinct urges me to save the suit and remove the cat, I don't.
The second, the animal hits my chest, a stronger instinct tells me, this is it. We have the deal. In that moment, I understand something that Bob does not. This cat is the boss. Bob is sweating. He just wants to unpack the machines and start the demo, but I know what to do next and it has nothing to do with the machines. Even at 22 as a nascent marketing rep in training, I was consumed by what people wanted and how I could give it to them.
The intent sales was making sure that I found out what their desires were and making the connection between that and what I had to offer. This was the art I had tried to master. The cat is clinging to me like a tree, but I smile at the woman and I say, Garfield has got nothing on this cat. I'm not angry. I just want those claws out of my skin. So I peel the animal off my body, but I do not let it go. I hold on to it, I pet it. The lady walks over to where I'm standing, the expression on her face and the fact that she lets her pet wander around the office, tells me she loves this animal. Beautiful kitty, I say, what breed is it? Then they talk about cats and dogs and pets. And then at the end, Bob is finally about to do his demo and the lady says, hun, do I really need to see a demo and it's done. She orders one copier and one typewriter, boom. Bob looks at him and says, Bill McDermott, you're either going to be the next CEO of Xerox or you're going to jail.
What lessons from that story applied to today, Bill?
Well, I think the whole world needs to get a good dose of EQ. And everything that people plan so carefully for always changes the second you're in front of the customer. And in that moment, it was quite clear that the President and Chief Operating Officer of the corporation was the cat. And the woman in her tremendous Chanel suit was obviously in charge, and she wanted to get connected on a human level. She didn't want demos and all the fuss and fortunately, we were able to come up with that and close that sale. But things really haven't changed much. I think in the long run, people buy from people. And I think more and more, the precious interactions between people are going to matter a lot, including in the AI era.
That's -- yes, we're totally skipping ahead, but let's just talk on that.
So is it really going to -- is the human touch and sales and appreciating that someone's cat is really the one who is in charge, is all that stuff still going to matter you think?
I think what we have in our hands here, Pat, is a world where there's so much information and there's so much knowledge and that intellectual capital that comes from knowledge is being quickly commoditized. There's just so much of it. And so the price and performance of information will continue to drop and drop and drop. And what's going to happen now, especially with $2.5 trillion being invested in AI in 2026. And still today, most of the projects in these enterprises are little pet, proof of concepts. And so you say, why is that? Because there's plenty of thinking, but there's a tremendous deficit of acting. And therefore, I think the people that can convey a message, have a platform that drives action and outcomes will outperform the ones that don't. And we've seen this before, by the way. If you think about the dot-com era, there were a lot of market participants.
Everybody had the latest and greatest idea on how they were going to rule the world. But in the end, the control plane where the money meets the road was all about Amazon and digital commerce. It was all about Google and the incredible information and advertising that they could drive in those corporations as two examples are still market leaders today. So I think we're now in the action phase of AI, where it's not a proof of concept. It's not just a game where I can push information and summaries at you. Someone's got to be able to put that in a formative way so decisions can be made from it. And I'm sure we'll talk about how we do that versus others.
We'll get there. Okay. So we -- in our -- what we'll do is we'll spend like, I don't know, a good 10, 15 minutes talking about the dot-com meltdown, the transition from on-prem to SaaS, SAP era and then we'll talk about ServiceNow today and ServiceNow in the AI era. And so let's start with Xerox, you're there 17 years, right?
Yes.
Left in 2000? Where do you go next?
Siebel Systems.
Siebel Systems...
Absolutely. And that was the early days of CRM. They were the market leader...
It went from like $1 billion to $2 billion in a year, right?
Yes. Very quick.
And I think it was important because I actually -- I had to stop at Gartner Group where it was all about the voice of IT and really understanding the advisory services of technology, but the application of that technology at that time, CRM was in its highly formative phase. Siebel was clearly the market leader. It was an honor to really get my feet wet in enterprise software. And so I've been at this now a little over a quarter of a century, and it's been a blast man. And I'm just getting warmed up.
Are you just getting -- I'm so glad that you signed back up. I was so glad...
Was cool.
I talk to people all the time. There was the high school quarterback who was hitting his prime at 18, and then there were some of the corporate types that bottomed out when they got about 40 and tired. I have not even come close to my peak. So not even close. So we're going to let it rip.
I love it.
Okay. So Siebel, then SAP and then ServiceNow. So from October 2000 to March 2002, right, the NASDAQ went down 70% as the bubble burst, right? And I remember just looking -- it was right about when I got fired from that in -- my previous employer, right? Every day, everything went down and it didn't stop. And there's a guy named Dan Niles, who is still sort of around. But I remember he went on CNBC, and he had absolutely nailed the downgrade of all the hardware stocks.
And I remember Maria Bartiromo asking him, Dan, when can we buy these stocks? And he goes, hey, it was 5 or 6 years on the way up. It's not going to be a month or two on the way down, right? When you look at that period compared to today -- and then you were also there, obviously, for the great financial crisis, another huge downturn. S&P dropped 57%. So talk to us a little bit about what it was like trying to sell software and what the situations were like in those two downturns and how it feels compared to today.
Yes. I think we're in a situation where if you take anything away from that, you know tough times don't last, tough people do and resilient with durable business models always shine through all difficult times. So first, on the dot-com era. I mean, this is when Global Crossings was laying fiber cable under the ocean on the prospect of this unbelievable new world order of things. So it was kind of like buy and invest and worry about whether you have a customer for it later. The financial crisis was different in 2008. I can remember at that time, I was an Executive Board member of SAP running global field operations for the company and losing EUR 1 billion in license revenue in 30 days, just gone. And so this -- always remedies for companies that have durable business...
Again, EUR 1 billion?
EUR 1 billion in pipeline in a month, gone, just gone. And so at that time, you can adjust your business model. That's the beauty of strong, durable software companies that will run on very strong margins. You can do other things with your business model and still pull out a profitable outcome even when revenue is under enormous pressure. And then in 2009, it was a slow recovery. You'll all remember that. And I became CEO in 2010. And what was amazing then the cloud had already formed and enterprise SaaS was already well underway, and we had exactly zero in the cloud. And so the idea then was to have a resilient core ERP nervous system that connected to these best-of-breed clouds and really run a knowledge enterprise powered by an in-memory database. And that worked out pretty well since we quintupled the value of the company and the revenues of the company.
And looking at where we're at now with the current environment, it is such a good opportunity. First of all, I've never seen entry points like this. And I think the opinion is already changing, where at first, it was like any time a new language model would release something, it was like, oh, this is a catastrophe for enterprise software. And I love this innovation. And I think it's fantastic. What we have tried to do as a company is always be open to the innovation. So for example, if you remember with the hyperscalers, that was going to be the end of enterprise software, especially in the SaaS category because everybody would do everything through the hyperscaler. And we opened our platform. We're the only one to all 3, AWS, Azure and GCP because we knew these are fabulous companies.
These are significant important companies. And so not only do we integrate at a deep engineering level, but we even let the customer retire their revenue commitments to these companies if they want to run ServiceNow in their clouds. No problem. And so today, they do billions in revenue on the back of ServiceNow, and I'm happy for them because it opens up the lanes for us to do more business as a friendly open platform. Today, if you look at the language models, whether it's OpenAI or Anthropic or Bedrock or any of the other ones, we're completely open to these platforms. And here's what's really happening. All of that thinking power is great. But I'll give you the simplest of examples. If you're trying to get your VPN operationalized and for some reason, your IT department tells you, "Hey, man, it's expired. Your license has expired." A large language model can tell you the steps in which you take to get your license renewed or get your network rebooted, but it can't actually do it for you. It's a simple example, but it's representative of thousands more that I can give you.
So they do something very important, but not the action of actually doing the work. And so we team up with all of them. For example, OpenAI on natural language, they can make a really big difference on our platform, Anthropic in developing software more quickly, the setup work is done. But we find that because we're so open, the context awareness of 85 billion workflows that are in flight right now in the global economy, almost 7 trillion transactions matter for context, awareness, all the things about governance, audits, controls and just like that individual trying to get their VPN to cooperate, all of that is done at enterprise scale for the biggest corporations in the world. So it's not better or worse. It's different. Take advantage of it, work with it and make the customer better because of it. Furthermore, if you think about data, data is everywhere. Databricks is an important company. Snowflake is an important company.
In fact, all the systems of records, they matter. They're actually important companies, whether it's the SAPs of the world or the Oracles of the world or even some of the SaaS companies. We cooperate with all of them because that data in those systems matters in the workflow, data fabric and how you actually execute your business processes in a corporation. So while it's also true that we have the world's best database with [ RouteDB, ] we never started that to be a database company. We wanted to have a workflow data fabric that enabled all the data to come together for the customer in real time. And therefore, they could either run it in ServiceNow or make a zero copy, and it's intrinsically executed in our workflow automation platform in real time. I think it's important to mention, Pat, if I may. Today, the deal for Veza closed today. And as you know, Moveworks closed at the end of last year, and we're on course for Armis to close in the first half of this year, which is going very well and very fast.
So what that's going to enable you to do is form the AI control tower for business reinvention. So for example, agentic business is the future, not at the expense of people to actually drive productivity outcomes and competitiveness for corporations so they can, in fact, thrive in this new era. So with the ServiceNow AI control tower, you're not only going to manage human identities, machine identities, but now we're going to also manage our agents and everyone else's agents, third-party agents. We're going to onboard them. We're going to monitor them. And we're going to manage them with the same governance and efficiency and scale as we manage people. And so it's the combination now of human and agents that's going to give us such a competitive advantage for our customers. That is huge.
Now with Moveworks, take a CVS, for example, Pat. They got 200 million roughly employees that use Moveworks as the front door for the whole employee experience, not just to like get on a website and see what the payroll looks like, but actually think about that since I mentioned payroll. You have a payroll issue. They can't hear me back there. Is that better? You're okay back there?
Let's say you have a payroll issue. If you use a language model to straighten out the payroll issue, it will tell you have a payroll issue. It will explain to you the various steps in the process that are required to remediate this issue. With ServiceNow, the issue is not only explained, the issue is automatically resolved across multiple legacy systems in a very complex infrastructure of a global enterprise. It's a different kettle of fish, not better nor worse. They just perform different things.
And so it is the power of this idea of having the control tower for business reinvention to manage the people, the agents, deal with all, all of the cases and the workflow associated with them through this front door called Moveworks, Veza managing the agents, human machines, nonhuman identities, third party. Remember, onboard, monitor, secure, govern the whole thing. So you can't have rogue agents get out of control with ServiceNow because we treat it just like a person. And then finally, with Armis, I think Armis may, in fact, be our Instagram. And the reason for that is this. When you think about the security plane right now, each security breach in these companies cost the company $4.4 million. In the world of AI and agents, you're going to have more breaches than ever, and that's why it's going to make us stronger than ever because with our IT platform, people, places, things, context, governance, rules, compliance, auditable, rollback security, all that's in there.
And now you get OT where it's like all the operating technology, think about infrastructure, networks, devices, IoT, medical manufacturing equipment, manufacturing industrial controllers, shadow IT, all the things that OT does and secures in an agentless fashion is now combined on one platform. So I give this one example. It's another bank, but I think it's a good example. If you think about JPMorgan as an example, and Jamie has a pretty nice building on Park Avenue, he's got to be thinking about the hard infrastructure, the networks, the devices, the people, the whole thing, $4 billion investment, you want to protect it. All of it's done by Armis. I could have also said Honeywell and many others.
They do business with 40% of the Fortune 100 already, and they don't have a sales force, certainly one of our size, scale and capability. So this is the vision. for ServiceNow to embrace all participants on this once-in-a-generation platform that enables you to change the game. And if I may, Pat, I was thinking about doing this on X, but I have this great interview with one of the real luminaries in the industry. That's why I'm here today. I'm here because of Pat. And I want it to come.
Thank you.
And the thing I wanted to tell you is I had to be patient because when I saw an unhinged podcast earnings call done by a legacy CRM company, I thought to myself, my God, what is going on here? Have we really gotten that far under their skin that they're doing this type of a thing? But then I said, well, let's check out those companies that they're talking about replacing us at. And so there was 1 out of 5 that represented $42,000. Okay, $42,000. All the other ones are still doing business with us. Most of them are renewals that haven't even come up yet for 2 years. And most of them right now are in flight on another sales cycle with us. There was one called [indiscernible] for $42,000. So I want you to understand that just because somebody says they did something, doesn't actually mean they did it. I can give you anything I want. I can toss it over the fence to you because I'm big, I said, here it is. You can have it for free actually. That doesn't mean you're ever going to go live on it because none of them have.
So I just want to set the record straight because we got $2 billion today, as I sit here in pipeline in CRM, okay? And I thought maybe you get a kick out of this since we're talking about names. This might turn you on, DraftKings, Zoom, Starbucks, Xerox, Boomi, Swisscom, Micron, Iron Mountain, Bell Canada, Panasonic Avionics, NVIDIA. Because NVIDIA is the world's most valuable company, I thought you might get a kick out of this. We use CPQ to configure and quote some of the most complex products of the world's supercomputers and turnkey AI data center installations. This is one of Jensen's direct reports. ServiceNow CPQ is the best in the industry. There's simply no question about that, the best. A lot of other people think that too. So $2 billion and marching. So I think it's really a great opportunity to level set. Okay. Thank you.
That was fantastic. Thank you, Bill.
Let's talk about competition. Let's talk about competition. So let's talk about competition broadly, and you just definitely started that, but -- and then also talk about competition in terms of your right to win for control tower.
Competition broadly and right to win because of Control tower. We're on the right side of what the customer needs. If you talk to CEOs today, they want to take advantage of all the AI in this really amazing super cycle for AI, and we're leaning into that as well. Today, we resolve 90% of the issues related to customer service that used to be done by people with agents. We're well on our way to $0.5 billion in cost/productivity as a result of doing this. And you say, well, how do I know? Well, if you look at our revenue growth -- and by the way, I think when people have this multiple debate, gee, why is their multiple -- it came down a lot, but why is their multiple still the highest? Because we grow more than twice as fast as all the other ones.
And our margin performance at a free cash flow level is also higher than all of them, even as we hire and build not a make-believe culture, but a real culture where we level with people and we train people and we let them know your very employability is dependent on your AI skills because this is a new economy, and it is a disruptive economy, and we want to take you on this journey with us, which is what we've done. But there's huge, huge opportunities in really driving AI in service to people. Because what good is it if it doesn't make people better. And so as a culture, CEOs rarely talk about that. I think that's one of our superpowers, not to mention this amazing platform. So competitively speaking, I think when you look at NVIDIA and ServiceNow being the 1 and 2 most trusted companies in the world, I'll take #2 if it means being next to Jensen and his amazing fantastic company.
So that's my feeling on the big picture. As it relates to sort of the micro idea, I've already told you, we embrace the language models. We embrace the hyperscalers. We respect all the systems of records. Most of them obviously have gotten the memo on working with ServiceNow because their win rates go up when they work with us. And we're only too happy to help them because for the most part, we don't really want to be a legacy database supporting legacy applications. We want to be the system of action driving this AI superpower through these corporations in every industry, in every corner of the global marketplace. And we want to do that at a consistent rule of 50, 50-plus company. Right now, we're in the mid-50s, and we want to keep that momentum going. It's pretty special. I hope you see what I see.
As it relates to CRM, I think it's really simple. It's no longer customer relationship management. It's all about resolution. Nobody wants just the front-end conversation. That has been commoditized. We do it, others do it. legacy players do it. That's fine. But what they want is the connectedness to the mid and the back office so they can sell, okay, provide, provision the service and service all on one platform, selling, fulfilling, provisioning, servicing, all on one platform. If, for example, a legacy CRM provider is doing the conversation, no problem. That's up to the customer. They can still do the fulfillment and the servicing on the ServiceNow platform, which many of them are choosing in record numbers. And a lot of them now are saying, I choose to rip and replace it in a methodical way because the cost is high and the benefits from the legacy is not doing it for me anymore.
And you can't almost blame them because they took something that was okay as a rental in the cloud for certain applications, but it's gotten colossal where an employee on average is swivel chairing in and out of 33 applications a day. So to service a customer in AI, it has to be a smooth magic carpet end-to-end business process. I order something, you fulfill it, you service me, you keep me loyal. It's bang, bang, bang. You meet me in any channel I'm in and you take care of me for life. The net present value of a very satisfied customer is the greatest asset of any corporation. So we have changed from customer relationship management to the comprehensive resolution and full service of AI to a customer. And no, the human touch has not gone. but it is going to be segmented based on the size, complexity, industry, vertical, micro vertical heuristics of the customer you're servicing. So that's a big thing.
On HR, as an example, I mean, it's more of the same. I think right now, the legacy has a place. If a customer has it in their database and they want to keep that, that's fine. But the AI front door, that agentic front door to the full employee experience. So for example, recruit me, hire me, onboard me, train me, give me all my benefits, Show me all my compensation logistics and all the things in real time. If I have an error in something in the corporation, AI should remediate that across any system, across any particular management hierarchy within a corporation because I, as an employee, want to be treated like a customer. And then also when you offboard me, make sure it's clean, it's concise. I stay loyal to your brand, and I'm not mixed up in your data.
So all those things we do and so much more. On the financial supply chain and operations side, I think that the ERP providers, while they may not be growth companies anymore, I don't think it's on the top priority list of companies to like x them out. But I think the innovation above them is this workflow orientation that I'm explaining to you where they get all the benefits of AI without going through a lot of the pain of either upgrading something that they've done many times before or even thinking about switching it out because with ServiceNow, they don't have to. So this is like a quick thumbnail sketch on what's going on in the market. I do think, and I put together a white paper on this, and Darren will happily give it to you if you send him your interest in having it. It's a white paper with a deep technical architectural view of things, which I think is a great read for you. It won't even be boring. And then if you are bored by reading, it has an executive summary that would be very consumable to a CEO.
And I think you're entitled to both of them. And believe me, great care and precision has been put into this document, and it does tell you what all of the language models do and what they don't do. We think they're all fine companies, but we also think that last mile of the action is where it's at in terms of that control plane analogy I gave you earlier in the conversation. Does that help you, Pat?
Fantastic. Okay. I asked my trademark question, Bill. And you kind of hit on this, but how is business?
Business is great. I mean the thing is we have so consistently performed. I said to myself, sometimes a company can almost seem boring if their executional excellence is at an art form level. It's like, oh, yes, here we go another quarter, they're over 20%. The free cash flow margin is going through feeling -- right. And it's like okay like can we find something wrong here? And I get it like in the fourth quarter of last year, I really did empathize with the shareholders because we hadn't really done any M&A. And then Moveworks took 9 months between when we actually decided to do it, and I think it's a pristine move, by the way, and you will, too, and actual closing. And that so happened to be within like 24 hours of Veza and then shortly after Armis, so people might have said, what's you doing? Like what are they up to over there at ServiceNow? Are they doing this because they need the revenue? And let me take that on directly.
No, we didn't do it because we needed the revenue. If we did it because we needed the revenue, we would have done some of the ones that you've seen some legacy companies in the CRM category do because they're desperate for the revenue, and they have to chunk in something about every 11 months before you realize their core isn't growing. So let's chunk it in and get a few points and you know how it works. These companies are innovative AI companies. They're young and they don't have those big revenue pops. So if I was buying the revenue, I wouldn't have done any one of the three. It would have been a bad idea. But if I was buying you the defining AI software company of the 21st century, I would have been negligent not to do all three. And that will prove itself out for sure. So that's kind of the deal on how I feel about this idea of executional excellence at an art form level so consistently well above the Rule of 50 and also the fact that you guys deserve clear answers on why did you do those three? And hopefully, today, I've cleared that up.
The other thing the shareholders had a question about is like, hey, man, because of this AI world, are seats going away? And I think that's a very fair question because I think agentic business is here to stay. But uniquely, the ServiceNow franchise grew seats 20 active users, 25% year-over-year. And I told that in the earnings script. But I realized that, hey, like don't let facts get in the way when people's minds are already made up. And so I think at that point, there was like just questions in the overall macro and the environment around business software companies or SaaS companies, as people like to say, that no matter what I said on the earnings call, no matter how good the revenue or the guide was, there was still going to be these resounding questions. And that's totally fair. But business is great. And the one thing I also want to point out that's unique about our architecture, I never get to talk about this.
When I hear SaaS, I always tell you guys, we don't live in a SaaS neighborhood. And I say that because the SaaS companies you're familiar with are multi-tenant clouds. We're a single-tenant cloud. I can run it in a sovereign way in Germany or France today, meaning if you want it in your own data center, no problem. If you want it sovereign because of the issues that are going on with data and [indiscernible] relations between national interests, I can run it in a sovereign cloud in your country or in your government. I can also run it in the ServiceNow cloud or any one of the hyperscalers clouds or any hybrid of that. I can give you a pricing mechanism based on the seats. But also when I give you my Pro Plus version of our software, there is an allotment of all the AI resources and capabilities. Once you run through that allotment, which you're more than happy to do because you wouldn't do it if you weren't getting business benefits, then we can reload the tokens on a hybrid basis.
I have another one that's quickly developing, where our business cases are so good, and that's really what it's all about. What are you doing for the customer? What is their outcome? Is it a great ROI story or isn't it? We have one legacy CRM replacement in Europe where the business case was $682 million and a large SI actually is underwriting the business case. So the customer, your CEO, you're like, hey, it seems good, everything looks good, but we're really not that great at execution. Am I going to get the money out of this investment? The SI says, "Well, I'll tell you what, we think it's so good, we'll underwrite it for you." So you have that developing, the hybrid business model developing. DraftKings, which was an example I gave you, have already reloaded. They're so happy the way they can customize the bets, especially for the best betters and so forth. And there's many other stories like that. And the seats are growing.
So all these things are in very, very nice formation. Will it shift? Will it adjust over time? Yes. But we're ready for that. We've actually anticipated it now for the 7 years I've been here, we started building it with Jensen 7 years ago in NVIDIA, and we're more than ready for this race. In fact, it's our best moment as a corporation because we happen to have what the customer wants.
When you look at -- hopefully, you're good coming on this, if not, it's fine...
You give me anything you want.
I know.
This is real.
Yes, the layoffs of block, right? So you have a company that 10,000 employees that letting 4,000 of them go and then everyone is like, oh, no, that's, do they run ServiceNow? How many seats do they have? So what are your thoughts on that and your reactions...
Yes. Again, like, for example, let's just say you take block or -- first of all, that's a pretty bold move that [ Jack Dorsey ] made. I hope that those people quickly find employment elsewhere. I do have a heart for people, and I'm sure he does, too. But the reality is he's betting on agentic business to supersede the need for lots of humans in his particular enterprise. CEOs have the right to do that. And therefore, with our business model, the AI control tower for business reinvention, he's betting on those agents. And so if you're betting on those agents, which is a logical thing to do, you now have people, humans. You're now going to have the nonhuman agents that you're going to have to onboard them. You're going to have to monitor them. You're going to have to control them with very tight security guardrails, which we've already built into our system. It's already there.
And those agents that are machines, thinking machines will work in tandem with the humans. But we can take the thinking machines alone across any business process in our control tower and let them run a fully formed business process. Let's say it's order to cash or lead to cash or procure to pay or design to build or recruit to retire. We've already thought about all this, and we're already doing it at ServiceNow, and we're already doing it for many, many customers, which is why our AI business is growing so fast. So I think that's a bold step. It's a larger step than most will take, but I expect that others will take similar steps at a smaller scale, and that will benefit the hybrid pricing model.
Similarly, any time anybody says, Hey, Bill, tell you what, let's go for our own model. You have a share of my revenue growth or my savings. done. Let's go. And the second I say that to them, they're like, "Oh, actually, I'm good with the seats plus the hybrid. Thank you. Thank you very much.
Have you done one of those for real?
Of course.
You do?
Of course.
And when they see the size of the prize, they realize the percentage of the value that we get with our traditional licensing mechanism even with the hybrid approach on the AI, which they haven't fully formed in their mind in terms of business impact. They're like, let's go with that. So the real world is where I live. I live where the customer lives, and I know what's going on in these relationships. And truthfully, the biggest challenge is a bunch of confused CEOs that just want to know what they are supposed to do, not for anybody or against anybody, for their self-interest.
And therefore, I suggest you take a look at this white paper again, [email protected], is that right? And I give you my authentic fact-based architectural design and executive summary. And I think you'll find it extremely compelling. It's a body of work I'm extremely proud of and put the best people on it, reviewed every single line, and it's factual and it's fantastic. And CEOs around the world told me, thank you very much. The first CEO that actually gave me something that I understand it actually makes sense. And it's not a sales pitch. It's not a marketing brochure. It's not even a made-up sales story in a podcast.
Oh my gosh. All right. Can we -- so many directions I want to go and got 5 minutes. But let's -- can we hit the federal business?
Yes, sure.
And address it to whatever extent you think is okay. But you have a huge federal business. What's your relationship with Anthropic like? And what's the current standoff between Anthropic and the Department of War maybe mean for ServiceNow?
Yes. We actually do not use Anthropic for our public sector entities at all. So there's zero impact to ServiceNow related to the Anthropic public sector U.S. government matter. So cross that one off your worry list. It's not there. We have a great relationship, as you know, with the federal government, with state and local governments. It's literally one of our truly greatest verticals. We work extremely closely with GSA. I admire the work that Josh and his team have done on behalf of the President and the administration, I think it's fantastic.
We were very, very forward leaning with one gov where we put a contract together for all of the government that they can procure from, which gives them tremendous privileges and rights, but it also encourages all the agencies to jump on board. So if you had an issue with negotiating or going through these long boring processes, don't worry about it. ServiceNow already leaned in and we're rolling. So our business is great. And even when our business, when there were questions about the public sector and the change to the public sector and everybody was so worried, you might even remember that quarter, we grew 30% in that quarter.
So we're very well positioned. What's happening now is the greatness of the U.S. government is being replicated in other governments around the world. And the reason I touched on that sovereign cloud issue is we're out in front of all these issues. Like we are the protagonist in the story. If there's a concern or there's a customer requirement, we have supplier specifications lined up and measurables ready to go to prevail in any environment. So no excuses, no shortcuts. We're on top of our business.
Fantastic. All right. Last question. Biggest -- and you hit this so hard on your earnings call. It was great. It's a little while later, you've had 1 million conversations. Biggest misunderstanding that you think is still out there with the investor community in ServiceNow.
Well, I think I've touched on quite a bit of them. I think I touched on the seat-based licensing. I think I've touched on if that were to adjust -- our hybrid pricing, obviously, is there today, and it's already kicking in. And I think that will be a continued prevailing theme, the combination of those 2 things. And then I also think because we're so strong in the Global 2000, we're prepared for any business model against the value creation or the ROI that we can put forward for the customer. And because we are an end-to-end platform company, we can talk to the customer about their IT, their security asset estate. We can talk to them about their human employee experience portfolio. We can talk to them about what I really truly do believe is a much broader topic than just CRM. I truly believe it's all about customer resolution at AI speed from order, fulfill and service.
And then obviously, the engineers and the innovators, they deserve everybody to give them the best tools possible. And I think Anthropic has done a great job of that. I'm sure OpenAI, we have a partnership with them, too, is doing some really important things, especially with natural language and voice that we've embedded into our product. And they also both showed in our product release from an autonomous platform standpoint in ways that I think will continue to come clear when we have everybody present in Las Vegas for the keynote at Knowledge, the Financial Analyst Day at Knowledge and so forth. So I just think that if those were misunderstandings, you just need to have some peace of mind that they should be cleared up at this moment in time. And I really do believe that I had a dream when I came here. SAP was a wonderful company. I loved all 17 years and all nearly 10 as CEO.
Why did I do it? Because when I as CEO of SAP hired ServiceNow, they took my very complex 100,000-person, $30 billion in revenue organization with some cloud formations that were not organic, and they unified that on one platform where I could see my employees, I could see my customers, I could execute my mission. And I said, "Man, if they could do that for me," they could do it for a lot of other companies, too, which was the reason I came here with the dream to be the AI-defining enterprise software company of the 21st century. And I'm only getting warmed up. But the cool thing is I got 29,000 other people that feel the same way. And we did 3 very nice M&As. Certainly, as a percent of our revenue, I think they're extremely minor in the big picture. But in terms of the capability of the control tower for business reinvention, they're huge. And they all love the idea of being part of ServiceNow.
I go back to the culture because, you know what, -- it was real cool when CEOs in Silicon Valley in certain areas talked about culture, and that was their advantage. Notice when things got tough, the culture was the first thing they threw out the window. And so we didn't. And I think that, that's holding a strength in our fabric that's built for this moment. And I think that's going to be a major differentiator for ServiceNow going forward.
Bill, thank you so much for coming.
Pat, thank you for having me. Great pleasure to be here...
Thank you for your...
Thank you so much. Appreciate you.
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ServiceNow, Inc. — Citizens JMP Technology Conference 2026
ServiceNow, Inc. — Citizens JMP Technology Conference 2026
📣 Kernbotschaft
- Kern: ServiceNow positioniert sich als "AI Control Tower": Menschliche Nutzer, nicht-menschliche Agenten und Sicherheits-/Asset-Controls werden auf einer Workflow‑Plattform zusammengeführt, sodass KI-Generierung in echte, auditierbare Automatisierung übergeht.
- Takeaway: Offen gegenüber großen Sprachmodellen und Hyperscalern; Fokus auf Umsetzung (Action) statt nur auf Proof-of-Concepts — Ziel: messbare ROI und operative Kontrolle.
🎯 Strategische Highlights
- M&A: Moveworks, Veza, Armis sollen komplementäre Bausteine liefern: Front‑door für Employee Experience, Agenten-/Identity-Governance und OT-/IoT‑Sicherheit — zusammen zum Control‑Tower.
- Ökosystem: Kompatibilität mit OpenAI, Anthropic, Databricks, Snowflake und Hyperscalern (AWS, Azure, GCP) — ServiceNow bleibt Plattform‑offen, integriert Kontext aus Trillionen Transaktionen.
- Cloud & Pricing: Single‑tenant/sovereign‑Deployments möglich; Hybridmodell mit Sitzlizenzierung plus AI‑Allotments (Tokens) und Nachladeoptionen; Seat‑Wachstum bleibt zentral.
🔭 Neue Informationen
- Aktuell: Management nennt Veza‑Deal als gerade geschlossen, Moveworks als abgeschlossen Ende letzten Jahres und Armis „on course“ für Abschluss in der ersten Jahreshälfte; CRM‑Pipeline wird mit ~$2 Mrd. genannt.
- Konsequenz: Diese Zukäufe werden als integraler Baustein zur Absicherung der „last mile“ Automatisierung und zur Governance nicht‑humaner Agenten dargestellt — kein reines Revenue‑Buy.
⚡ Bottom Line
- Implikation: Für Aktionäre bedeutet der Auftritt: klare Produktvision für AI‑getriebene Automatisierung, fortgesetztes Seat‑ und Pipeline‑Wachstum sowie ein Hybrid‑Pricing, das Risiken addressiert. Wichtige Beobachtungspunkte: Integration der Zukäufe, tatsächliche Umsatzwirkung und Marktreaktion auf Preis‑/Lizenzmodell‑Änderungen.
ServiceNow, Inc. — Q4 2025 Earnings Call
1. Management Discussion
Thank you for standing by. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Q4 and Full Year 2025 ServiceNow Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] I would now like to turn the call over to Darren Yip, Senior Vice President of Investor Relations and Market Insights. You may begin.
Good afternoon, and thank you for joining ServiceNow's Fourth Quarter 2025 Earnings Conference Call. Joining me are Bill McDermott, our Chairman and Chief Executive Officer; Gina Mastantuono, our President and Chief Financial Officer; and Amit Zaveri, President, Chief Product Officer and Chief Operating Officer. During today's call, we will review our fourth quarter 2025 results and discuss our guidance for the first quarter and full year 2026.
Before we get started, we want to emphasize that the information discussed on this call, including our guidance is based on information as of today and contains forward-looking statements that involve risks, uncertainties and assumptions. We undertake no duty or obligation to update such statements as a result of new information or future events.
Please refer to today's earnings press release and our SEC filings, including our most recent 10-Q and 10-K for factors that may cause actual results to differ materially from our forward-looking statements.
We'd also like to point out that we present non-GAAP measures in addition to and not as a substitute for, financial measures calculated in accordance with GAAP. Unless otherwise noted, all financial measures and related growth rates we discuss today are non-GAAP except for revenues, remaining performance obligations, or RPO, current RPO and cash and investments.
To see the reconciliation between these non-GAAP and GAAP measures, please refer to today's earnings press release and investor presentation, which are both posted on our website at investors.servicenow.com.
A replay of today's call will also be posted on our website. With that, I'll turn the call over to Bill.
Thank you very much, Darren, and good afternoon to everyone joining today's call. As you might imagine, I've been waiting for this extraordinarily exciting moment since December 31, 2025. There seems to be speculation everywhere these days, so let's take it all head on.
Here are the facts. Our Q4 results beat expectations handily, just like we have consistently for years now. Overall, Q4 NNA CV growth accelerated both quarter-over-quarter and year-over-year in Q4.
Our subscription revenue growth was 21%, 19.5% in constant currency, 1.5 points above the high end of our guidance. Contribution from Moveworks was de minimis. Our CRPO growth was 25%, 21% in constant currency, 2 points above our guidance including a 1% contribution from Moveworks.
Operating margin was 31%, 1 point above our guidance. Full year '25 free cash flow margin was 35%, and 1 point above our already raised guidance. We had 244 deals greater than $1 million in NNHCV. We had 7 deals greater than $10 million in NNHCV. And CRM NNH CV growth accelerated quarter-over-quarter to close its largest quarter in history wrapped to DB Pro more than tripled NNHCV year-on-year in Q4, including 131 million-plus deals. Workflow Data Fabric was in 16 of our top 20 Q4 deals, and we've seen attach rates increase in every quarter of 2025.
All of the workflow businesses were very strong in Q4. Gina will take you through the breakdown on all the metrics. The speculation of AI will eat software companies is out there. Let's clear it up with the facts. Enterprise AI will be the largest driver of return on the multitrillion dollar super cycle of investment in AI infrastructure, the real payoff comes when trillions of tokens move beyond pilots to be embedded directly into the workflows where business decisions are made.
ServiceNow is the gateway to this shift, serving as the semantic layer that makes AI ubiquitous in the enterprise. We are also the great consolidator of hundreds of feature and function specific software solutions into end-to-end business processes with our AI control tower for business reinvention.
You need AI plus workflows because AI is probabilistic, which by definition means we can't be certain about the results. Workflow orchestration is deterministic, predictable, no randomness, which is required given the sophistication and governance of running global enterprises.
AI doesn't replace enterprise orchestration. It depends on it. It depends on governance, it depends on scale. Many people ask why our valuation has not kept pace with our results. The short answer is that we have been viewed as a feature-oriented SaaS company.
We are not living in a SaaS neighborhood. We are a platform company, executing a long-term platform strategy where AI agents and workflows are harmonious and synonymous creating sustained advantage, not short-term wins.
This makes ServiceNow's AI platform more strategically relevant today than ever. By the way, our monthly active users grew 25%, now assist NN HCV outperformed expectations in Q4 and surpassed $600 million in ACV.
In Q4, now assist NN ACV more than doubled year-over-year. We had 35 deals over $1 million in Q4 alone. Our AI controlled tower deal volume nearly tripled quarter-over-quarter in Q4. We saw great brands already purchasing assist packs in Q4 across a variety of industries, including financial services, manufacturing, health care, life sciences, public sector and technology.
Overall, the number of workflows and the number of transactions each grew over 33% and from $60 billion to $80 billion and from $4.8 trillion to $6.4 trillion, respectively, and the growth continues. I continue to hear speculation about seat compression. If all we did was look at available seats in our target market, there would be an estimated $1.3 billion seats in that target market. So we barely scratch the surface.
And of course, we're looking far beyond seats alone with our hybrid business model for billions of devices, agents and assist. On the back of this momentum, we're guiding to 20% subscription revenue growth for 2026. And by now, everyone knows how ServiceNow rolls. We don't set our sights on hitting the guide. We set our sights on beating it. The speculation out there, is that M&A is the new playbook out of necessity? Here are the facts.
ServiceNow has the fastest organic growth in the history of enterprise software. We're the fastest enterprise software company to have ever reached $1 billion, $5 billion and $10 billion organically. And on our way to cross $15 billion plus this year.
Since 2019, we've nearly quadrupled our revenue, all built on a foundation of continuous innovation and net new product delivery. ServiceNow is fully capable of achieving previously stated subscription revenue and now assist ACV targets without M&A.
Our capital allocation strategy is about accelerating customer value and shareholder value. We have never acquired a single company for revenue alone. We use M&A to expand into an even larger TAM, and it is now beyond $600 billion based entirely on where our customers need us to go, where we know we can build exciting growth businesses.
Our announced plans to acquire Vesa and Armes happened in rapid succession because this assembles 3 critical layers for enterprises to operate securely in Agentic AI world, visibility, identity and orchestration with our fast-growing $1 billion-plus CACV security and risk business, the timing to expand the opportunity could not be better.
Post Armes, we do not see any other large white spaces that are necessary to complete our platform vision for security. ServiceNow's organic growth strategy with opportunistic tuck-ins for tech and talent remains unchanged, AI, data, workflows, security.
We are one of the few companies totally in control of our own destiny. We are playing offense on our tippy toes. That's why we're announcing an incremental USD 5 billion share repurchase authorization with an immediate ASR of $2 billion.
Here's another fact. ServiceNow has one unifying objective, which is simply to be the AI defining enterprise software company in the 21st century. IDC estimates there will be 2.2 billion AI agents in the world by 2030. Millions of those will be built on the ServiceNow platform.
Whatever isn't built on our platform will be governed and secured by our AI control tower. ServiceNow is a build or buy winner. We'll win with the builders because they want ServiceNow for our Data Fabric, our agents, governance and security.
We'll win for buyers because they want best-of-breed AI native workflows and agents to reinvent their status quo in IT, HR, CRM, app development and beyond. We have a pristine rule of 55-plus financial profile, a comprehensive integrated platform architecture.
We're open to any cloud, any language model, any data source and system integration. We're one of the most trusted companies in the world according to Forbes. We have an award-winning culture with millions of talented applicants. You may have noticed that I recently extended my own commitment here to ServiceNow until 2030 and beyond.
There's one reason I did this. Overwhelming belief in this company. This is a $1 trillion company in the making. I can't fathom a better entry point for what ServiceNow is building.
To those on this journey with us, we are grateful for your enduring support. To those who are waiting. We've given you every reason to believe that time is now. This is a one-on-one company. That's not speculation. It's a fact. Let's bring the ServiceNow story to life with customer examples.
We closed a $1 million-plus assist pack deal with a leading U.S. consumer services company after customer service agents generated a 400% ROI. After a year of deployment, the customer needed 8x more assist as they transition customer support operations to predominantly automated interactions.
This is minimizing operating costs, shortening support resolution times and enhancing the overall customer experience. They are flipping to support model from 80% human-led 20% automated to 80% automated and 20% human-led.
In Q4, we closed a landmark 7-figure deal with a complex high-tech manufacturer, involving an end-to-end takeout of a legacy CRM competitor. They turn to ServiceNow CPQ to solve their complex deal evaluations, replacing manual spreadsheets and unsuccessful legacy tools. In combination with CSM, workflow Data Fabric, now assist and other products, too, our customer trusted ServiceNow as their AI control tower for business reinvention.
A leading European telecom provider is building an AI-driven CRM solution for the telecom industry with ServiceNow. They consolidated 7 internal systems using ServiceNow CRM, and they're going to modernize even further to sell, serve and support its own customers. This is reducing costs by 30%, reducing cycle time from order to fulfillment by 25% and resolving 20% more work orders on the first request.
A leading Canadian real estate company, selected ServiceNow CRM platform to integrate all aspects of their resident support and field operations with a unified data model. The customer leverage ServiceNow to gain real-time operational visibility, optimized dispatch and automate work order management. This drove efficiency gains that delivered more than 100% ROI.
A global business services company deployed ServiceNow agents for incident classification and resolution resulting in initial time savings of 13% for agents involved. The company is now processing hundreds of thousands of AI assist monthly on ServiceNow.
An international leader in commercial real estate services deployed ServiceNow agents to automate e-mail triage across their service desk, reducing mean time to resolution from 2 days to minutes, bringing agents for higher-value work.
A U.S. insurance company uses ServiceNow out-of-the-box agents to automate e-mail to case conversion achieving 91% accuracy and saving agents up to 12% of their time annually through an AI-first mindset.
A diversified industrial multinational conglomerate deployed ServiceNow agents to automate help desk triage. These ServiceNow agents now handle over 90% of incoming requests. They have reduced triage time by 50% and with 99% routing accuracy. This saves tens of thousands of hours annually.
One of Europe's largest drugstore chains, you ServiceNow to transform its customer service cutting the time it took customers to receive support from 9 minutes to 30 seconds and resolving customer issues with 98% accuracy.
ServiceNow was selected by a large U.S. county in a 7-figure deal to replace a legacy highly customized IT platform. They are supporting election operations by consolidating manual, fragmented processes into our AI platform leveraging native ITSM, asset management, custom app development and offline mobile capabilities.
A large U.S. agency, it's using ServiceNow is the foundation of its IT modernization strategy. They are consolidating all IT services on ServiceNow, replacing more than 40 disparate tools currently in use. And looking ahead, they plan to use ServiceNow Agenic AI capabilities to expand self-service and reduce operational overhead.
Everyone talks about AI. We deliver business outcomes with AI. Last quarter, we announced a collaboration with FedEx DataWorks, while supply chains are more critical than ever, many companies still lack the predictive intelligence needed to coordinate today's complex value chains.
We're combining ServiceNow's orchestration with FedEx's unique data DNA to provide procurement leaders with trusted insights and our source-to-pay solution. FedEx is also expanding beyond just Source to Pay, its partnership will leverage the capabilities of the ServiceNow AI platform.
Other great brands like Adobe, Accenture, EY, Fiserv, Siemens, Panasonic Avionics and BT have all save millions and millions and they're using ServiceNow to grow their business, and we could go on and on.
So let's talk a little bit about our great partners. Our ecosystem includes all 3 hyperscalers. They're all great companies. The language model companies. They're excellent too. Systems integrators, pure-play ServiceNow partners and independent software vendors. They're all building their futures on our AI platform.
Think about this. ServiceNow and Microsoft have announced a deep AI integration, connecting copilots, agents and data across Microsoft 365 and the ServiceNow AI platform to deliver seamless orchestration, governance and enterprise-wide automation. The collaboration introduces Microsoft's Agent 365 integration, and it's anchored by ServiceNow's AI control tower, and it sets a whole new standard for enterprise AI interoperability, moving organizations from isolated AI experiences to autonomous AI workflows that drive efficiency and return on investment.
ServiceNow and Anthropic have announced an expanded partnership to integrate Claude models more deeply into the ServiceNow AI platform. Through the collaboration, ServiceNow is also bringing leading cloud models into ServiceNow to support secure compliant AI across numerous industries.
ServiceNow also announced a new collaboration with OpenAI to enable direct customer access to frontier model capabilities, Custom ServiceNow AI solutions and increased speed with no bespoke development required. Under this agreement, OpenAI models will be a preferred intelligence capability for several agentic use cases offered to ServiceNow enterprise customers.
ServiceNow and NTT Data have expanded our strategic partnership to accelerate AI-led transformation for global enterprises, designating NTT Data as a strategic AI delivery partner. This includes co-developing and co-selling AI-powered solutions, also scaling NTT Data's use of ServiceNow's AI platform.
And together, we will operationalize AI responsibly advancing new deployment models and embedding AI engineering expertise into transformation projects. Again, these are just a few of the many strategic partnerships. Before I wrap up, let me give you a few more facts about our strategic expansion in AI security.
As you know, we're going through the regulatory clearance process, but we can say this. The combination of Vesa and Armes with ServiceNow AI platform will create something that is mission-critical for enterprise AI. In the Agentic era, if companies want to scale AI, trust and governance that span any cloud, any asset, any AI system and any device, these are all nonnegotiable.
So here's the problem enterprises face today. AI adoption is expanding the attack surface exponentially. Companies are deploying autonomous agents across their operations, but they're only able to see a small fraction of their digital estate. Traditional security tools do not address connected assets, especially unmanaged IoT devices operational technology and medical equipment.
To make matters worse, leaders have no control over who and what can access critical systems and data and they have no coordinated way to remediate vulnerabilities before they become breaches. And here's where ServiceNow's strategic vision comes into play.
First, Armes will solve the visibility problem. Armes provides real-time agentless discovery and classification of every asset across the entire enterprise. IT, OT, IoT, medical devices, industrial controllers and even shadow IT that bypasses procurement.
This creates a continuously updated map of the enterprise environment. Armes is already protecting over 40% of the Fortune 100 precisely because they've cracked the visibility challenge. Second, Veza, will solve the identity governance problem through its patented access graph technology, these maps, access relationships and privileges across humans machines and AI agents in real time.
This is critical because AI agents need dynamic context aware permissions an agent working for a senior manager needs different access than the same agent working for a junior employee and those permissions must be governed continuously not set once and forgotten.
CISOs have told us this is the bottleneck preventing AI agent deployment at scale. When both of these are integrated into ServiceNow's AI platform and AI control tower, this is how orchestration goes from theory to reality. When we combine Armes asset visibility with Vesa's identity governance and ServiceNow's business context, CMDB, which maps every asset to the services, processes and teams that supports you create something highly differentiated, a unified end-to-end security exposure and operation stack that can see, decide and act across the entire technology footprint.
Let's make this concrete for you. Armes discovers of vulnerability on an unmanaged IoT device in a manufacturing plant. That exposure insight automatically flows into ServiceNow's AI control tower. Now you understand which production line depends on that device, which team owns it and what the financial impact of downtime would be?
Simultaneously, Vesa maps who and what has access to that device and related systems. ServiceNow then automatically prioritizes the risk based on business impact, triggers the appropriate remediation workflow routed to the right team, with the right permissions and tracks resolution, all before an incident has a chance to occur.
This is autonomous, proactive cybersecurity, not alerts that sit in a queue, not manual coordination across fragmented tools, not security theater either. This is intelligent action at machine speed governed by unified policies executed through an automated workflow machine.
We just closed the largest quarter ever for OT in Q4. Customers recognize the expanded security capabilities these acquisitions will unlock and they are encouraging us to go even deeper and broader with them on OT.
Our customers are very excited and so are we. In closing, ServiceNow is exactly where the world needs it to be. The AI control tower for business reinvention situated in the core of the enterprise in the core of enterprise AI with the capabilities to automate, orchestrate and integrate any business process.
With Moveworks, from ServiceNow, we put AI to work for people, a front door to the agentic enterprise for every single employee in the world. We have the workflow data fabric to map the right information to the right workflows. We have the most innovative technology operating system in the world, the only one capable of delivering fully autonomous IT.
We have the customer demand to deliver AI native solutions for the employee experience and the customer experience to modernize expensive legacy systems. With Vesa and Armes, we will have the most comprehensive approach to secure the Agentic enterprise. There's only 2 measurements that matter in enterprise technology. Is there a completeness of vision is their proven capability to execute on both counts.
It's an enthusiastic yes, for ServiceNow. And 2 things can be true at the same time. You can have fast-growing new market participants building exciting use cases, especially for personal productivity at work. You can also have fast-growing market leaders at the core of enterprise-grade AI.
Many postmortems have been written in the enterprise over the years. Most of them ironically have been dead wrong. The -- great Luke Gerstner once said, changing business processes in a company is like setting your hair on fire and then using a hammer to put it out. This is hard work. It requires deep domain expertise, industrial-grade technology and a global distribution engine to reach global enterprises and meet the customer where they are.
Operating plans exist to organize the business. Dreams exist to unleash the imagination. Unprecedented fast time to value for our customers, $30 billion plus in revenue, consistent expansion of free cash flow, best-in-class profitable growth, $1 trillion market cap, our dreams for ServiceNow are clear and no operating plan will hold us back.
The world works with ServiceNow isn't a tagline. It's a hard line. If you have any doubts that we're building to greatness, I look forward to your questions later in the call. Thank you for your time and attention. I'll hand it over to our President and Chief Financial Officer, Gina Mastantuono. Gina, over to you.
Thank you, Bill. Q4 was another strong quarter, concluding a remarkable year of AI innovation. Net new ACV growth accelerated both quarter-over-quarter and year-over-year. We exceeded our top line growth and operating margin guidance metrics, showcasing our team's consistent execution and unwavering strength of our business.
Emerging product areas, including Now Assist, Workflow Data Fabric, Raptor and CPQ outperformed in the quarter. Furthermore, AI is also driving significant cost efficiencies and that have resulted in full year profitability beats on top of our recently raised guidance.
Turning to our results. Q4 subscription revenues were $3.466 billion, growing 19.5% year-over-year in constant currency, exceeding the high end of our guidance range by 150 basis points.
RPO ended the quarter at approximately $28.2 billion, representing 22.5% year-over-year constant currency growth. Current RPO was $12.85 billion representing 21% year-over-year constant currency growth, a 200 basis point beat versus our guidance.
Moveworks contributed 1 point to both RPO and CRPO. From an industry perspective, Transportation and Logistics continued to lead the way with net new ACV growing over 80% year-over-year. Business and Consumer Services also posted impressive growth, surpassing 70% year-over-year followed by Financial Services growing over 40% year-over-year.
Telecom Media and Technology also delivered strong growth in the quarter. We achieved a robust 98% renewal rate in Q4, underscoring the importance and value the customers place in the ServiceNow AI platform because 244 deals greater than $1 million in net new ACV in the quarter, including 9 with new logos.
Our strategic focus on landing the right new customers continues to deliver results. As new logo net new ACV in EMEA and Japan were up nearly 30% year-over-year. We accelerated net new customer adds in 2025 to end the year with over 8,800 customers including 603 generating over $5 million in ACV. Even more impressive, the number of customers contributing $20 million or more rose over 30% year-over-year.
These trends reflect the resilient strength in our core accompanied by increasing momentum in our emerging growth vectors. Our technology workflows net new ACV growth accelerated in Q4, both quarter-over-quarter and year-over-year as customers embrace autonomous IT to accelerate ROI with integrated workflows and take out costs and improve operational resilience.
ServiceOps is in 16 of our top 20 deals, highlighted by a standout performance in ITOM, which grew net new ACV nearly 50% year-over-year. ITAM within 17 of our top 20 deals, security and risk within 19 of our top 20 deals and drove nearly 40% net new ACV growth year-over-year.
Core business workflows were in 13 of our top 20 deals. CRM was in 16 and both on net new ACV accelerate sequentially. As Bill mentioned, CPQ had a phenomenal quarter, Logic is a perfect example of our M&A strategy, creating demonstrable ROI.
We identified an adjacent opportunity moved decisively integrated flawlessly, and we're already seeing outsized returns. Go-to-market synergies have unlocked significant opportunities as Logic customer count as part of ServiceNow has nearly quadrupled year-over-year in Q4.
Finally, creator workflows were in 19 of our top 20 deals with an impressive 32 deals over $1 million in ACV.
Moving to our success in driving broader AI adoption, now if this continues to outperform all expectations, surpassing $600 million in ACV and tracking well towards our $1 billion-plus target for 2026.
In Q4, deals greater than $1 million, nearly triple quarter-over-quarter and customers spending more than $1 million grew over 40%. The number of deals that included 5 or more now assist products increased by over 10x year-over-year as enterprises expand their Agenetic AI capabilities across their deployments.
We've also overachieved our initial AI control tower targets by more than 4x for 2025. As we develop prescriptive road maps for Agentic deployments, we are seeing the pace of AI monetization accelerate.
For example, our FTEs engaged with the leading American fast food change to enable a path to scaling a agentic AI across their customer service operations. As a result, they expanded their assist entitlement by 13x upon contract renewal in Q4 based upon anticipated value and usage.
Stories like these that have driven customer service analysis deals to see over 70% upsell expansion at renewal in Q4.
Turning to profitability. Non-GAAP operating margin was 31%, 100 basis points above our guidance, driven by the top line outperformance, OpEx efficiencies and disciplined spend management. Our free cash flow margin was 57%, up 950 basis points year-over-year, driven by store collections, lower CapEx and significant operating leverage.
For full year 2025, operating margin was 31%, up 150 basis points year-over-year. Free cash margin was 35%, up 350 basis points year-over-year and 100 basis points above our guidance which I would remind you, we raised by 200 basis points just last quarter.
Total free cash flow for 2025 was a robust $4.6 billion, up 34% year-over-year. We ended 2025 with a healthy balance sheet of over $10 billion in cash and investments. In Q4, we bought back approximately 3.6 million shares after adjusting for the stock split as part of our share repurchase program.
As of the end of the quarter, we had approximately $1.4 billion of authorization remaining. Given our strong cash position, our strategy of managing the impact of dilution and our confidence in the business, we announced today that the Board of Directors authorized the purchase of up to an additional $5 billion of common stock under this program.
With the recent pullback in our stock, we also plan to launch a $2 billion accelerated share repurchase program. Together, these results continue to demonstrate our ability to drive a strong balance of world-class growth, profitability and shareholder value.
Moving to our outlook. For 2026, we expect subscription revenues between $15.53 billion and $15.57 billion, representing 19.5% to 20% year-over-year growth on a constant currency basis. This includes 1 point contribution from Moveworks.
We expect subscription gross margin of 82%, reflecting incremental data center investments related to public cloud geo expansion and AI. We expect an operating margin of 32%, up 100 basis points year-over-year, driven by OpEx savings enabled by AI efficiencies.
We expect free cash flow margin of 36%, up 100 basis points year-over-year and 350 basis points ahead of our target that we gave at Financial Analyst Day in May. This is driven by significant operational leverage and further opportunities to reduce CapEx.
Finally, we expect GAAP diluted weighted average outstanding shares of $1.05 billion. For Q1, we expect subscription revenues between $3.650 billion and $3.655 billion, representing 18.5% to 19% year-over-year growth on a constant currency basis.
This includes a 1 point contribution from Moveworks and a 1.5 point headwind or a mix shift of on-prem hosted revenue, partially driven by the strong adoption of our hyperscaler offerings.
We expect CRPO growth of 20% on a constant currency basis. This also includes a 1 point contribution from Moveworks. We expect an operating margin of 31.5%, and we expect $1.05 billion GAAP diluted weighted average outstanding shares for the quarter.
In conclusion, 2025 has been an incredible year, and we're just getting started. The world is in the midst of an intelligent super cycle, and ServiceNow is capitalizing on this decisive moment in technology where the strongest companies leverage rapid change to extend their market leadership.
Our recent strategic acquisitions bring us incredible talent and create enormous new market opportunities while solidifying our ability to put AI to work securely across every corner of the enterprise.
As we integrate these best-in-class capabilities into the ServiceNow AI platform, we're layering on advantages that position us for even stronger, more durable growth over the long term.
Our organic growth engine remains fully intact our strategy complete with a disciplined focus on margin expansion remains unchanged. But the ambition is larger and our confidence in sustained high organic growth has never been greater.
Finally, Bill and I want to express our deepest gratitude to our employees around the world. Your relentless innovation and unwavering commitment to our customers are the foundation of everything we've accomplished.
With that, I'll open it up for Q&A.
[Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from the line of Alex Zukin.
2. Question Answer
Thanks for a really inspired and inspiring message. And congrats on a very strong end to the year. Maybe, Bill, first one for you. Just give us a flavor, a little bit of the tailwinds and headwinds that you're seeing, both in the demand environment from a budgetary perspective, and also kind of how you're thinking about the monetization of AI in the product set, particularly the consumption component to play out as we get through the year, you've already -- you clearly cleared the $500 million hurdle that you set for yourself well on your way to $1 billion. How should we think about that layering into the numbers? And then I've got a quick follow-up for Joe.
Well, thank you very much, Alex, for your very nice remarks. And also given me a chance to explain how it's going out there in the marketplace. We have excellent hyperscalers in the marketplace. They're all great companies. We have exciting language models. We have good data lakes that are out there, too. .
And we have, as you know, 6-plus decades of legacy systems that have really burdened these companies quite substantially but at the same time, they've customized them. They've invested heavily in them and they're not going to rip them out at least the ones that matter.
But what they are doing now is they are looking for platforms that really do matter and they are recognizing that MLIT study that said basically 95% of those projects out there weren't delivering a positive ROI. They're recognizing clearly that you can have little pet projects that a agentic AI is not just a revolution. It's the only way to survive. It's the only way to grow.
And so now they're looking for a platform that spans functions and goes across the business process frontier of their enterprise. As I've said repeatedly, it could be recruit to retire. It could be order to cash, procure to pay, designed to build. There are many of these processes but there's only one company that actually has a platform that's a cross-functional platform.
And so our cooperation with all of them has led many of our customers to simply say, we love it. We want to expand with you, which they're doing. But at the same time, they're looking to retire tools that don't matter. And they're looking to thoroughly examine functional platforms because if you could do cross-functional AI work to reinvent the process on the fly and it's autonomous, why do you want to get drug down by the little toys or large model, large systems that perhaps have built up over the years with many different instances and people are swivel chairing between 33 apps a day.
So it's the radical simplification that comes with AI. And one thing I wanted to double down on is you can see our user count is growing. You can see it's growing in harmony with our revenue. And you can also see that our margins are growing. So we're really the winning hand for companies that want the consolidator, and they want a consolidator now. That's different than it was 6 years ago.
When I told you with the platform of platforms, and we work with everybody. We still do, but we have to respond to what the customer wants and they want cost out. They want autonomy in and they want margin improved and growth, and we're giving it to them.
In terms of the buying cycle, what's so cool about this buying cycle is if you have an and you're fast to value, which we are. We're the fastest one, you don't actually need a budget to get approval on your deal.
You just need an executive that wants to win, and the CEOs are investing heavily. Our pipelines have never been better. Let me be clear, never been better. And don't forget, we gave you those numbers without actually a full 40-day cycle in an approval of deals in public sector because of the government shutdown. So we've got a lot going on there, and we've got a lot on across industries and across all segments of the company.
And finally, security grew 100% year-over-year. So our customers are loving on the digital front door from Moveworks and we're loving having Moveworks, but they're really excited about Armes and Vesa for all the reasons I stated in kind of the keynote here. So you should feel really good about ServiceNow. We didn't have to work hard to give you a great guide. It's there.
And then do you want to add?
Let me add things about the monetization of AI, Alex. So we already, of course, have been selling this hybrid pricing model, and we're already seeing a lot of customers now add assist packs. We shared in the earnings already that we had many customers with average deal size of 500,000 and some in multi 7-figure range. Renewing and adding more assist packs when they're running out of tokens. So that adoption and that consumption is starting to happen very, very fast, especially now that they're using a agentic use cases and workflows to run the business.
And once they start using one, they start using many more, and that's where the space is starting to come in. So the consumption part has been adding to our subscription revenue quickly as well.
And the key to that building on what Amit said, which is so important. This is where cross-functional also comes in so heavily because these deals, in many cases, have 7 or more ServiceNow products built into them. .
So we're not confined by we can make one buyer in the enterprise happy. We're actually making a team that reports to the CEO happy. So the strategic relevance is elevated considerably. And these assist we've been telling you that for a year. that the day was coming with a hockey stick with form around the reload on those tokens, it's happening.
Got that respect to my colleagues, I'll leave it there. But congratulations further questions. .
Your next question comes from the line of Keith Weiss with Morgan Stanley.
This is an infor Keith Weiss. Congrats on proving out the durability of growth of the business throughout the year. I wanted to follow up on some of the themes in Q3, particularly the federal business, can you maybe give us some color on how federal performed via your expects relative to your expectations?
I know we had a government shut down a deal with. There's some large deals in the pipeline. Just how that sort of shaped up in Q4 and what the prospects are looking like for the balance of the year in 2026 on the Fed side.
Yes. What was really great about the Fed business is even with the shutdown and less days to do business, you have to comply with the procurement procedures. And as you know, 40 days is a minimum standard.
We were still able to get very, very nice deals. And our OneGOV offering has been really well received. So we're seeing a very big pipeline in public sector. What didn't happen in 2025 is only good news for 2026.
And we're also seeing that we have significant traction that's now developed in state and local. The public sector more broadly is growing not just U.S. Fed, which is great. but also state and local.
And I do want to mention we shouldn't forget the global government business because that was up 80% year-over-year. So the global government business is on fire across Europe, Middle East and obviously, Asia. So I feel really, really good that the brand is resonating and what we're doing in the U.S. is now translating beautifully to Rest of World. We're in great shape.
Your next question comes from the line of Gabriela Borges with Goldman Sachs.
My question is for Gina, on the gross margin outlook. Tell us a little bit about how you think about the puts and takes to gross margin, particularly around some of the temporary headwinds you have before monetization on the consumption revenue part of the business, how much of the gross margin headwind from LLM cost inference and API calls? How much of that is temporary versus structural?
Thanks, Gabriel, for the question. So listen, I'm really excited about the overall guide from a margin perspective. The fact that despite some headwinds in gross margins, we're able to increase operating margin guidance by 100 basis points and free cash flow by another 100 after increasing by 350 days this year is pretty remarkable.
I'd say on the gross margin headwind, the bulk of it is actually our our very strategic focus on moving more towards hyperscalers that have slightly lower gross margins at this stage of the game, given our capacity there with them than our internal.
Now those margins are margin business, you want me to take every single day, and we're offsetting headwind down below the line with efficiencies. As we continue to scale up those hyperscaler deals, margins get even better.
And so you can count on ServiceNow to ensure that you will see not only best-in-class top line growth, up 20% plus, but also continued margin accretion at the bottom line, both from an operating margin and free cash flow perspective.
Your next question comes from the line of Samad Samana with Jefferies.
The execution scale continues to be very impressive. So congrats on that. Bill, maybe a question for you. I appreciate you digging into the M&A given that it's been such a big focus, you made a point about there may not be more to expand the TAM, at least on the security side via M&A.
So should we take that as maybe we won't see arms size deals going forward? Or just maybe help us get some clarity on how we should think about M&A in 2026. And then Gina, if you could give us any details on Armes financials? I know it hasn't closed yet, but it would be helpful just to think about how assets growing, size, scale, et cetera?
Yes. Thank you very much, Sam, for the question. First of all, I wanted to underscore what both Gina and I both said. We're an organic growth company. These were very select M&A moves for the talent, the technology and the moment to capture $125 billion market TAM. .
And this is also where our customers wanted us to be. As I said, our security and operations portfolio right now is doubling year-over-year, and they wanted us to do more. I wanted to make it very clear to the investors. I hear you, and we did not and never have bought an asset like many others have, and I know that's probably why it's on your mind because we needed the revenue. What we needed is the innovation and the expanded growth opportunity of a great TAM and a customer base that's waiting for us.
So I want to knock that one out of the park based on our great 2025 results and our extraordinary guide. And as it relates to future M&A, we do not have a large-scale M&A on the road map. What happened, and I felt for you all, we had Moveworks. It took 9 months to close.
We know sooner closed Moveworks, which we love Moveworks. We love Bavan and the founders of the company, and it's a great culture, great fit. We love them. Amit and I were no sooner celebrating in their campus with their spouses and everything, then we also closed on that and then had Armes and Vesa come to you within like a few days.
So probably, it was a little bit what's going on over there at ServiceNow, and I noticed that we lost about $10 billion in market cap on that because of the worry. So now the worry is gone, you can give us back to market cap. And no, we're not going after anything large.
We now have them in the family, and we're going to grow them like we do everything else. And I would want to make one thing clear, and I'll give Amit a chance to do this is really important. We chose assets also that were heavily integrated with ServiceNow already. So this isn't one of those -- how is the integration going to go? It already went. So maybe Amit can give you a little color on that.
Thanks, Bill. So the way we've been doing -- clearly, we have this one platform philosophy, and we continue to invest that way. What Armes and Veas has been doing is we've been integrating those products using a technology called universal agenetic network which is built on MCP and work for Data Fabric, making it easy for us to really have processes as well as a lot of the domain expertise, which come from Vesa and Armis, make it integrated into a lot of the capabilities we provide in our one platform. .
Over time, some of the capabilities which we have on one platform will be available through Armes and Vesa, but they are right now completely integrated in a process-oriented way and allowing customers to get advantage of those integrations straight away.
Having to wait, replatform or do things which are not going to be more architecturally correct. So with architecturally, we've been very thoughtful about how we bring all these technologies while getting customer adoption quickly as well as value created for customers and this UAN is a really very modern way of integrating and providing technical superior way of integrating and bringing products together. So this will be very straightforward for our customers, and there's no real time loss when we bring all these capabilities into one platform mindset.
And then lastly, Samad, on your question on the impact. So we expect to close Armes at this point, second half, early second half of this year. And based on that timing and estimated revenue adjustments that always happen in acquisitions. We expect subscription revenue contribution to be about 1 point, so 100 basis points in -- we expect potentially up to maybe 50 bps headwind to operating margin in up to 50%. So not that large.
And given our strong organic operating leverage, we expect to absorb any headwinds to that dilution in '27 and continue delivering operating margin expansion. And so we're very committed in our M&A strategy to continue to deliver expansion, both on the operating margin and free cash flow perspective. We'll obviously provide more details around all of that at Financial Analyst Day as we get closer to close. But again, not that big of an impact either on the top line or bottom line. It's really about the incredible capabilities and the addressable market that we're opening up for us to go after.
The good. Thank you so much.
Your next question comes from the line of Peter Reid with AllianceBernstein.
And congrats on a really strong finish to the year and guidance for the upcoming year. I think one of the exciting announcements that have been coming out are your partnerships with OpenAI and Anthropic, one obviously today and on a few days ago.
And I couldn't help but notice in reading those it looks like both of them are making some investments in helping with your customers and getting traction and scaling -- maybe you can share a little bit more about those partnerships. And obviously, now with multiple of them. There's also kind of the question of decisions for customers, like which one would you focus on? Like how do you think through which partner to pull and when? And how are the partners investing and kind of helping you get even more out of the customer opportunity and really driving the business faster?
Peter, thanks for the question. So as you know, we've been always working with many of the hyperscalers as well as the large language model providers. And we had open ecosystem as a mindset -- with the large language providers like OpenAI and topic as well as Google and Gemini, we allow customer choice. -- we have prompt engineered and make sure that those models work with our products and customers don't really have to worry about what the underneath the covers, what LLM we are using. They can choose if they want to and use any 1 which we provide out of the box. What we have done over time now is with each of these providers, there's some unique capabilities we think we can take to market. .
So for example, OpenAI, what we're doing around voice AI and speech to speech real-time, multimodal as well as multilingual capabilities. So our CRM products can now have voice capabilities with open AI as as a preferred model so that we can have a much more differentiated offering using what we know from domains perspective as well as contact and adding the open AI speech capabilities into our products.
Similarly, with Anthropic, they have a very good coating agent. A build agent, which is a white coating tool allows any customer to build any work flow on top of ServiceNow, and we use cloud as the underlying technology to generate some of the core and then we provide the contact, the security, the governance, on top of that using build agent to run those workflows on top of service now as well.
So finding those unique use cases, which might be useful with one of these individual providers and they want to take those products to go to market with us. We, of course, collaborate with them and tell them about what's the issues with any model maybe, what kind of efficiencies we can get out of it, and how can we optimize it so our customers get value. but we still keep this idea of openness and availability of default choices for customers so they can choose anything they want to. And then we'll provide some unique use cases, which will be done with individual providers like open AI and Anthropic.
They have interest to go jointly to market and build those unique solutions as well. So customer guidance is pretty straightforward. They can use any of the models, everything will work but there might be some of these individual use cases, we believe could really be turbocharged with some of these providers. And typically, in the infrastructure, the model providers are providing 5%, 10% of value and 90% of IP has been built by ServiceNow to really provide that context-driven enterprise use cases out of the box for our customers to get value instantly.
And Peter, because your question is so strategic and so important. I'd just like to build on its excellent answer. We have to recognize the Harmony and the synchronicity between these models and ServiceNow. And the idea that these models are eating enterprise software may be true in some cases. But obviously, it's not true. In our case, they're actually leaning into us because of the innovation on our platform and the broad reach of our go-to-market global engine. So these are very enticing and interesting factors in their decision to team up with us.
But it also really does manifest itself, I think, is something that Dario said when he said, obviously, the co-founder of Anthropic, he said a common error that enterprises make with AI is to treat it as a kind of bolt-on tool. -- that you access now and then. But the way to get much better results is to make AI an integral part of how we get work done. And it has to be woven into the whole range of things workers do every day. That's where you actually start to see where these systems are adding value. And it's also why we're partnering with ServiceNow.
So it's kind of like where the decisions and the business takes place is in the low and the models need that to have the business impact and really to be resolute with the C-suite of these corporations.
So I think that it's really a match made in heaven. I think it's going to be a great tailwind for our growth, and I hope that we help them grow, too. So it's really a nice, nice thing. And I'm glad today we had a chance to clear it all up.
Your next question comes from the line of Patrick Walravens with JMP Securities..
Great. And let me add my congratulations on my appreciation of the hitting the 3 bear cases upfront. So Bill, I was talking to a senior executive at a Fortune 500 company. And they really want to transform the enterprise using AI but there's some sort of specific concerns holding them back.
And I'm just -- they're 4 of them. I'm just going to rail them off really quick and I'm sure you have these kinds of conversations all the time with customers, and I just wonder how you address them.
Number one was, how do we monitor the agents in real time? Number two was how do we have kill switches. Number three was, how do we have grading agents? And then number four was red teaming. So those are the kinds of things that come up all the time? Or was this unusual? And how do you address them?
No pat. I will address those. I mean I think -- no doubt every customer we speak to an enterprise are wondering how to adopt the AI, how to make it easy to manage and really have controls. And no doubt that questions come up every time in terms of what technology to use and do that very well. So the way we address it -- the reason we launched AI Control Tower early last year and why it's getting so much traction is because we're addressing these things head on, right?
How do you manage and monitor agents real-time, not just our agents but third-party agents in one system it's really built on top of CMDB so we can now access all the kind of assets, be it hardware, software and AI agent assets in the same system and then we can really give you full-time real-time monitoring, observability as well as cost management, auditing, security in one place.
And that allows you to do kill switches, where you can now go and shut down any agent, which is going role, prevent any kind of nefarious activities as well as do red teaming and ensure you're making security as a prevalent and most important aspects of what you're doing before you go and deliver an AI agents.
And that really has opened up a lot of customers' ability to now adopt Agentic use cases because before they were worried about losing control, security, governance and compliance now with AI control tower, we able to give them that ability and remove that barrier out of the way. And that's where we saw this huge amount of new use cases emerge with customers and starting to adopt things around incident management, triaging and things like that, very quickly because we can give you that real-time visibility and full control.
So these are real questions and things we've been addressing and has really worked out and I control tower has grown so fast for us because that takes on head-on as trogenious product out there.
And Patrick, one thing I would say as an example, I'll give you an example of a public sector entity. And the Mansell who runs this particular entity has literally thousands and thousands of employees, nearly 100,000, and it's set up in 3 different divisions. What you're seeing a lot of now is they want to consolidate these divisions they want to consolidate the action onto one platform because I keep going back to east to west, AI is a cross-functional sport.
There's only one CMDB in the world that behaves like ServiceNow's where they know where all the people are, all the places are and all the things are on one platform and then you apply the AI in all of our know-how that Amit just outlined, and they're running quickly.
So he's got to make change fast. He doesn't have years. He has weeks and months, so we give them a business case to show them an incredible benefit on the ServiceNow platform. And then they looked at what we did with Armes and Vesa and they say, we're all in.
Please road map that into the thinking because I want to have one instance. I want to have one single view of my entire enterprise and I'm going with ServiceNow. In that conversation, we were basically consolidating them out of about 479 legacy tools. And that's what's happening out there because AI is changing the game, but this is the consolidator platform.
That's fantastic. Thank you for going on it. .
Your next question comes from the line of Matt Hedberg with RBC Capital Markets. .
Congrats from me as well, really strong results here. I guess for Bill or Amit, in an increasingly agentive world, it really does seem like now it is packs are resonating with customers and it's right to see the $600 million ACV number already. I guess when we're entering this period of hybrid pricing and paid seats are still growing strong, do you vision the time in the future when ServiceNow pivots completely away from seats to maybe consumption or some form of value-based pricing, for instance? .
Matt, maybe I'll give you my perspective, and of course, Bill and Gene can add that. we keep on thinking about what's the best place to give customer value and show them what they can get out of the products, right? So we keep on getting input from them in terms of what kind of pricing and packaging works for them. typically, what we've seen customers do want flexibility, but they also want predictability.
So without having some kind of guardrails and understanding how much they're going to spend and what are they going to get out of it. going to complete 100% consumption may be too early in some of the cases. So I think that the hybrid model has seemed to be resonating with my customers. They know what the envelope they have, what they will be consuming beyond that, how much will it cost them?
And a lot of times, customers even have come back and say, You know what, I have been using a lot more than I'm entitled to. I will just renew or do an expansion on the thing with another higher subscription. So it might not be just consumption driven. So we just want to give that flexibility that some products we do do consumption only already, by the way, right?
So we do things like storage or additional things you might want to use for capacity -- we're doing that in some tokens around workflow Data Fabric from an integration perspective. So wherever it makes sense, we will do that. As we go more and more AI native in terms of packaging, we want to continue still to make sure that we don't confuse our customers too much. and make it so difficult for them to predict what they're going to spend, that they can keep on staying on the sidelines. So we just want to manage that very well.
And Matt, just building on Amit here for a second. Let me give you a real example -- so Amit is 100% right that the customer wants predictability, which is why against some of the theories out there that would be would be seat compression which is why our active user base is growing 25%, okay?
It's because they want that predictability. The other thing they want is with the assist, when we sell a Pro plus version of this platform, we have contemplated all the puts and takes on their business innovation and what the ROI is going to be to get the sale in the first place.
And so when they derive more value from the assist that they have that comes with the Pro plus, they're happy to renew it. In fact, they're looking for more ways to use us. You never have a dissatisfied software customer when you've deployed the software and you have happy users, you have an eager customer that wants to expand. And that trend is really big in the AI world.
And finally, we're so flexible because what we do is where the rubber hits the road. We're delivering the ROI, and we know it. So I'll give you one example where we replaced the legacy CRM system. By the way, it's not the one I referenced in the script.
And the customer saved $682 million. And we would be very happy to take a percentage of that savings and give it to our great shareholders. But the customer will quickly pull back and say, I like the predictability of the seats. I'm good with that. I'm good with the assist.
Let's keep that going. And it's so strong in these business cases that we now have large FIs that are actually underwriting the savings on ServiceNow, underwriting it and guaranteeing it to the customer.
Just think about the Swagger, we can walk into a C-level meeting with knowing that, sharing the logos and the examples -- so no matter where the customer needs us to be, if they'd rather split the profits with us, we're open for business.
We have time for one more question. our final question comes from the line of Brian Schwartz with Oppenheimer.
I'm not sure if this is for Bill or Amit, it's on the topic of the Mega LLM provider partnerships. Bill, in your introductory comments, you're clearly making it clear. You viewed these Anthropics OpenAI is more complementary to ServiceNow's product set than as competitors. I guess a question I wanted to ask you or Amit.
If we think about the percentage of AI inferencing and training workloads that are going to run on the platform in 2026, how do you think that mix would break out between those workloads running on ServiceNow's LLMs versus those third-party foundation models.
Yes. Brian, I think, as I said, we definitely want to make sure customers have choice, and they can use any of those foundational models as well as LLM. In many cases, we've seen customers may end up using frontier models because some of the use cases might make sense with the frontier models
Inferencing as part of the overall workload is still very low as a percentage of cost or usage-wise, right? As they use tokens, we have a lot of other work we do on top of the inferencing part of it. which is really the whole context, data management, the integration, understanding the particular workflow required for use cases, they won't go and deliver on it.
So that's really where the most of power goes in -- and I would say in the long term, I would see more of the frontier models as the inferencing models versus our now LLM, but their sovereign requirements, private data center requirements, things customers want to deploy in like on-prem not all these models don't work.
And that's where we would probably still continue using a lot of our third-party, our own now LLM as well. So we just want to make sure we have choices and flexibility and let customers really choose it out. And from us, the cost perspective doesn't matter really.
Thank you.
Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes today's call. Thank you all for joining. You may now disconnect.
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ServiceNow, Inc. — Q4 2025 Earnings Call
ServiceNow, Inc. — Q4 2025 Earnings Call
📊 Quartal auf einen Blick
- Umsatz: Subscription-Revenue Q4 $3,466 Mio (+19,5% YoY in constant currency), 150 bp über der Guidance.
- RPO: Remaining Performance Obligations ~ $28,2 Mrd (+22,5% YoY CC); Current RPO $12,85 Mrd (+21% YoY CC, Beat 200 bp).
- Profitabilität: Non‑GAAP Operating Margin 31% (1pp über Guidance); FY‑Free‑Cash‑Flow $4,6 Mrd (+34% YoY), FCF‑Margin FY 35%.
- Vertrieb: 244 Deals > $1M ACV, 7 Deals > $10M; Now Assist ACV > $600M (doppelt YoY).
🎯 Was das Management sagt
- Plattform-These: ServiceNow positioniert sich als "AI‑Control‑Tower" und semantische Schicht, die AI in deterministische Workflows einbettet – Fokus auf Governance, Orchestrierung und Cross‑Functional‑Value.
- M&A‑Rationale: Selektive Zukäufe (Veza und Armes) zur Schließung von Sicherheits‑/Identity‑Lücken; Integration soll schnell und prozessorientiert erfolgen.
- Kapitalallokation: Neuer Rückkaufautorität $5 Mrd plus sofortiges $2 Mrd ASR; Buybacks betonen Kapitalvertrauen statt reine Umsatzakquisition.
🔭 Ausblick & Guidance
- Jahresguide: Subscription‑Revenue $15,53–15,57 Mrd (+19,5–20% YoY CC), enthält ~1pp Beitrag von Moveworks.
- Margen & Cash: Subscription‑Gross‑Margin ~82%, Operating Margin 32% (↑100 bp YoY), FCF‑Margin 36% (↑100 bp YoY).
- Q1‑Leitlinien: Subscription $3,650–3,655 Mio (+18,5–19% YoY CC), CRPO‑Wachstum ~20% CC; erwarteter Mix‑Effekt Q1 ~‑1,5pp (On‑prem → Hyperscaler).
❓ Fragen der Analysten
- AI‑Monetarisierung: Nachfrage nach "assist packs" und Hybrid‑Preismodellen; Management sieht starkes Consumption‑Upside, bleibt aber bei mix aus Predictability (Seats) und Consumption.
- Öffentlicher Sektor: Pipeline resilient trotz Shutdowns; OneGOV/State & Local treiben Wachstum, Global Government +80% YoY.
- M&A‑Integration & Impact: Management betont geringe kurzfristige Margin‑Dilution (einige 10er bp bis ~50 bp) und behauptet, keine großen akquisitiven Pläne mehr; Armes‑Close wird für H2 erwartet.
⚡ Bottom Line
- Implikation: Starker Beat, beschleunigtes AI‑Momentum und eine 20%‑Wachstums‑Guidance stärken das Wachstumsszenario; Kombination aus organischem Upsell, gezielten Zukäufen und massivem Buyback erhöht Shareholder‑Value. Kurzfristige Risiken: Cloud/LLM‑Kosten und Integrations-/Regulatory‑Timing für die Käufe.
ServiceNow, Inc. — Barclays 23rd Annual Global Technology Conference
1. Question Answer
Perfect. Thank you. Welcome to our first big fireside keynote. Gina, great to have you here.
Great to be here. Thank you so much.
I was like -- I saw your LinkedIn post, and I kind of -- I had to hit the gym, so I really feel bad. But...
Stamina, we need stamina...
Yes. I know, I know, in these times, so yes. If you think about it, I wanted to start big picture. The beginning of the year was very volatile for everyone, spot market, probably kind of vendors as well. How do you -- how did the situation evolve for you this year? What are you seeing?
Yes. I got this question earlier from one of our investors. And if you actually go back to this same conference last year in December right here, we talked about the environment feeling a little bit better, right, like a little bit of uncertainty behind us. And then Q1 came, and it was a little bit different pretty quickly. The great thing, I think, is that our business, especially if you exclude the Fed piece, was extremely resilient and demand was strong and growth was really good. Obviously, with DODGE, we definitely had some headwinds for Fed, but we're really excited about the fact that Q3, which is the biggest Fed quarter out there, we had incredible growth at 30%, biggest Fed quarter ever. And so I'd say this time now going into 2026, well, I think that the conversations with customers, and if you look at any IT spending reports into '26, it looks healthy and looks good. But I would just say that I'm just so excited and pleased with the performance and the execution that our team has had quarter after quarter even despite some pretty uncertain times this year.
And what are you seeing on the customer side in terms of their kind of behavior or kind of thinking about maneuvering these volatile times like what's the customer -- what are the customer conversations like?
Yes. First and foremost, no surprise. It's all about AI. I figured that's like two minutes into the conversation where I -- AI, right? So conversations are broad, and they are really focused on how AI is going to help drive growth, productivity and efficiency across the board. And so the conversations we're having with customers is all about how they're quickly moving from experimentation phase into full-scale deployment. I think there was a lot of experimentation, especially on build, and there's a lot of focus now on software providers that are the trusted partners of the IT organization and really the ability to -- if you think about what ServiceNow is able to provide with our AI control tower, the ability to manage, govern, secure all assets, including agentic AI assets, all in one place, whether they're building their own, they're using third parties to build and manage that holistically because the conversations about AI are obviously everyone is having them. But in the enterprise, especially, the focus in the C-suite is all how to do this in a secure governed way because at the end of the day, AI is only as strong as the governance around it in the enterprise. It's just so very important.
Yes, yes. Okay. Perfect. Yes. And I wanted to get back to AI a little bit later, but just finishing up, sorry, on one point in terms of what we're seeing, like federal this year. You mentioned DODGE a little bit. Then we had the shutdown. Thankfully, for you guys, that was after the end of the quarter. But like on the one hand, obviously, it created kind of volatility. But on the other hand, if the government goes and wants to be more efficient, et cetera, that should play into your playbook. So how is that federal thinking evolved for you this year?
Absolutely. So certainly, short-term headwinds just because things were slow, right, and things were slowing down. But as you saw coming into Q3, once things opened up, our growth continues to be extremely strong. And the reason for that is exactly what you're saying, Raimo, the administration's focus on transparency, accountability and cost savings is exactly where the ServiceNow platform has helped government agencies transform in the past. And so the ability for us to go more broadly and deeper into the public sector in federal space, especially, the opportunity is enormous. The agreement we reached with GSA back in Q3 also opens doors much more broadly. And so from a mid- and long-term opportunity perspective, our federal business is, I think, one of our key drivers for continued incremental growth. And even more broadly, what we've been able to do with public sector and federal government, we can do much more broadly help public sector around the world. So everything we've done, we can replicate for public agencies outside the U.S. as well as state and local, which for us has also been pretty strong throughout the year. So to your point, we're so well positioned to help federal agencies. And a lot of the work that we're doing there is displacing very old homegrown systems that really need to be modernized and automated. And so we play and the platform plays so well into exactly what these government agencies are trying to do with their technology stack.
Is there also an argument that AI -- like with AI coming, you can't do AI with these very, very old systems. So it's kind of more of a driver that you can kind of realize shoot like kind of maybe that 30-year-old system finally needs to be replaced.
That's exactly right. We're not going to get the AI productivity on old systems like that. And actually, we saw in Feb specifically a lot of very fast POVs turn into deals like within weeks. And so AI is definitely, I think, going to be a catalyst for even more opportunity in the federal space as it is more broadly in the private sector as well.
Yes. Talking about private sector, are you kind of eating your own dog food? Like how is AI within ServiceNow?'s
I like to say we're drinking our own champagne.
Oh, sorry, yes, yes.
Our platform is like champagne and not dog food. But yes, so we absolutely -- we call it now on Now. It's a huge part of how we think about the platform internally. We're customer zero for almost every single product we launch. We've talked about now on Now and our own AI productivity, driving $350 million worth of productivity efficiencies. Now a bulk of that, we reinvested back into the business into innovation, but about $100 million annualized, we flow through to the bottom line this year alone because we were able to reduce our headcount growth plans. So we don't have to do big mass layoffs, but we are able to really think strategically about our headcount bets going forward. And so we were able to actually drive $100 million to the bottom line this year, and those AI efficiencies keep growing. And so we will continue to drink our own champagne and deploy our platform broadly across the enterprise. And we're seeing it all over the place. Think about autonomous IT. So 90% of our IT requests are fulfilled self-service. Customer service, significant improvements, plus CSAT going up all at the same time. HR, employee self-service going up significantly as a result. And so expectations for the ability to leverage AI continually within helps us with our ability to accrete margins. We were able to raise our margins for this year pretty significantly on the free cash flow side as well. And so there's inherent leverage in our platform to start because we are one platform, one unified architecture. And then AI just really enables even more leverage. And so the question always is how much we're going to redeploy back into the business to drive future growth. That's always, first and foremost, our priority. But we also have the ability to be bullish and sustainably grow our margins while at the same time, really driving best-in-class top line growth.
And because you're probably involved in this -- on the projects, like -- to me, it sounds like a multiyear journey because if I think about like Barclays, when we are using AI, it's like, yes, there's something, and it's like, "Oh, yes, this is actually working." But you think like bigger picture, this is not just a one-off and one-off margin improvement. This looks like multiyear, correct?
Oh, this is definitely multiyear. This is an AI journey, and we are in very, very early innings. We talked about the fact that our AI revenue surpassed $0.5 billion this year alone, well on our way to $1 billion next year, which was the target that we put out back in May. But this is very early innings. And talking with our customers, including Barclays, it is a multiyear journey. And we're just getting started. The innovation that continues to be fueled internally, I think, is just phenomenal. And it's all about how we're able to help our customers, really drive significant incremental value, both on growth as well as productivity and efficiency gains.
And then what do you see in terms of customer adoption? Because like -- and you started out with the Pro Plus SKU. So if I'm a customer, I could say, well, I bought Pro Plus, I have AI, but that's on paper. That's not really adoption. Like what are you seeing there in terms of customer behavior?
Yes. So implementations are going faster. Deployments are going faster. We've seen 55x increase in consumption from May till now, which is faster than we anticipated. And so we're seeing really strong traction. And what that means is that customers are deploying, and they are building more and more agents on the platform. And so the consumption trends that we've seen over the past several months continue to be strong. And so the more customers are using and deploying, the more value they're getting, the more they'll continue to deploy. And so it's a virtuous circle that we're really excited about.
And how do you think about that consumption showing up as consumption? Because like -- I guess if I'm like a customer at Pro Plus, I get token, I get consumption initially and then use more, then I need to come back to prove that point that SaaS is alive and kicking for the whole industry. People want to see consumption growth. Like where are we on that journey?
Yes. So as I said, we've seen consumption growing 55x from May till now. So we're doing extremely well on that consumption journey. But yes, you're right, we have a hybrid model from a monetization perspective. And so that initial subscription, consistently, we're seeing 30% pricing uplift. And we've talked about that for a while. We're consistently seeing that. So with that initial subscription, obviously, we're giving them a decent amount of consumption. I've talked about the fact that given the initial consumption allocations, we wouldn't expect to see the incremental consumption kicking in until back half '26 into '27. What I'd say is that 55x is stronger and faster than we initially anticipated. But our base guide back in May that we talked about for 2026 was $15 billion in revenue for '26. And so for the consumption to start to materially impact that number, that won't happen until back half '26 into '27. But that hockey stick and what that looks like in the future as AI becomes more ubiquitous and more agentic workflows are built, and think about it, we have trillions of workflows built today on the ServiceNow platform, trillions. You identify all of that, that compute and that capacity need really is exponential and can be a really strong hockey stick as you think about growth '27 and beyond. So we're excited. We're keeping a strong eye on that, and it looks very, very healthy.
And then two questions -- two quick questions around that. If you think about it, if we talk to customers, a lot of them start small. And they were like, okay, well, like let's not go crazy on the use case in itself because I'm nervous that it starts to hallucinate and things like that. Do you see that? And how quickly are they kind of moving on from that? And second quick question was like on the use cases. Does it kind of mirror what you see internally in terms of what people are using it for?
Yes. So we're absolutely seeing it mirror internally. You would imagine our core is IT, right? And that's our core. So IT service desk is a huge area of where customers are focused. And we secure all the assets, right? Our CMDB has visibility to all the IT assets. And now you layer on AI, it's just a huge value add for customers. So you'll continue to see it there. Customer service continues to be a pretty remarkable area for us. And HR actually was a bit surprising. But if you think about probably not so surprising because it's a safe place to start internally with employees versus externally with customers. And we're seeing those use cases really across the board, across the product portfolio. And then you add in AI control tower, which we talked about briefly, and the real need for customers as they're deploying AI more broadly to think about governing and securing it, that AI control tower. And the ability, by the way, to connect and monitor the agents irrespective of what platform it's built on, I think, is a very compelling value-add customers love this. And we actually surpassed our full year expectations in one quarter. So we're really seeing some strong traction there, very exciting times. To your question on small deployments getting bigger, we're absolutely seeing that. We're seeing folks really leaning in and understanding that the real value is when you go more broad as opposed to starting small.
Just to save you a question for the earnings calls for the next few quarters, we have that slide where you look about the ITSM versus CRM versus HR versus platform? Conceptually, because you have such a big base on ITSM, if I do more agentic, could we have a scenario that, that kind of segment kind of actually grows faster because there's just so much upsell, cross-sell that you can do there. And so as we get the slides, it's not like, oh my God, like something is wrong with CRM or HR, it's like ITSM has such a big upsell opportunity. Like how do you think about that?
Well, I think you've seen that in the past, right? So there's always been the constant question about our core. Are we so penetrated?
Yes, exactly, yes.
And is it going to continue to grow? While we are certainly more penetrated in core IT than in the other areas, there's so much room for continued growth, especially in an AI-enabled world, but it doesn't sit alone with IT. I think if you just think about platform innovation, if you think about CRM, we've talked about our acquisition of Logic AI and really moving into modern CPQ is opening the door quite broadly into front office for us. And then employee, the acquisition of Moveworks, which we're super excited about, really leans into that employee experience. And so I actually think that we have multiple growth vectors across the product portfolio and the ability to have products, strong products that really go across the enterprise, it's a really compelling value proposition and differentiation, right? So we have a platform that goes north to south in the tech stack, integrating with any platform enabled with zero copy to touch the data and get the data and then action it across the enterprise, whether you're IT, customer service, HR, legal, finance, procurement, you name it, it's a real compelling differentiation for us. And then you add the agentic world, agents are only as good as the data they have access to and the ability to cross platform because I don't know about your companies, but my companies, most of my processes are very cross-functional. So that ability for agents to manage and to seamlessly hand off complex tasks and complex business processes in an enterprise is a compelling differentiation that ServiceNow has to be the AI operating system for the enterprise.
And on that note, you mentioned a couple of acquisitions that helped you, like you had one recently. I'm trying to pronounce the Veza, like how does that fit in? Like what does that bring?
Yes. It brings the critical ability to control human, machine and agentic assets within an organization. And it gives -- it allows authorization ability. So a lot of the identity providers are very focused on authentication. So think about it, they let you get in the front door, but authorization is what allows you to unlock each of the individual doors in the house, right? And so in an agentic world, these agents because, you don't know who's going to be calling up the agent, right? So from an identity perspective, if I just have an agent that's Genus agent doing my stuff, identity and authentication is enough. But when you have agents doing multiple tasks that many different people are calling on them, you need to understand authorization and that authorization is constantly changing. And so the ability, right, for Veza to really help in that authorization as well as authentication in an agentic world is really compelling. And it really just adds to the ServiceNow security foundation and opens up, I think, some really cool opportunities in the security space going forward.
Yes. So it's interesting to see because it looks like as you evolve, you realize, okay, this is a good piece of technology. So should we think about like that for the future M&A as well like you identify, Moveworks was a good asset, Veza is a good asset, et cetera.
Well, hopefully, I'm getting going. Thank you, yes. So I think you're absolutely right. So we continue to do these tuck-in capabilities with great assets with great technology. Oh, by the way, great talent has always been a key focus for us as we think about M&A. Yes, they're getting slightly bigger in size, but so are we. So our hurdle rates remain high. And the ability for us to really think organically first, but also add tuck-ins of incredible technology and capabilities and talent will always be part of how we think about things. But remember, hurdle rates are high, and you'll expect us to be as disciplined as always in how we think about M&A.
And then last question on AI. The one more fundamental question is, is AI going to reshape kind of how we think about the different subsegments of SaaS, for example. So I hear you guys talking a lot more about CRM than like a few years ago. That could be maturity, but it could also be with AI, you can kind of do things differently. Can you speak to that like how do you see that?
I think it's a little bit of both. So it's certainly a maturity perspective, right? So our organic innovation in the space, we released sales and order management two years ago, getting great traction. Our services side of the business has always been strong. We talked about our CRM business surpassing $1.5 billion a while ago now, right? And so it's a pretty large business to start from. If you think about the ability of AI to really help drive real value in the CRM space, I think there's been a lot of frustration with siloed systems, not speaking to each other and really the value provided. If you think about AI first, modern CRM, where you can -- all on one platform, you can sell, you can -- and in that selling process, you can configure price and quote, which arguably is probably the most complex of the processes within the front office. So you can sell, you can fulfill, you can service all on one platform. Really complex workflows has been, I think, a really compelling value add and customers have been pulling us into that space, more broadly over the past several years. And so we've seen some really great traction, some really great wins. And our CPQ acquisition of Logic AI, which is that incredible modern CPQ system, the pipeline that we have on that business, so shortly after the acquisition has been fantastic. And it really is a great front door into front office. So we're excited about that.
Yes, okay. Just to wrap up the -- on the growth side a little bit. How do you think about that growth envelope for ServiceNow? Because like if you -- not because that sounds negative. But if you think about like you've been growing 20% plus, you're kind of the only company at scale that still achieves that. Like -- but as you think longer term, and I don't want guidance from you for next year, but if you think about that growth envelope, like how do you kind of see ServiceNow evolve from here?
Yes. So I won't guide, but what I'll tell you is that what we've just talked about over the last 24 minutes, I think, really shows you the opportunity for continued really best-in-class strong growth. If you think about growth vectors, we talked about federal and public sector more broadly. We talked about AI and what that means from a consumption perspective '27 and beyond with that hockey stick. We talked about continued innovation in AI, meaning that the core has the ability to continue to grow. We've talked about CRM. If you just think about geographies, we remain very underpenetrated internationally, and we have extremely strong leadership now in place across the board. So expectations internationally for continued growth remains strong. And then even in the U.S., we talked about globally back -- I don't know if it was this past May or the May before, if you just take our sweet spot of customers, so $100 million in revenue, 1,000 employees or more, there's 50,000 of them, excluding China, which we're not focused on right now versus the 8,500 we have today, there's a lot of white space still for growth, that we've got to continue to go after. So I think the expectations and the opportunity for continued best-in-class growth, I think, remains obvious and clear.
And that sounds really exciting. It must be like one way to test that always with the CFO on stage is to ask, okay, how much do you approve for capacity expansion? And if you increase your capacity, it's like, okay, you put your money where you're talking. I'm kind of -- can I still ask that question, or is AI actually changing that to some degree because you don't -- you might not need as many people? Like how do you think about that?
We certainly won't need as many people in certain functions, right? I don't think that in enterprise sales, you're going to -- AI is really going to change the dynamics dramatically on sales productivity for feet on the street quota-bearing sales. However, sales operations, overlays, marketing operations, finance, legal, HR, R&D with coding, there's lots of leverage that we can continue to see. So from an overall headcount growth perspective, I think AI will definitely change the dynamics, which means that we'll have more opportunity to both reinvest back into R&D for more growth as well as fall to the bottom line. But as importantly, I think it will -- we will not be stopping our headcount growth in the areas that really are going to continue to drive growth, and that's the feet on the street quota-bearing sales, the innovation coming out of our R&D organization. But I do think AI does help with a leverage perspective across the board in all the other places that we talked about.
I remember in previous years when I had you on stage, I kind of got like, okay, I want to grow my sales force. You're probably not going to give me a number, but like -- so that's still [indiscernible] like the question that comes up then is like as you save some more, could you kind of over-index on capacity...
Well certainly, my sales leaders would say that.
Yes, you can't say that, okay.
But you would absolutely expect that one of the continued areas of investment would be in that feet on the street quota-bearing sales to continue to accelerate growth. And in certain international markets where we've been under-indexed, there's a large opportunity to really lean in there.
And is there -- was it because there was so much volatility this year because there's a lead time, obviously, on investment. Where are you on that journey for next year, like...
We are well on our way. We still have -- I think we have significant open head reqs out that we expect to close by the end of the year, but we're well on our way. Remember, when you see my headcount numbers, there's a lot in those numbers that are not feet on the street quota-bearing sales folks. There's lots of operation roles. There's lots of partner type of roles that are not necessarily quota-bearing. And so while total headcount growth has slowed down, the focus on feet on the street has not.
Yes. Okay. And then last question for me, and then I need to let you go. Now let's bring it all together, like growth looks really interesting, margin kind of you can do some stuff. How does that all kind of translate into cash? Because cash you've done kind of like an upgrade on the guidance.
It's about 4 years of cash flow accretion in one quarter. So hopefully, investors are happy with that. But I think that's part of exactly what you're seeing, right? You're seeing the efficiencies. You're seeing us investing back into the business while on the same time, continuing to drive margins up. The question is always how much of that incremental we're going to invest back into the business. First and foremost, we're a growth company. So we're always going to lean more heavily towards growth. But I think based on what you've heard me say today, there's lots of opportunity to continue to invest back in, while at the same time, accreting both free cash flow and operating margins for sure. So more to come in January and certainly in May at Financial Analyst Day, we'll update the numbers a bit for you there.
Yes, yes, yes. No pressure for the IR team. All right. Perfect. That's a great closing statement. Thank you.
Thank you so much.
Thank you. Good to have you, again. Thank you.
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ServiceNow, Inc. — Barclays 23rd Annual Global Technology Conference
ServiceNow, Inc. — Barclays 23rd Annual Global Technology Conference
📣 Kernbotschaft
- Takeaway: ServiceNow positioniert sich als "KI‑Operating‑System" für Unternehmen: Fokus auf Governance (AI Control Tower), schnelle Produktivsetzung und Verbrauchsumsätze. Interner "Now on Now"‑Einsatz lieferte rund $350 Mio Effizienz, davon ca. $100 Mio jährlich aufs Ergebnis. KI‑Umsatz überschritt $0,5 Mrd und soll auf ~$1 Mrd im nächsten Jahr zusteuern; Federal/Public Sector und internationale Expansion bleiben zentrale Wachstumstreiber.
🎯 Strategische Highlights
- KI‑Governance: AI Control Tower als zentrales Produkt zur Überwachung, Absicherung und Governance agentischer KI; Veza ergänzt Autorisierungsfunktionen.
- Monetarisierung: Pro‑Plus/Token‑Modell mit stark wachsendem Verbrauch: Management berichtet von 55× Konsumwachstum seit Mai; initiale Subskriptionen liefern Upfront‑Umsatz und Konsum als Upside.
- Öffentlicher Sektor & M&A: Starkes Fed‑Momentum (Q3‑Fed‑Wachstum +30%), GSA‑Deal öffnet Türen; gezielte Tuck‑ins (Logic AI, Moveworks, Veza) ergänzen Front‑/Employee‑ und Security‑Fähigkeiten.
🔭 Neue Informationen
- Zahlen & Timing: KI‑Umsatz >$0,5 Mrd; Ziel ~$1 Mrd im nächsten Jahr. Konsumwachstum (55×) läuft schneller als erwartet, wirkt aber laut Management erst ab H2 2026 real auf Gesamtumsatz und stärker in 2027.
- Produkt‑Momentum: AI Control Tower hat Jahresziele in einem Quartal übertroffen; Management hebt freie Cashflow‑Akkretion hervor (Upgrade der Cash‑Erwartungen).
❓ Fragen der Analysten
- Adoptionstempo: Wie schnell gehen Kunden von Experimenten zu breitflächigen Deployments? Antwort: deutlich schneller, bleibt aber eine multijährige Reise.
- Monetarisierung & Guide: Wann schlägt Consumption materiell durch? Antwort: Wirkung vorrangig H2'26→'27; Basisszenario für 2026 bleibt $15 Mrd Revenue.
- Kapazität & Margen: Führt KI zu weniger Headcount‑Bedarf? Antwort: Produktivitätsgewinne (~$350 Mio) liefern Spielraum; Vertrieb und F&E bleiben prioritäre Wachstumsinvestitionen.
⚡ Bottom Line
- Relevanz: ServiceNow liefert ein klares Narrativ: KI als Treiber von zusätzlichem Consumption‑Umsatz und Margenhebel, flankiert von Federal‑Momentum und gezielten Akquisitionen. Kurzfristig bleibt das Timing der Consumption‑Monetarisierung und die Execution (Governance, M&A‑Disziplin) der maßgebliche Risikofaktor für Investoren.
ServiceNow, Inc. — UBS Global Technology and AI Conference 2025
1. Question Answer
Let's get started with the next keynote where we always love having ServiceNow here. You've got such an amazing story. Amit Zavery, I think you know from earnings calls, terrific executive to have here to talk through a lot of what's going on with the product and AI. So we're very honored to have you up on stage.
Thanks for having me, Karl, and thank you all. Yes.
Yes. Amit, I wasn't planning to, but just because you made this interesting little acquisition just yesterday, I think that's on everybody's minds. Can you give a little context to that deal, how it fits into the ServiceNow AI story?
Yes. So no, I think, first, if you look at what's going on with AI adoption, there's a lot of customers at C-suite we speak to, they worry about governance, policy management, security and how do you manage the identity of all the people accessing different systems. So we've been building out AI Control Tower, which has become very, very fast growing and been very well adopted. Our security business has gone to $1 billion plus. And we're seeing a lot of demand in terms of adding capabilities very quickly to not just manage a lot of the agents which are running and integrating and interacting with systems, but also the identities of them, right?
So what Veza does, Veza is a small company, but very strong IP. Technology they build is around identity governance. So what they do is really create this access graph of humans, machines and AI agents and track all the different identities they have, what kind of access they should have and then in real time, govern them before anything gets done. So basically, ServiceNow has been very, very proactive in building out technology in the post-breach area. This gives you the ability on the pre-breach, so kind of making sure that anything which can go wrong is managed through the access graph and integrates into our governance model and the workflow. So it gives a much bigger, broader capabilities for customers who want to adopt AI, but also all human relations associated with their overall system access.
That's really how you should think about it. It's a very good product, well adopted by a lot of financial services institutions, public sector, telcos and others. They have 150 customers, but in the growth path. This is a [indiscernible] as 5-year-old company, but very good, strong IP and technology, which really allows us to accelerate some of the road map we want to put in place for our AI Control Tower as well as governance and the security portfolio. So it attaches to that.
Is it in any way sort of part of a broader strategy to push the mix a little bit more into security identity, Amit?
Yes. We've been talking about our opportunity in the security space, and as I said, there's a lot of interest from customers to keep adding -- us providing a lot of capabilities to help them manage all the cybersecurity threats. So you should start seeing, and we've been delivering that as well. As you look at our portfolio, it has grown considerably over the last few years and keep on investing in that area. And it's a great growth opportunity for us and also a big differentiation because when we build a lot of these workflows, security becomes a very, very important element to it. And we can combine AI, data and workflow with security all around.
Okay. This next question, Amit, I'm shamelessly teeing you up to brag a little bit. So take advantage of this question. And that is, ServiceNow is on its way to $0.5 billion in AI ACV. A lot of the other SaaS companies that this group follows are still in the $100 million, $200 million, $300 million range. So why is it that ServiceNow has been able to scale up an AI presence a little faster than others? I'm sure it's amazing product engineers, great sales reps. Maybe it's a little bit that a lot of the early opportunity where enterprises are investing in AI are, frankly, in very domain-specific workflow automation, and that's what you guys do. But maybe you could unpack why the success?
No, I think it's really because of the foundation ServiceNow has built for many years is this idea of one platform with one data model, one user experience and building out AI as part of the platform, it makes a huge difference versus something on the side. If you look at many of the other vendors, they are building new, new stacks and customers have to migrate, reimplement, redo it. We build our agentic workflows as part of the existing workflows, right? So customers are using -- we have 75 billion workflows used on ServiceNow today and growing at a very considerable rate.
Now as the customers take our AI platform and upgrades to the next version, they automatically get the agentic version of it without having to redo a lot of the work. So we optimize those workflows. We make those changes in real time. And it's very easy and very fast to get access to the AI technology stack as part of our platform. So that removes a lot of the barriers, guarantees you a very good outcome and a technology which works, right? So we have been doing this workflow business for many years. We added AI as part of our platform. Now we have a data platform, which connects all the different data sources on the one same stack. And that's a big differentiation.
Second thing is the 20 years of workflow data where if you want to do agentic processes, agentic processes are really probabilistic, right? So agentic doesn't guarantee you all the outcome. What we have done is marry that deterministic data set from our workflow information we collected for 20 years to the outcome an agentic processes provide and guarantee you an outcome. And that changes the game as well because you don't want any of these business processes to give you a wrong outcome. So if you want to onboard an employee, you want to make sure it went through all the different pieces required for an employee to be successful. And we guarantee that because of the data we've collected.
We ensure when a process with AI agents are working between our AI agents and third-party agents, the outcome is guaranteed. So that has been a big change. And the third is the AI Control Tower. Most of the C-suite, if you talk to them, they are always worried about governance, auditing and especially what's happening with AI across all the different departments. And if you can't control and you have no visibility, you really land up having a lot of havoc being created using AI systems and you don't know how to audit it, but also how to secure it. So the AI Control Tower, which works across multiple systems, we have this model of any -- in terms of any system, any AI technology underneath the covers, any cloud and any persona. So we've been able to bring a lot of that governance and visibility across all these various technologies.
This is built on the CMDB technology, right? So CMDB is the foundation, the knowledge graph, which ServiceNow platform has been built on. So we have access to every asset inside the company. We added AI agents as another asset class. And now you have full visibility across the full spectrum of AI systems you're running inside your company. And the leaders inside the company love it because they can now have visibility, control, auditing capability and security so that when they deploy AI technology, they are able to be guaranteeing them the outcome, but also the visibility required.
Amit, is that single unified architecture advantage complicated by now your need to graft Moveworks into the platform? And how is that acquisition integration going so far, by the way? It hasn't really started yet, I guess?
Yes. So Moveworks, we announced early this year. We're working through the regulatory approvals. But you should think of Moveworks as a layer for conversational interface. So it runs on top of ServiceNow. It provides you ability to ask and interface into all the different systems, and we provide a very technical integration between the 2. So it doesn't require any replatforming. It should -- we already have a lot of customers between ServiceNow and Moveworks using us together, and it will just get better and better and more seamless. So the way we've been thinking about acquisitions, is kind of attaches around our core platform. Of course, there will be more integration in some areas where we can do better, seamless way of making things work. But beyond that, it's day 1, customers get the benefit.
Okay. Maybe we zoom out a little bit from ServiceNow in particular. You and Bill have talked a little bit about on the earnings calls about some of the struggles that large enterprises like UBS are having in terms of taking agentic AI apps out of pilot and getting them live. Could you update us perhaps on your view of enterprise AI adoption, Amit? What some of the hurdles are? And to what extent you're helping those customers overcome those hurdles?
Yes. No doubt. I think there has been a lot of work around AI. Many companies are, of course, trying to adopt it. Everybody approaches in different ways. The customers we've seen struggle is really this model of doing spare part-based AI adoption, right? When they want to pick different pieces of technology and try to cobble it together and build the whole platform. And what they realize, even though it's exciting in the first part of it because you are playing with many new technologies, is that keeping up with the changes, guaranteeing your outcome as well as governance and visibility is very difficult. The technology is changing very fast. There's a lot of different moving parts associated with that. And there's not enough expertise available in every company to keep up with it as well, right?
So where we've seen success and many of our customers that we talked about in the earnings call, our usage of agentic and our AI stack has gone up 55x over the quarter-over-quarter because what we do is preconfigured workflows with AI. So you're not really having to learn all the building blocks, the technology, moving parts, we upgrade the systems, we upgrade the platform, we keep up with the changes and the customers are getting the benefit and the ROI associated with that, right? So that's really what we have done with Now Assist today.
As you said, we have gotten to $0.5 billion -- we'll get to $0.5 billion this year and plan to be, next year, $1 billion in that space. And it's because of the prepackaged 100-plus configured workflows. And customers usually say, if you do case management, incident management, you want to do triaging, any issue resolution, all of these things come out of the box. And then we -- usually customers spend around 6 weeks to 12 weeks maximum to make it work according to what they might want to change the processes because you don't want to just take the same processes and implement it. Sometimes you want to reengineer them. So we provide them the ability to do process mining and update those things and then make it more modernized for the next use cases they might want to deliver.
So once they start seeing the ROI, that gets unlocked. So you look at the customers like Dell, Lenovo and others, they have implemented our agentic stack pretty much in like 6 weeks. And they have some of these use cases already been implemented and used. They're seeing a huge amount of reduction in terms of the human labor required, but also improvement in terms of customer satisfaction when they're doing selling or servicing of the products they sell today with ServiceNow as the foundation.
One of the hurdles we often hear about, we certainly do, I think most in the audience do is around data readiness. How big a hurdle is that? And what is ServiceNow doing to help enterprises address that issue?
Yes. No, as anybody tries to modernize, there's a huge amount of fragmentation of data platforms today. And I don't think there is ever going to be one unified data platform ever in the future either. So what we have done, we introduced this product called Workflow Data Fabric early this year. And the concept behind that is to really create this Zero Copy architecture, letting customers have their different data platforms available the way they have today. We create a layer with Zero Copy Architecture and provide this metadata abstraction so that you can do insight to action across the business process level, not at a data level, right?
So what happens today, many of the vendors out there say, "You know what, let's rationalize your data stack, let's do your data architecture," and everything is happening at a data level. That doesn't change the business process in many cases. What we're doing is we're moving that solution to a process -- business process level, where you're seeing this insight across all the different east to west processes. And now the data stack, which we have built with Workflow Data Fabric, integrates all these different systems together, but doesn't move it around -- move the data around. It is doing the metadata extraction, creating the information on the fly and helping our workflows to become much more intelligent and the AI agent to be able to use this data, which is coming across various systems to make decisions faster, right? So that architecture is built into the same platform, which I talked about as the ServiceNow platform. It's not something you do on the side.
So Workflow Data Fabric today has been one of the fast-growing areas for us. Similarly, what we have done associated with that is the Raptor database, where we've been able to now bring in both an OLAP and OLTP system in one place underneath the ServiceNow platform that powers what you do with ServiceNow workflows and then works in conjunction with Workflow Data Fabric to make sure that we have a very clear view of the information inside a particular process, and that feeds into our business process and the agentic flow and the AI agents are basically interacting on that one. And as I said earlier, we also have this 20 years of workflow data, which we're integrating into this thing depending on the customer or a particular situation, so making our AI agents much more intelligent and much more deterministic even though usually AI systems are not.
So this is, I think, an indication of pretty strong demand and good progress you're making. But the way that investors are perceiving your category right now doesn't feel like it's matching this message you're giving me, Amit. So I'd like to give you a chance to ripoff that. So as you know, SaaS stocks in general, nothing to do with ServiceNow in particular, have derated quite a bit in the last 6 months. People are worried that we'll see headcount cuts as a result of AI and seat-based models will suffer, that pricing models are going to have to shift, that the incumbent SaaS firms are going to have to go through fairly pronounced architectural shifts or be at risk of getting disrupted from others. So there's all kinds of concerns that the Street have. I'm sure you feel a little bit more optimistic than the Street does, but where do you think maybe the Street is over-indexing to negative?
Yes. First, I don't think so you should think of us as a SaaS company. We are an AI platform company, right? As we talk about the product we're building, it's a platform which allows you to really run your business effectively. And it works across multiple systems. So we're not one system provider, we are a system of action. We're really doing the ability to understand what users are trying to do and complete the task. And it can happen -- the task completion happens across multiple different entities underneath the covers. We are really at the forefront at a business process level, working end-to-end across an enterprise.
Second thing, I think, is that we have already incorporated AI technologies in our platform. So we are not really -- more AI usage goes up, more revenue we make. We are able to really monetize today as we do with Now Assist, but beyond that, because the adoption is in conjunction with users and AI systems. So our platform is really, really built towards the idea of taking any kind of business process, automating them, but also understanding how all the other systems work together and abstracting it out for you. So customers might change a lot of these underlying applications in the future, and some of them are very verticalized, right? They have very full vertical stacks. We work horizontally across them. And we are the abstraction layer across all of them today.
And we have built a lot of IP on top of large language models and other things like that. So it's not like the large language model is driving any of the stuff directly, it's just like another part of our technology stack. But the IP we have built around the context aware workflows -- see, a lot of times people think that you can have a large language model and understand a business process. A lot of business processes are not documented. Even the standard operating -- the SOPs out there are usually not up to date, and they change frequently. A lot of the context is in human brain inside an enterprise. It's not like the consumer world, as you know. So what we've been able to do is bridge the gap between humans working inside a company and a business process which is automated. And how do you bring those 2 things together? That's why we have the concept of human on the loop working across the business process, cutting across various different systems and automating them and making sure the context is brought in when you're making decisions.
So the stack we've built is much more foolproof in that regards. It changes how businesses run and giving them the liberty to make changes in the system underneath the covers while really keeping the business running and humming using ServiceNow. And that has been very well adopted. If you look at our growth, I mean, we're still growing at the rate much higher than any other companies out there, more than Rule of 50 and consistently delivering.
And evidently not seeing any signs of seat compression.
No, not at all. I mean if you look at our licensing today, I don't see any kind of discussion around seat compression. And also the combination of -- even if user count might go down, if for some reason, companies reduce the number of headcount, our usage -- that will have to be replaced with AI agents. And agentic workflows will become the monetization part of it. And today, that's what we're doing already, right? Even though we have our seats continuing to grow, we're seeing the growth in the AI agents. Even if the other thing goes down, we still see the usage on the AI agents part of it. So we are pretty much well covered. And I think I would love to bet on seeing AI growth continue to happen because that will increase even more where we are, right? Our seats are -- employees are still using our software. They are licensing that way, plus their license is in conjunction with AI agents today, and the combination is where we see the revenue growth.
Amit, you made mention of the large language models, and you are an ex Google executive. So let me ask you a question that might force you to anticipate their behavior, but I'll ask you anyway. So I think a lot of investors are grappling with the question of how Google, OpenAI, Anthropic will scale into the revenue targets and the extent to which that might overlap with incumbent software companies like ServiceNow. Not to oversimplify, but it seems like there's a couple of routes. They can attempt to themselves launch agents that effectively step on the toes of incumbents and be direct competitors, in other words, like productize their models at the apps layer, or they can stick to a different path and go down the API route where they partner with companies like ServiceNow to motivate you to build on their models. How would you anticipate the model companies behaving because they do have a choice right now.
You're right. I mean, when I was at Google and of course, I worked with a lot of these large language frontier model companies today. Now we are very good partners of theirs, right? One of the things they lack, and I know when I was at Google, we struggled with the understanding the enterprise application business processes just because that's not the DNA. And it's not like they're not smart people, it's just -- it takes a different understanding of how you operate a business inside an enterprise and different policies and business processes required associated with that. So what I anticipate, and this is already happening today, with large language models, their really ability to give you answers. And that's really where they're very strong at is to be able to discern information out of different documents and give you a succinct way to get information. But they're not action platforms.
And building an action platform takes years and years of work. Be able to do fulfillment, when somebody is asking for information, that's great, but then asking the information to do something with it. This is where ServiceNow shines. And that's why Google partners with us, Anthropic partners with us, OpenAI partners with us because they want that ability. Once you give the information, and we use them to kind of summarize things, 100%. That's a great capability. But when you have to start doing actioning, none of them will be able to do it. And that's a reality. If you look at any customer base today, there's no actioning framework provided by them. They will provide AI agents to give you that information. And that AI agent will interact with AI agents, which have been built by ServiceNow to really do the heavy lifting. And that's where the IP and the value comes in.
So as I said, we have built on top of large language model. We use it in agentic flows as orchestration, reasoning technology underneath the covers, but it's like 5% of the technology. 95% is built by us because of the work we do, heavy lifting we do in the context part of it, the understanding part of what it means to do something and how do you do and interact with various systems. And these systems are not like you just say, I want to go and do something there. You have to understand details behind it. You have to understand the context behind it. You have to integrate with the details, the schema, the data models. They're not going away. Those things -- nobody is replacing all of these things and suddenly just running a business without any technology. Large language models are not going to run the business. They're going to help you with some information gathering. So the actioning framework and the technology we've built is really where we shine, and that's why customers are still buying this technology because they've realized without this thing, they're not being able to finish the work. Getting the information is great, but if you don't do the task, it doesn't really do much.
One more model question for you. Just because you and ServiceNow have a -- because you're taking a platform approach, you have an interesting perspective. I'm sure you're, to some extent, model agnostic, whatever the customer wants and where the workload is best suited on which model. But are you seeing any interesting changes in terms of model preferences from your customer base or even from your engineering team?
Yes. I think it's -- this technology is -- the large language models are changing, and they are, in a way, trying to figure out where they want to focus on. So every release kind of changes. So as you said, we are model agnostic, and we extract it out that customers really -- we give them a choice that they choose to, but they're happy with our choices in many cases because as I said, it's really not a differentiator in 99% of the use cases. So customers don't care what is underneath the covers as long as we give you the outcome, right? But we do test. We have a lot of large -- we have a large research team and other -- we build some -- our own models to really make sure we understand what the technology can do for you. And based on price, performance, some of the multimodality we require and some of them overtake someone in 1 month, next month, you see another one. So it's a great work they do. But end of the day, we will keep up with it and use it as we see, just like we used to do with -- as you remember, with different operating system and different chipsets. That's the technology. It's really foundational, but not really a differentiator.
Okay. Another product question, not really related to AI, but that's around your core ITSM heritage, where I think there's always been a lingering worry that, that business will hit some measure of TAM saturation. But I can tell you as one of the analysts I've been amazed over the years that, that hasn't happened yet. So talk a little bit about that core and what's driving continued growth despite the fact that it's at scale?
No, it's ITSM, and I've been here at ServiceNow for a year plus, it's so impressive, the technology and the product which we have built at ServiceNow, right? And it does change how IT businesses -- IT departments operate. So the foundation is so strong, as I said, the foundation with CMDB and the things we have built around it to make it very easy for companies to really operate in a very efficient manner. And we are, I mean, still 40% penetrated even though we've been growing very well because there's a huge amount of headroom available to keep on growing. And you look at the technologies around it, right? So ITSM is a core. But when you add things like ITAM, which is asset management, observability management, ITOM, and then you add portfolio management, the capabilities can keep on expanding very quickly. And customers start with one and they easily see the value of adding other things.
Now we're adding things around CISO, which is very connected to IT. So that security business is built around that as well. So what we're doing with integrated risk management or security incident response, and now what we do with the identity governance, it's a very easy upsell for us because customers value the basic foundation and they see the ability to kind of very quickly do other things, which they will take months and years to do in somewhere else. And it's very cost effective and IT groups are used to this, the technology and the interface and the capability. And it's the same platform. So the modules we add, the way that we build our platform today, this workflow, the new workflows we're adding is on the same platform.
Today, a customer can build their own workflow on our platform if they want to do custom while we provide a packaged one. And very quickly, they get going without having to redo everything from scratch. So ITSM business, the tech workflow business is still a huge, huge opportunity, and we keep on investing. One of the big focus for next year as well is going to make sure that our technology workflows are getting the innovation required. We're bringing a lot of the idea of autonomous IT, where you have 0 ticketing, 0 incident, automatically -- everything being self-served. So you don't really require a lot of heavy lift when an issue happens or anybody requiring any help. So the autonomous IT thing is really resonating with every customer I speak to in this area today.
Got it. We have time for a couple more. Switching maybe to the industry verticals. Right or wrong, one of the focus areas has been your U.S. federal government exposure. There's been, needless to say, a lot going on this year. Can you give us an update here we are in early December, how that exposure has turned out, how the deal activity is tracked given that there's been a number of headwinds of late?
No, we've been very prudent with our guidance because of that. So we've been clear that we have to be aware of what's going on in the government. But fortunately enough and the execution we've had with our team, which is very impressive, last quarter, we -- our ACV grew 30% year-over-year in the federal business, right? So it's showing that we have a lot of demand from the federal government because they want to automate, they want to become more efficient. And they see a lot of value of ServiceNow products, making them more efficient as they think about the next-generation way of operating, right? So we are very bullish about how that is progressing. Our team continue to remain focused. We have a very good business opportunity there, and we've been successfully delivering against that.
Okay. Let me close with a fun question. If you don't mind for a minute to take off your ServiceNow hat and put your old Google hat back on. You left about a year ago. You must have done something right because 2025 was a recovery year for Google. But everybody in the audience has been following their story quite carefully over the last 6 months. What have they -- as the next Googler, Amit, what have they done right to get their mojo back?
Yes, that's an interesting question. So Google is an amazing company. I mean I loved my 6 years over there, very innovative and very clearly engineering driven. There were definitely -- when we were working through some headwinds and market changes, the technology is always there. The product was great. I think sometimes you just have to get a lot of the different things working together. So I think Google has figured out how different groups come together to build an integrated offering versus the federated model Google used to operate at, right? So I'm very excited about what Google has been able to deliver with Gemini. We are very bullish with Gemini, we use some of the technology, but also our partnership with Google Cloud as well.
So a great team, great people, great product, a lot of innovation and a great partner of ours. So I definitely want to see them continue to succeed and work together with us. But in general, I think it's all -- I always believe you have to be product and technology led. And that's what excites me about ServiceNow as well, right? We are product and technology led. And as long as you focus on the right capabilities and differentiation, and I think Google has done that irrespective of what was happening in the industry, and deliver great product, which customers love to use, you always win. And that's our goal and my job here as ServiceNow, it's customer first and making sure we deliver the best product.
Well, from one success story to another. Amit, thanks very much. Thank you, Darren, as well, and happy holidays as they come up.
Thank you for having me. Thank you, everyone. Happy holidays.
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ServiceNow, Inc. — UBS Global Technology and AI Conference 2025
ServiceNow, Inc. — UBS Global Technology and AI Conference 2025
📣 Kernbotschaft
- Kern: ServiceNow positioniert sich als plattformzentrierte AI‑Plattform für agentische Workflows und Governance. Kombination aus AI Control Tower, Configuration Management Database (CMDB)‑basierter Sichtbarkeit und Workflow Data Fabric soll Unternehmen ermöglichen, AI sicher, auditierbar und prozessorientiert zu betreiben. Veza‑Zukauf ergänzt Identity‑Governance; Ziel: $0,5 Mrd. Annual Contract Value (AI‑ACV) dieses Jahr, $1 Mrd. nächstes Jahr.
🎯 Strategische Highlights
- Akquisition: Veza ergänzt Identity‑Governance mit einem Access‑Graph für Menschen, Maschinen und AI‑Agenten zur präventiven Zugriffskontrolle und integriert in das Governance‑Portfolio.
- Conversational: Moveworks soll als Conversational‑Layer atop ServiceNow laufen; Integration hängt von regulatorischen Freigaben ab, kein Replatforming geplant.
- Data & Infra: Workflow Data Fabric (Zero‑Copy) und die Raptor‑Datenbank bündeln heterogene Daten auf Prozessebene, um agentische Entscheidungen deterministischer zu machen.
🔭 Neue Informationen
- Update: Konkrete Neuankündigung ist der Veza‑Deal (Identity Governance). Produktseitig wurden Workflow Data Fabric und Raptor DB als Infrastrukturanker hervorgehoben; Moveworks‑Integration ist angekündigt, aber regulatorisch noch offen. Keine neuen finanziellen Guidance‑Änderungen ausser der bestätigten AI‑ACV‑Zielsetzung.
❓ Fragen der Analysten
- Datenreife: Kunden‑Hürde bleibt Fragmentierung; ServiceNow setzt auf vorkonfigurierte Workflows und Zero‑Copy‑Ansatz, um Implementationszeit (6–12 Wochen) zu reduzieren.
- Wettbewerb: Große Sprachmodelle (Large Language Models, LLMs) werden eher als Partner/Modellanbieter gesehen; ServiceNow stellt sich als Action‑Layer dar, der Fulfillment und Kontext liefert.
- Integration: Nachfrage zu Moveworks/Veza‑Integration und Zeitplänen; Management blieb bei regulatorischen Details und konkreten Integrationszeitlinien vage.
⚡ Bottom Line
- Fazit: Produkt‑ und Governance‑Fokus stärkt die Differenzierung: Identity‑Governance, AI Control Tower und Daten‑Fabric untermauern die Monetarisierungsstrategie. Kurzfristige Risiken bleiben Integrationsaufwand, regulatorische Freigaben und Kunden‑Datenreife; bestätigte AI‑ACV‑Ziele sind wachstumsrelevant.
ServiceNow, Inc. — 2025 RBC Capital Markets Global TIMT Conference
1. Question Answer
First pick, the 2025 draft, I get ServiceNow. And I'm lucky. Thanks, everybody, for coming. My name is Matt Hedberg, for those who don't know me. This conference is -- it's such a lot of work, but when the day gets here, it's always -- this is my favorite day of the year. Outside of maybe Christmas. I really enjoy Christmas wrapping. Yes.
Thanksgiving.
Thanksgiving. I mean there's a lot of good ones. Yes. But I really do appreciate everybody coming. And especially the companies, really you guys make this conference so special.
So first this morning, we've got a half an hour. I don't know, we might leave a minute or 2 at the end for questions if there are some. So save them up. I'll be polling for some of the best questions.
But with us this morning, Josh Kahn, SVP, GM Core Business Workflow.
So maybe, Josh, for those less familiar with your role, you oversee products like HR, finance, legal, other back-office functions.
Yes.
Could you just give us a little bit of understanding about your role and sort of how long you've been at ServiceNow and kind of how you've seen the platform evolve over these years?
Yes. Sure. So the job of a workflow leader is essentially to be driving the strategy for a particular segment of the market and then leading the company in the execution across being successful in that segment. At the core of it is the product strategy and the innovation strategy. But the job that I have, and a few of my peers have, is to make sure we've got the right go-to-market machine to reach that market, the right post-sales machine to make customers successful there.
So if you think about ServiceNow, we've got one set of workflows and a workflow leader that focuses on IT and the things that IT needs, IT and security teams. We've got another workflow that's focused on customer operations and the things that you need to find and retain and serve your customers. And then we have my workflow, which is focused on the people and what might have been thought of as the back office. We don't like to use that word because it sounds like a place you don't want to be. But it's really kind of the engine of the organization. So my job is to make sure we're staying close to our customers and delivering for them through our innovation strategies and how we reach them as a company.
We still, as a company, build all of these workflows and products off of the same platform and the same set of technologies. So we have a really, really strong platform team that builds core capabilities that then each of us in the workflow is tailoring to the specific needs of a department or a set of personas. So my job is to make sure that chief people officers, chief legal officers or general counsels, the head of finance, the CFO, are getting what they need from the platform and that we identify places we can innovate for them.
It's a huge -- I mean, you think about the scale of that and the opportunity to cross-sell that. You've been at ServiceNow for 9 years. You've had several CEOs, and the current one is obviously special as well. Can you talk about, as you've been with the company for nearly a decade, what is it about the company, the culture that's been able to thrive through multiple CEOs, and really what makes sort of the secret sauce from your perspective?
Yes, I think there's a few things I would point to. First, you're absolutely right, we've had 3 different CEOs since I've been there. And they're each world-class in a unique and different way. Frank Slootman is just like, his ability to execute and get a team to execute on something is amazing. John Donahoe really brought a culture of growth and a growth mindset and more sort of cross-functional thinking. Bill brings a world-class way to engage customers.
The thing that I think has stayed the same, that is really important to me and I think a lot of the people who've stuck around, is one of our core tenets, one of the few company culture tenets, is hungry and humble. And no matter how much we accomplish, we always feel like there's more to be done, we can grow, we can do better. And so that has really helped permeate the culture.
I think there's also, from the founding, been this notion of being able to serve our customers and delight them, not just at an enterprise level saying, "Hey, we delivered a great ROI and the business case played out." But at a personal level, like delighting a human who has a job to do every day and making their job better. And so I think there's a lot that each of those CEOs has brought, but that notion of serving our users, in addition to our business stakeholders, and the company culture of being hungry and humble is really probably the things that I think haven't changed that are what keeps me here.
Yes. That's great. Given your purview on some really, really critical aspects of the business, I think a lot of us, when we think about Now Assist now and we think about workflows, it's really turbocharged. Could you give us some tangible examples of where customers are using some of the premium features of Now Assist -- or Pro Plus and Now Assist within some of the core workflows?
Yes. So I'll give you -- first, I'll just kind of describe a couple of layers of where we serve our customers and products that we provide because then I think it will help zoom in. The first thing a lot of these departments do is serve employees or customers in asking for things. "Hey, I've got an issue," or "I need some information. Help me." The second thing they do is they build a service desk to be able to provide that information.
So with Now Assist, the first areas that we directed it were at those 2 layers. We have a ton of customers that have deployed Now Assist to help employees, customers, partners, suppliers find information and summarize it or easily ask for something to be resolved on their behalf. And so that ability to use generative AI to understand their intent, to summarize information, to find the right information has been kind of a breakthrough. And so we have customers that are seeing 30%, 40%, 50% improvement in their ability to keep those kinds of requests off of the team in that service desk.
The next level is the service desk. Things do eventually find their way to someone who's working in a service desk. We would all encounter these people when we call for help at one of our favorite service providers or product providers or internally at IT or HR. "Hey, my paycheck's wrong." We're providing them the ability to do their job faster.
So getting a lot better at being able to summarize case information so it doesn't take them 5, 10, 15, even 20 or 30 minutes and a complex IT case to come up to speed and start doing their work. So we can get them up to speed faster with case summarization. We can help them reflect the next 5 or 10 or 50 or 100 of those by creating knowledge base articles, the information people need.
And so those are really the first 2 places we've seen a lot of our customers get a tremendous amount of value out of Now Assist. And that's where we started. It's just sort of core generative AI capabilities.
Today we're starting to see a lot more customers getting value out of AI agents. And that's where instead of just using kind of intent and language summarization and the ability to generate language, we're actually using reasoning to automate a lot of steps. In some cases, you can just full-fledge automate that through the workflow. In other cases, you make a recommendation to a human because people aren't quite comfortable yet in allowing an agent -- an AI agent to just make a decision and go with it.
So it just feels like in the area of productivity, I'm sure you hear from the front line what customers are looking for in terms of where there's urgency for additional workflow, I mean, what are some of the things that maybe you're not doing today that you get request for in terms of kind of urgency around improving some of that workflow?
Yes. If you -- I think one of the big areas that you -- that we see -- take HR, for example. So HR teams, we have a phenomenal product there. We announced last year that that product itself crossed $1 billion in 2025. We continue to see HR teams want to be able to provide employees and managers self-service on everyday moments.
So HR teams spend a lot of money on what they might call HR business partners or experts to help with making managers more productive, helping serve employees through managers. So they're looking for ways to make managers more effective using AI and using technology. So that then their super specialists, these HR partners, can do the things that only those humans can do. That's one example that we're addressing with a lot of our customers.
Another is in finance. There's a lot of work to be done in finance to do things that are about pulling multiple data sources and reasoning over it to make, for example, a journal entry. Now nobody is going to say, "Hey, AI bot, just go crank that out, put it in there and let's go," today. But there's a lot of prep work that happens in the finance department that can be automated so that those accountants can actually be far more productive and handle a lot more volume by not having to do all the manual work.
Okay. That is a dovetail into a narrative that has been topical for us really the last several years, but it's this, with increased productivity, what is the impact of AI on traditional software? Is software -- is AI killing software? I'm sure you hear that all the time.
I'm curious, from your lens, from the customer lens, how do customers think about that? How do they think about usage of ServiceNow with AI and maybe increased productivity? And maybe that means fewer seats in the future. But what is the customer lens?
Yes. So there's a part of this that is about how we drive value and how we monetize the driving of that value, that I'll park for a second. That's kind of the pricing model, right? But if you think about this, there are -- no customer service department, take your favorite consumer brand. That customer service department has policies about how you resolve certain customer inquiries.
And they're very specific. And they don't just tell all of their agents, "Do whatever you think is right when a customer calls in and just make it happen." They have a pretty specific flow that they want people to go through in a specific set of things. To me, that's kind of like traditional workflow. It's if then else. If the customer situation is this, here's what you can do. Unless they're a really good customer, then you can also do this.
So there's a lot in the world, and I use the customer service example, but the same thing holds true in HR, IT, finance, legal, accounting, any department that we serve, there's a ton that is still deterministic workflow in its nature.
And then there are ways that AI agents can automate things that people are comfortable just saying "Do your best." Because even humans are wrong sometimes. So if an agent is wrong in certain cases, it still may be better to automate those away. But there are other cases where you'd say, "No, no, no, I need this to be deterministic."
So that unique combination that we have of deterministic workflow and AI agents is incredibly powerful. And it's a reason that people aren't just going to say, "Hey, the whole world is going AI agents and AI. We don't need this stuff anymore."
The other thing I would say is there's a tremendous amount of value in the data models, the user experience models that we prebuild for those personas. You know what I'm saying? We have a ton of personas we serve and we design outcomes specifically for them. Our customers don't want to go roll all their own. And there's a tremendous amount of IP in understanding those personas, building the data models, building the experiences, building the workflows, that agents and AI technology isn't just going to automatically understand.
So for us to make sure we stay ahead of this, we have to really embrace AI. Like we can't sit on our hands. We can't say, hey, we're safe. We've got to be scared and we've got to be paranoid. And we are. But we feel that it's a confident paranoia, I guess, I would say. Because we feel -- we understand our assets, we understand what our customers want. And that combination is really powerful.
So it's kind of a pivot into pricing, because one of the concerns is, we sort of alluded to it in the prior question, but if XYZ company is so much more productive, are we going to need as many HR service reps in the future?
Yes.
I guess, are you seeing examples of where customers are shrinking the number of seats? And then that'll dovetail into the pricing and packaging with the...
Yes. I'm seeing places where customers don't need as many people, but I haven't seen a lot of like large-scale layoffs resulting from that. I've seen some people getting redirected to new things. Because there is a virtuous cycle. And I'll give you an example. One customer with their service desk started seeing a place where they didn't have as many inquiries coming in. So they said, "Hey, we don't need as many people. What if we redirect those people to improving the quality of our knowledge base and making it so that we deflect even more cases?" So those people didn't go away, they just went into a new role, and they're making the knowledge base better.
Now I think over time, what I expect to see is a shift in how this -- I would expect to see fewer people doing those kinds of service desk jobs, but it will be because our AI is doing the job for those people. And so that's where our pricing model comes in, in making sure we've got a pricing model that balances the user roles that we've traditionally been monetized -- that we've traditionally monetized and that customers actually know how to buy. Like customers actually don't want a pure consumption-based model. They know how to buy on a user base.
And so we have that today, but it's got capacity limits built in. So as the users come down and the usage goes up, and we are seeing that usage go up significantly in these cases where they need fewer service desk people, that consumption meter will go up. And so I think we're in a really good position right now with the combination of our kind of hybrid pricing of user and usage to be able to ride that transition.
And I know, Gina, when she talks about the $1 billion of Now Assist ACV at the end of next year, there's not a lot of consumption built into that initial assumption. But are you starting to see some customers break through some of those -- some of the commits that are embedded in the...
Yes, we're seeing a very significant growth in what we call assist consumption, particularly as customers deploy more and more AI agents, which is what you would expect, because AI agents are delivering breakout value for those customers. And so I think the thing that we're managing is when a customer has to come back and say, "I need more assist, I need to buy more from you because I'm out of AI capacity," we should have a really good business case for them on what they're getting from those assists.
So that's what we're seeing by and large. And when we find cases where a customer is saying, "Man, I'm burning through my assists faster than I like and I don't think those things are the highest-value tasks," we have to work with them and say, okay, let's make sure we're automating the things that are creating business value for you more than those things.
And so sometimes it's about getting customers to pick the right places to deploy their AI, because they burn a bunch of assists on stuff they consider low value, that conversation about buying more consumption isn't a great one. But if they're doing it on things that are helping them reduce service desk agents or helping them improve their time to renegotiate a supplier contract or reduce their supplier risk, it's a much more valuable conversation for the customer and for us.
And so it's a bit of an education as we pivot from this traditional seat-based model to a hybrid model. And I want to go back to that in a second, but you said something interesting. In other words, implied in some of your earlier answer, you don't necessarily see ServiceNow moving to a full consumption model at some point in the future.
We'll stay really close to our customers on this. There are customers who have become used to models like that in hyperscalers. There's a model there. It's kind of commit to consume, right? You say, "I'm going to buy this amount from you," and then you can burn up to that amount. To the extent our customers say, "Hey, I want to start doing something like that with ServiceNow," I can imagine us being -- moving into that kind of a model. But it really needs to be something that we base on working closely with our customers.
And this was the thing about seat-based pricing in the beginning, is it was a lot about customers don't want to just buy a bunch of [ assists ] at that time. Nobody -- it was very early on, this was 3 years ago, I think, and nobody knew very much about AI, generative AI at all at that point, not customers, not suppliers. And so there's a lot of uncertainty. As we're getting more and more certainty and seeing more and more of it play out, I think people are getting more comfortable by saying, "Hey, maybe I just want to buy a bunch of stuff."
And with our platform, we can cover so many use cases. I mean I talked about from IT all the way to contract management running through customers and supply chains and everything that our customers have. So thinking about just saying, "Look, I don't want to have to contract with you on this product and that product and that product. I just want to buy your platform and go deploy it in all the places that make sense for me" is something that more and more of our big customers are coming back and saying is like, "Look, let's take the friction out of this. Let's just let me put it wherever I want. And when I use it, then you're going to create value and I'll pay you for that value."
So I guess maybe to put a bow on this, the big concern is kind of P times Q and fewer seats in the future is bad. When you're talking to these customers and they're seeing the ROI, are you seeing any friction on, "I love ServiceNow, but in the future, I feel like we're going to use less ServiceNow?" Or is it more of like, no, no, this is like it's changing the way we get work done. We see ACV growing on a customer basis...
It's absolutely the latter. Our customers are getting from the top of their organization, "We need AI. We need AI use cases. This should be" -- when I talk to anyone in a core business department, they're saying, my CEO is telling me to do my job as well or better with fewer people. How do I do that? And everyone tells me AI is the answer.
So they're looking for those kinds of answers. And when they're able to use our AI to create some of those business value outcomes, it helps them be a hero in their organization. It helps them succeed in their job. And so that's something that is resonating really well. They're not saying I want to use less ServiceNow. They're seeing ServiceNow as the stuff we knew and this new AI capability, and they're turning to their peers and saying, "ServiceNow has a product in your department too."
And by and large, a lot of the departmental work is very similar. Hey, how do we serve employees? How do we get our core work done? And how do we eliminate all that manual work that used to result from all the underlying fragmented technology landscape and all the manual processes that sit in between?
So it's a dovetail into the orchestration layer. I've long thought as organizations are building and deploying AI, as we are internally at RBC, just understanding what all these agents are doing is a critical issue, I think, for a lot of organizations. And you guys, we think you're in a really unique spot to be an orchestration agent across an organization, that agent of agents. Talk about how customers are thinking about that? Is that something that they think about, "I need somebody to manage all this?" And if not ServiceNow, it doesn't -- I don't know who else is in a good spot to do that.
Yes, there's a couple of dimensions to it. One is similar to what used to be the low code concern. It's like, hey, if I give citizen developers the ability to build apps and I have applications all over the place. So people were really worried about agents all over the place and they have no idea what those agents are doing. And so there's kind of a management capability to that and then a risk capability.
And so we built something called the AI Control Tower. The AI Control Tower can monitor not just our agents, but third-party agents, and understand what they're doing, how often they're running, what kind of risky activities they might be executing, and start to look at the business value that they're creating by customers sort of assigning a form of value to the execution of that agent.
And so I think we are in a really unique position to be able to provide that because of our place in the stack. We sit and complement, particularly in core business departments, we sit and complement a lot of the systems of record. And so they're going to have agents, and we believe it will be a heterogeneous agent world. And so you're going to want one place to really look and monitor how all those agents are running. And that's what our agent Control Tower is doing. It's one of our products that's getting the most interest from customers and growing in terms of interest faster than probably anything else.
So I can imagine as a knowledge worker, you're pulling information from multiple systems to get your job done. So is there an example that you have of somebody using your orchestration, your Control Tower to ingest data from one system, maybe create a PowerPoint in Microsoft? Are those examples happening? Or are we not to like the agent protocol perspective yet where that's...
Yes. So I think that I would say that's going to be at the agent level rather than the Control Tower level. So Control Tower will monitor those agents and what they're doing. But we have -- in our core products, we build out-of-the-box agents. So a lot of those out-of-the-box agents are doing things like resolution recommendations for agents. That's one of our most common agents that will run in IT. And that resolution agent will pull data from ServiceNow, but it will also pull data from other systems to make a recommendation to the human agent for how something should be resolved.
And so that's an example back in that service desk layer, how I said we're making people more productive, that's a great example. Because now the human agent doesn't have to go start from ground zero and do the work. They can look at a resolution plan that was recommended for them. So that's one example of that.
But we also see customers building custom agents with our Studio. And our Studio makes it incredibly easy for our customers to build an AI agent to do really anything. Because in our Agent Studio, all of the automations that exist in ServiceNow today are available as tools to a new agent. So if you have a flow that does approvals for time off requests or for expense reports, all of those are available for an agent to call on. All you have to do is kind of describe what the agent is supposed to do and then plug it into our orchestrator.
And so then when a request comes in and says, "Hey, I want to request time off," the orchestrator says, do I have an agent that seems like the time off agent? And there's an agent that's been described as "I'm the agent that finds time off balance and schedules time off." So it was like, oh, yes, okay, do your thing.
And it can just call in to our out-of-the-box integration to the HCM, Workday or SuccessFactors or whatever, and say, "Get me the PTO balance," sends it back through a conversational interface to that employee saying, "You have 8 days of PTO left. Do you want me to schedule you some?" "Yes, I do." Go back to the same agent and call a different spoke -- or a different -- we call integration spokes, that actually schedules the PO.
So this kind of ability to -- the layers of our architecture and our AI platform for agentic AI that allow you to connect to all those systems is pretty unique in the market. And nobody has really built out from the [ action ] layer to the ability to create and modify our out-of-the-box, to the Control Tower layer and the ability to orchestrate that Control Tower, much less the ability from end user engagement all the way down through action.
Once Moveworks is completed and integrated, what are you most excited for? What are customers most excited from that they weren't previously getting from ServiceNow?
Yes, we have a lot of customers that are using both our products today. And we can see -- I've talked to some of those customers and they have Moveworks plugged into Teams or Slack or whoever they are, and their employees use it and they have conversational engagement through there. They do some search capabilities.
And then they also come in to our employee portal, that the customer has deployed. We call it Employee Center. They'll come into our employee portal and be able to use ServiceNow's virtual agent powered by our AI. So a lot of customers are using both of those in 2 places. And they can call in to the back-end systems. Our virtual agent calls much -- has much deeper knowledge of ServiceNow and calls deeper into ServiceNow today.
What I'm excited about is the ability to bring those 2 really powerful engagement capabilities together, let our thousands of customers who have our portal seamlessly plug in Moveworks the way they have into Teams and Slack and other interfaces, to provide a great, incredible conversational experience. I'm excited about the ability to make it possible for Moveworks to call deeper into ServiceNow and drive even more powerful automations from within the ServiceNow platform.
And of course, there's customers that are using one, the other or neither. And I think the combination is just going to create an incredibly powerful way for us to accelerate sales of our AI technologies and for more customers to quickly get these conversational and search capabilities set up. And all of that will plug into the incredible power of that agentic AI architecture I just described, our orchestrator, our Studio, our Control Tower.
So our front end and the chat and the search is just about to get better than it's ever been before, and we're going to couple that even more deeply with the power of that agentic platform.
That's great. As we -- you guys have delivered strong results this year, and it's obviously, it's like the new normal is uncertainty. The government is back open. But when you talk to customers -- a question that I always get is like, how do customers think about year-end budget? Do they -- is there a budget flush? Have we historically seen that? I can't imagine Gina is necessarily assuming anything abnormal there. But like from a customer lens, how do they think about kind of year-end spending?
Yes. I haven't -- to be honest, I'm not in, today, in a lot of conversations with customers where they're like, "Hey, I have a ton of money I just want -- I want to flush out." What I'm seeing a lot more is the conversations are all centered around AI. The buying conversation is, "I have money to spend on AI."
And so I don't know whether that's a budget flush or it's just like, "Hey, we took all our money and we moved it out of this box and into AI." But spending money on AI, spending money on automation, spending money on driving costs down and driving efficiencies up, whether it's with AI or just sort of that deterministic workflow is a priority for customers.
They're dealing with macro uncertainty. They're dealing -- and now nobody really knows what's going on in the background because we had a data blackout. But that's been a trend that's been growing, is macro uncertainty, tariffs, sort of erosion in the consumers that's kind of the low end of the market. And so customers are saying, "I need to cut costs." And so that's what I really see, is people saying, "I'm willing to spend money to save money," and coming in with a hypothesis that AI is the way to do that.
So effectively, what you're saying is you think there's more defined AI budgets today than there was even a year or 2 ago. And that certainly can play -- yes.
Absolutely. And look, a lot of people are saying, "Oh, when is the value of AI going to show up?" And I can tell you, we're seeing it with customers today and it is showing up. And so I believe that will be an incredible accelerator because no matter what part of a customer's organization they start using our AI in, the transferability of that automation into another department is so significant that I believe it will really help us accelerate AI adoption.
I love asking a question, like a moonshot question. And you, with your seat and your lens, I'm sure you have some interesting thoughts on where we go in the future. I guess like if we're sitting here 3 years, 5 years from now, like what is like a moonshot element that AI could bring to ServiceNow? I mean, what could it mean that is transformative that we don't even see today?
Yes. So I guess what I -- I think of this like, can you imagine using a product today that didn't have Internet connectivity?, Like every app on our phone, every app on our desktop, they all kind of depend on Internet connectivity. Even the things you'd think you can work on for a long time in isolation, like Word or PowerPoint or something like that, still you need to get to the Internet because that's where everything is stored and shared and that's where a lot of the suggestions that it will have come from.
I think that's the way we need to think, is AI is going to be in the core of every single one of our products. Like you won't buy a product from ServiceNow that doesn't have AI in it. Today it's an add-on and it's -- we create more value, so we monetize it that way. As monetization models evolve, AI will be in everything we do.
And so is that a moonshot? I don't know. It may seem kind of obvious today. But the amount of effort we're putting into making that happen is very significant because it impacts everything from feature design -- our designers can't design a non-AI and an AI version. They just have to design an AI version. So it impacts everything about how we build products, how we price products, to how we deploy products. And that's a really significant lift, but one that we are absolutely focused on, from our CEO to our COO and Chief Product Officer, to me and my peers and everyone who works for us, is we are figuring out how AI can be in the fabric of every single thing we do.
Yes. Well, and we need another half hour. We're barely scratching the surface here, Josh. So I -- unfortunately, we don't have any time for questions, but I know you're here and meeting with investors today. So from all of us at RBC, Josh, thank you, and Alex, thanks for coming.
Thank you. Appreciate being here.
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ServiceNow, Inc. — 2025 RBC Capital Markets Global TIMT Conference
ServiceNow, Inc. — 2025 RBC Capital Markets Global TIMT Conference
🎯 Kernbotschaft
- Kernaussage: ServiceNow positioniert sich als Orchestrierungsplattform für agentische KI in Kernabteilungen (HR, IT, Finance, Legal) und sieht AI als integralen Bestandteil aller Produkte — nicht nur als Add‑on, sondern langfristig in der Produktarchitektur und im Vertrieb.
🚀 Strategische Highlights
- Now Assist: Starkes Wachstum der Assist‑Nutzung; Kunden berichten von deutlichen Produktivitätsgewinnen (z. B. 30–50% weniger Anfragen an Service Desks) und steigender Consumption‑Nachfrage.
- Agent‑Plattform: Agent Studio + Orchestrator ermöglichen kundenindividuelle Automatisierung; Out‑of‑the‑box‑Agenten und Integrationen zu HCM/ERP sind Kernvorteile gegenüber Punktlösungen.
- Go‑to‑Market & Pricing: Management setzt auf hybrides Modell (Sitzlizenzen + Consumption), bleibt aber offen für commit‑to‑consume‑Strukturen mit Großkunden.
🔭 Neue Informationen
- AI Control Tower: Produkt zur Überwachung heterogener Agenten (inkl. Drittanbieter) wird als stark nachgefragtes Monitoring‑ und Risk‑Tool präsentiert.
- Moveworks‑Integration: Geplante Zusammenführung von Conversational Frontends soll Frontend‑Engagement (Teams/Slack/Portal) und tiefere Back‑end‑Automationen enger verbinden.
⚡ Bottom Line
- Fazit: Für Aktionäre bedeutet der Pitch: klarer strategischer Fokus auf AI‑Orchestrierung und monetarisierbare Consumption‑Wachstumsfelder; kurzfristige Seat‑Risiken werden durch Hybridpricing und Umschichtung von Rollen abgemildert. Wachstumspotenzial durch Cross‑sell und Plattformtiefe bleibt zentral.
ServiceNow, Inc. — Q3 2025 Earnings Call
1. Management Discussion
Thank you for standing by. My name is Kate, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Q3 2025 ServiceNow Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] I would now like to turn the call over to Darren Yip, Senior Vice President of Investor Relations and Market Insights. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Good afternoon, and thank you for joining ServiceNow's Third Quarter 2025 Earnings Conference Call. Joining me are Bill McDermott, our Chairman and Chief Executive Officer; Gina Mastantuono, our President and Chief Financial Officer; and Amit Zavery, President, Chief Product Officer and Chief Operating Officer.
During today's call, we will review our third quarter 2025 results and discuss our guidance for the fourth quarter and full year 2025.
Before we get started, we want to emphasize that the information discussed on this call, including our guidance, is based on information as of today and contains forward-looking statements that involve risks, uncertainties and assumptions. We undertake no duty or obligation to update such statements as a result of new information or future events.
Please refer to today's earnings press release and our SEC filings, including our most recent 10-Q and 10-K for factors that may cause actual results to differ materially from our forward-looking statements. We'd also like to point out that we present non-GAAP measures in addition to as a substitute for financial measures calculated in accordance with GAAP. Unless otherwise noted, all financial measures and related growth rates we discuss today are non-GAAP except for revenues; remaining performance obligations, or RPO; current RPO and cash and investments.
To see the reconciliation between these non-GAAP and GAAP measures, please refer to today's earnings press release and investor presentation, which are both posted on our website at investors.servicenow.com. A replay of today's call will also be posted on our website.
With that, I'll turn the call over to Bill.
Thank you, Darren, and welcome, everyone, to today's call.
ServiceNow delivered another set of stunning quarterly results that absolutely shattered expectations. Subscription revenue growth was 20.5% year-over-year in constant currency, 1 full point above the high end of guidance. CRPO growth was 20.5% year-over-year in constant currency, 2.5 points above our guidance. Operating margin was 33.5%, 3 full points above our guidance.
Free cash flow margin was 17.5%. We had 103 deals greater than $1 million in net new ACV, 6 of which were greater than $10 million in net new ACV. Technology workflows had 50 deals over $1 million, including 6 over $5 million. ITSM, ITOM and ITAM were all in 15 of our top 20 deals with double-digit deals over $1 million. Together, security and risk combined for 12 of the top 20 deals with 3 deals over $1 million.
That risk and security business combined is now $1 billion ACV business, our fifth business to cross the $1 billion threshold. CRM and industry workflows were in 14 of the top 20 with 15 deals over $1 million, and core business workflows were in 13 of the top 20 with 14 deals over $1 million.
Here's the headline. ServiceNow is one of the most durable, consistent, overperforming growth companies in the enterprise software industry. When you think about brand shaping the future, you have GPU leaders like NVIDIA, hyperscalers, foundation models and 1 company integrated in all together, the AI workflow company, ServiceNow.
It used to be the MAG 7. Now there's a new category, I'm calling this the Super 8. That's the MAG 7 plus ServiceNow, that's right, the Super 8. As you'll hear from Gina, our confidence in the future has never been stronger, so we're raising guidance again heading into the fourth quarter. This team knows how to focus, innovate for our customers, execute at global scale and most importantly, how to win.
We've only scratched the surface of the market opportunity for this platform. This new enterprise AI neighborhood is a dynamic place to live. Our Now Assist net new ACV to date, beat expectations once again in Q3. Our AI products are on pace to exceed $0.5 billion in ACV this year, excellent progress toward beating at $1 billion target next year, and we're totally focused on surpassing it.
We saw 12 Now Assist deals over $1 million, including 1 over $10 million. Our AI Control Tower deal volume more than quadrupled quarter-over-quarter in Q3. And just since the end of May, AI agent assist consumption has increased over 55x, that's the foundation of a beautiful hockey stick that's coming to you.
For our customers, it's all about AI business transformation. IDC forecast AI IT spending will be $1.3 trillion through 2029. And here's why ServiceNow is winning.
Our platform sits at the core of the enterprise technology estate. ServiceNow is championed by the very leaders who are designing AI reference architectures of the future. Beginning with autonomous IT, we're helping those leaders solve enterprise-grade AI challenges.
Governance is one of those mission-critical areas. Machines simply can't govern themselves, AI is like any other enterprise asset, it needs to be cataloged, tracked, supervised and secured. ServiceNow's configuration management leadership gives us and our customers a clean single pane of glass to govern all artificial intelligence.
How is it working, where it's adding value and where it's elucidating? This is AI-enabled orchestration of all the other AI. Every single enterprise and every industry wants this real-time AI Control Tower. Another challenge is getting beyond the height to fast business value.
The root cause of nearly every failed deployment of enterprise technology in history is a lack of integration. And even the ones that worked took years to get to positive ROI. To change this paradigm, AI has to run east to west across the enterprise and north to south up and down the tech stack.
ServiceNow's AI platform can do this like no other. For every process that transcends departments and systems, ServiceNow's workflow engine is creating the road map that AI agents follow to get work done. Without cross enterprise workflows, so-called agentic AI, is just another one-dimensional chatbot.
Enterprises gravitate to ServiceNow because we have a system of intelligence and a system of action on one integrated AI platform. Legacy systems of record where enterprises want a modern alternative are being composed as AI native workflows on the ServiceNow AI platform. We all have personal experiences with AI apps on our phones.
Enterprise AI is different. It's much harder. To put AI to work for people takes more than a language model or a rebranded wrapper on legacy tech. It takes domain expertise, which ServiceNow has curated over 2 decades and trillions of automated workflows.
It also takes empathy as every customer's AI journey is unique. You don't build trust in this industry by forcing customers to conform. You build it by meeting them where they are. That's where the operative word in ServiceNow strategy is any, any cloud, any model, any data source, any agent. It's why we were so early partnering with all 3 hyperscalers, the foundation model companies and the systems of record.
We neutralize complexity for our customers, giving them a clear road map to cycle down old systems over time as their AI readiness matures. Our customers recognize the time is now to shape their future. AI is the new UI. The ServiceNow AI experience breaks the cycle of siloed systems and bolt-on agents with a unified AI interface for voice, images, data and text.
Figma and ServiceNow are partnering to bridge the gap between design intent and enterprise execution. Through an MCP integration, teams can seamlessly transition from visual design and Figma to fully functional enterprise-grade applications on the ServiceNow platform.
This integration empowers developers, regardless of skill level, to use Figma design as direct prompts in the Now Assist build agent. We see a bright future, intelligent agents working side-by-side with people to resolve issues, complete tasks and take action. In the context of value creation for customers, partners, employees and shareholders, enterprise AI keeps every ServiceNow stakeholder on the same side.
This is a once-in-a-generation opportunity. It's like minting a new currency that underpins a limitless new economy. The more we keep getting this right, the more will reach our full potential as the AI defining enterprise software company of the 21st century.
To ground this in special way, in a special and specific market, let's talk customer experience. Enterprise has invested a lot into legacy CRM deployments. For all that investment, they got a sprawling massive instances and silos. They want a better way with AI. This applies to many legacy vendors, some more than others.
Here's why ServiceNow is reshaping the customer experience market. Our AI experience turned CRM into an AI-first system of action that drives growth and customer loyalty. In sales, a new AI-powered CPQ solution accelerates quote generation, and this is going to free business to focus on relationships.
In service, AI agents flag at-risk cases, automate resolutions and empower teams to act before SLAs are breached. This spans the entire customer life cycle from first contact to resolution. Customers like Thrive and Pure Storage are using ServiceNow CRM to personalized support, connect data, AI and workflows and scale service excellence.
With a global technology services company, we are streamlining service models and enhancing customer experiences through agentic workflows, a hardware manufacturer, selected ServiceNow CPQ and manufacturing solution to scale sales and service without increasing cost.
A leading global technology company tripled their CPQ commitment with ServiceNow. What began with 1 product and 1 channel turned into a breakout success. The customer saw the impact, and now they're scaling it across partners and a dozen more products.
A European auto manufacturer, Selective ServiceNow CPQ for its configuration, and it's selling this globally. What's fascinating is that these conversations are actually coming to us. The appetite for change is everywhere. We're also meeting the moment with great partners like Genesis. Unified experience from Genesis and ServiceNow merges contact centers, CRM and service operations into a single agentic AI-powered platform.
Through agent-to-agent orchestration between Genesis Cloud and ServiceNow, AI agents will collaborate autonomously on tasks to deliver fast resolutions, seamless customer experiences and stronger customer loyalty. ServiceNow always goes where the customer needs us to go; in this case, that's to the core of a better CRM because the status quo just isn't cutting it.
Let's spend a moment on U.S. Federal, which had a great Q3, beating NN ACV expectations handily. In the quarter, we saw Now Assist pilots quickly converting into deals, as agencies realize fast time to value and compelling ROIs.
Like other industries, our AI Control Tower is gaining attention, as agencies look to enforce governance and manage risk within their AI estate. The GSA One Gov agreement opens the door for broader federal and government adoption of ServiceNow. This simplified model reduces complexity and makes it easier for agencies to adopt more of our AI platform over time, that positions us well for upgrading standard customers to Pro Plus.
Through the agreement, the ServiceNow AI platform is estimated to boost efficiency by 30%, saving the federal government billions over the next 5 years and it will accelerate agentic AI transformation.
In closing, ServiceNow's strategic relevance has never been higher, and it's soaring right now. When you look at the Zurich release, every innovation from vibe coating to agenetic playbooks and enterprise-grade security, it's purpose built to unlock the full value of agentic AI, helping teams act faster, work smarter and build trust as they scale.
Gartner just published the first ever 2025 Magic Quadrant for business orchestration and automation technologies, affectionately called So get on board because ServiceNow is the leader, the furthest for its completeness of vision, placement of all companies. We have a rock solid core business with the biggest opportunity in our history to provide the AI Control Tower.
We have a next-generation CRM business at the doorstep of substantial legacy disruption. We have AI, data and workflows integrated into a single AI architecture, world's leading brands like the great NVIDIA, the world's first $5 trillion company. Congratulations Jensen, our great friend, and your wonderful company.
Also AstraZeneca, Volkswagen Group, Ulta Beauty, 7-Eleven Japan, FedEx, DataWorks and countless other companies are working with ServiceNow and excited to do so. Periods of systemic change always reveal new pillars on which the future is being built. This is the 1 moment in time when everything will change. And we won't do it with AI alone. We need AI that works for people.
We need a bias for exponential thinking for renaissance level creativity to finally solve some of the world's biggest challenges. Our customers, our partners and our team are all in to build that future on the ultimate platform, ServiceNow, the AI platform for business transformation.
Thank you for your time and interest. I look forward to your questions. I'll hand things over to our President and Chief Financial Officer, Gina Mastantuono. Gina, over to you.
Thank you, Bill. Once again, Q3 showcased another standout quarter of elite level execution with significant outperformances across all of our top line and profitability guidance metrics. Now Assist, Workflow Data Fabric and Raptor DB were all ahead of plan. .
ServiceNow's U.S. Federal business also demonstrated its resilience, surpassing net new ACV expectations for the quarter as we work hand-in-hand with agency leaders to modernize how the government works for the American people.
Q3 subscription revenues were $3.299 billion, growing 20.5% year-over-year at constant currency, 100 basis points above the high end of our guidance range, driven by strong execution with broad-based demand throughout the platform.
RPO ended the quarter at approximately $24.3 billion, representing 23% year-over-year constant currency growth. Current RPO was $11.35 billion, representing 20.5% year-over-year constant currency growth, a 250 basis point beat versus our guidance.
From an industry perspective, Transportation and Logistics led the way, growing net new ACV over 90% year-over-year, followed by momentum in retail and hospitality and education both growing over 50%. Energy and Utilities continue to see healthy demand and Government was also an area of strength driven by our U.S. Federal business growing net new ACV over 30% year-over-year.
Our renewal rate remained a strong 97% and an even more robust 98% when excluding the closure of a large federal agency. We ended Q3 with 553 customers generating over $5 million in ACV. Furthermore, the number of customers contributing $50 million or more increased by over 20% year-over-year.
We closed 103 deals greater than $1 million in net new ACV in the quarter, including 3 deals over $20 million. The power of our Better Together platform model was evident as all of our top 20 deals included 6 or more products.
Now Assist had a tremendous quarter, once again exceeding expectations, fueled by 12 deals over $1 million in net new ACV, including 1 over $10 million. As Bill noted, our AI products are on pace to exceed $0.5 billion in ACV this year, underscoring the great progress we're making towards our $1 billion target for 2026.
Key product areas of strength included ITSM and HR plus net new ACV, both doubling quarter-over-quarter. ITOM plus net new ACV, surging more than 5x quarter-over-quarter. And CSMs plus deal volume tripling year-over-year.
More broadly within CRM, our AI-powered CPQ solution has become a powerful entry point into front office transformation. We're seeing traction with displacement wins around the globe, including multiple million-dollar deals.
Turning to profitability. Non-GAAP operating margin was 33.5%, 300 basis points above our guidance, driven by our top line outperformance, AI OpEx efficiencies, disciplined spend management and timing of some program spend.
As we advance our AI agent deployments across the company, we're unlocking substantial organizational capacity, driving measurable efficiency gains and enhancing scalability. Our free cash flow margin was 17.5%, up 50 basis points year-over-year. We ended the quarter with a robust balance sheet, including $9.7 billion in cash and investments.
In Q3, we bought back approximately 644,000 shares as part of our share repurchase program, up nearly 70% versus last quarter, with the primary objective of managing the impact of dilution. As of the end of the quarter, we had approximately $2 billion of authorization remaining.
Together, these results continue to demonstrate our ability to deliver a healthy balance of world-class growth, profitability and shareholder value. With our continued confidence in the trajectory of our business, today, we announced that the Board of Directors has approved a 5-for-1 stock split designed to make our shares more accessible to a broader base of investors and to provide employees with greater flexibility in managing their equity. A special meeting of shareholders will be held on December 5 to approve the split.
Moving to our guidance. Given our Q3 outperformance, we are raising our 2025 growth and profitability outlook. For 2025, we are raising our subscription revenues by $55 million at the midpoint, to $12.835 billion to $12.845 billion, representing 20.5 year -- 20.5% year-over-year growth or 20% on a constant currency basis.
We are raising our full year operating margin target by 50 basis points from 30.5% to 31%, as AI operational efficiencies continue to drive incremental leverage. We're also raising our full year free cash flow margin target by 200 basis points from 32% to 34%.
We continue to expect subscription gross margin of 83.5% and GAAP diluted weighted average outstanding shares of 210 million. For Q4, I would note that while our public sector pipeline and demand is very strong, the ongoing government shutdown may impact deal timing in our U.S. federal business in Q4.
Given the time line requirements to complete standard procurement processes, we've prudently factored in this timing dynamic into our guidance. With that in mind, for Q4, we expect subscription revenues between $3.42 billion and $3.43 billion, representing 19.5% year-over-year growth or 17.5% to 18% on a constant currency basis.
We expect CRPO year-over-year growth of 23% or 19% on a constant currency basis. We expect an operating margin of 30%. Finally, we expect 210 million GAAP diluted weighted average outstanding shares for the quarter. In conclusion, Q3 was an exceptional quarter with standout performances across the board.
These results underscore the power of the ServiceNow AI platform and our multiple growth vectors from core workflow expansion to the accelerating adoption of innovative new products in areas like security and risk, sales and order management and data and analytics.
Massive platform demand, combined with AI driven efficiencies, not only fueled fantastic results, but also reinforced our ability to scale with accelerating margin expansion.
Before we close, Bill and I want to take a moment to thank our incredible employees around the world. Your unwavering commitment, tireless execution and passion for excellence continue to be the driving force behind our success.
With that, I'll open it up for Q&A.
[Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from the line of Kash Rangan with Goldman Sachs.
2. Question Answer
Congratulations, Bill and team. Bill, I like to Super 8, but I still like the category of one, even better than Super 8, but I wanted to ask you a question. With agentic technology is becoming abundantly clear as you outlined that there is a process of integration, implementation.
We're back to, in some sense, making software companies like you're successful with the help of the outside work like the Accentures and what not. Some integration expertise, implementation expertise could go a long way, maybe even the talk of forward deployed engineers to get this technology prime for real-time. What are your thoughts on that, Bill, going forward as you really try to institutionalize the adoption of agentic technology in your ecosystem? That's it for me. All the best for the future.
Yes, Kash, let me begin, first of all, by saying it's been an honor to know you all these years. You're one of the grates of all time, and I never forget being on a helicopter with you any years ago on a rough ride, and you were a champion then and you're a champion now, and I wish you and your family the best in your next endeavors.
I was with 150 CEOs a couple of Fridays ago and we were talking about the whole AI scenario, and they were telling me that their proof of concepts, these toys side cars are getting crushed. They don't want to do them anymore. And they were also telling me that they have so much complexity in their business processes that they're having trouble making AI work.
And I explained that was the same dilemma, as you pointed out, Kash, with digital transformation. You have a platform here with AI platform for business transformation that resides above the systems of record and gives you that clean pane of glass to integrate the business processes into workflows.
And workflow has become the new buzzword, everybody likes workflow now, but we're the workflow company. And what's unique about our workflows is we're doing 75 billion of them today and we're doing more than 1 trillion transactions on them today.
So the fact that we can connect to any cloud, we have all of the 3 hyperscalers, they're all great companies, by the way. We have the language models that are large ones, and we integrate with all of them. And we built on NVIDIA Nemotron, the next generation of our platform, which enables customers to do extraordinary things with big language model power at a fraction of the big model cost 0 latency, total security, no hallucination and a cost-effective ROI that's amazing.
And Kash, we're getting customers live with autonomous implementations in a few weeks, not years and years. So the game has changed, and I believe we're at the epicenter of the enterprise to make every company a best-run business and the word is getting out there. And I'm glad you asked that question. It was a perfect question. Thanks a lot, Kash.
Bill, the world should know that as that helicopter swiveled 45 degrees from it's a forward path of progress that you diligently on a blackberry were tapping away e-mails with, I think, perfect spelling, so and I was nearly throwing up and you were so kind to me. So that memory will go down forever.
Great memory, Kash.
Kash, I'll just add 1 thing. Again, congratulations on the future plans. But as Bill was saying, what we're doing with the way we build out our agentic processes and the workflow as part of ServiceNow platform is that we have 100-plus prepackaged workflows with agentic built in. So you don't have to do a lot of handholding, a lot of implementation to get going.
Of course, there are going to be co-innovation required, there might be something specific for our customers. That's why we're investing in FD kind of a model with forward deployed engineers who are really AI Black Belt who can work very closely with customers on the AI expertise required for some of those use cases.
A lot of customers are getting, I think, the lack of expertise in some of these departments it might be a difficult thing for them to catch up on. And when they do things with spare parts and buying all the random pieces, it becomes very difficult to really get the outcome they want. So what we're doing is really solving the problem and getting them the use cases squarely closely out of the box and getting the implementation done quickly and then production, they see value instantly and they do more and more with us. And that's really the difference between us and everybody else out there.
Your next question comes from the line of Samad Samana with Jefferies.
Great to see the strong results, Bill. I also want to ask an AI-related question. The $500 million plus ACV level for AI on its own is a great disclosure that you're tracking to that. But it's stood at that the deal volume you mentioned for analysis also seems to be broadening out and that there's a greater breadth of deals driving the AI ACV strength.
So I was wondering are you seeing that the broader sales organization, and to the partner base that Kash just mentioned, is getting better at selling the AI solutions and it's being less of a top-down-driven sale? And how should we think about maybe that impact going forward?
Yes, Samad, it's a great question. And you're right. It is progressing beautifully, and it is now a standard way of selling in our company. And you see that in the Pro+ upgrades and all the new business that's coming in Pro.
And what's really exciting to me from a shareholder value creation perspective is that the customers really want it. And when you see a 55x growth since May in the number of assists that our customers are doing on our platform, you have to look into the future and say, we have billions of assists already out there in the marketplace that will be monetized in future quarters.
And already, we have 1,700 customers that live on this, and that's growing every single day. And 1 thing that will definitely get under reported on an earnings day is culture. We have every single person in our company with their own AI learning journey where they've been assessed and credentialed and there's an AI action plan because we're putting AI to work for our people.
And internally, with super cool with our ServiceNow on Now, meaning we run the product before we put it into the market, is 90% of the IT, customer service and HR processes are now being done by agents, not at the exclusion of people, but to make people happier. So the soul-crushing stuff is done by the agent and the people are doing more and serving more capability to our customers.
And this really is a virtuous cycle because we're proving that you can grow put AI to work for people higher, and as Gina said, have tremendous operating leverage on the margin and free cash flow line to reinvest in our business and to create even greater shareholder value. So we get it. We know what that hockey stick is, and we're building a company for the ages here.
And Gina, if I could squeeze 1 in for you, if possible. I know you can't predict what the federal government will reopen, although the way you've been nailing guidance, I'd say, your prediction powers are strong. But how should we think about the prudence that you factored in? Is it different from what you were thinking, let's call it, 90 days ago? Or is there incremental prudence just given that the government is still closed? Just help us understand that comment specifically around guidance.
Of course. Of course, Samad. Yes, so first and foremost, I want to just extend like huge congratulations to our incredible Fed team. We had an incredible Q3, which as you know, is the biggest federal quarter always because it's the closing quarter of the fiscal year for the Fed.
Over 30% year-over-year growth in net new ACV really demonstrates the incredible resilience and demand that federal agencies have for our platform. So first and foremost, demand is strong, and we are resonating so clearly with the federal agencies, which is fantastic.
On specifically with the government shutdown, 90 days ago, the government was not shut down. And I would say that we absolutely have factored in a bit more prudence into this guide because as much as I would like to say, I know how to forecast when the government is going to reopen, I just don't.
And so procurement processes do take a bit of time. And so we did factor some timing-related only prudence into the guide because demand is healthy, strong and the opportunity for us in federal space, and by the way, more broadly, public sector, state and local as well, remains stronger than ever.
Your next question comes from the line of Alex Zukin with Wolfe Research.
Maybe just a quick 2-parter, Bill, for you. maybe demand trends as you progress through the quarter, linearity of bookings and kind of maybe talk to us a little bit about how the consumption and utilization of some of the AI credits is trending? It sounds like it's going better than you expected. And then I have a quick follow-up for Gina.
Yes. Thank you very much, Alex. I really appreciate it. The demand is amazing. Our demand right now is better than I've ever seen it. And I just want to give you a little bit of an anecdotal color on this. We have a world forum process going on across the world right now.
I was getting text early this morning on our New York Forum, which is substantially oversubscribed. But I also got one along with my colleagues and the Board a couple of days ago, we did our Board meeting. In Japan, we had a capacity for around 6,000 people in Japan for our World Forum, we had 6,500 that could not be seated due to fire regulations, and we had to set up a workaround, so everyone could see the speeches and get the content.
The pipe is wild. And what's happening now is we're breaking through. The brand is actually now breaking through. And this one platform for AI business transformation is coming across at the C-suite. The CEOs are kind of getting the picture. Many of them have killed these proof-of-concept scenarios.
One had 900 proof of concepts going on in the company and said it was uncontrollable, and they killed them all, and they went with ServiceNow. So I think we're really breaking through. As it relates to the linearity, I would say the linearity is historically consistent. I think it's going to get even better when you think about the bookings and the step-ins and the hockey stick around the assist as the tokens are used, then they get reloaded, and that is the hockey stick that's built into the model.
And yes, I see a 55x growth since May in the assist as clear indication that the customer is deriving unique value from the platform. And yes, I think that tsunami is going to increase and pick up even more.
Wonderful and amazing. Gina, maybe for you, the renewal cohort in Q4 that's been, I think, headwind to CRPO growth. Anything that stands out positive from this large renewal cohort that was initially expected this quarter, like whether it's a greater willingness to expand with Pro Plus and anything to think through there as we incorporate the prudence in the guidance?
Yes. What I would say is that part of the incredibly, so we had a 250 basis point beat in CRPO in Q3, part of that, about half, was the team doing a pretty incredible proactive job of pulling some of that cohort renewal into Q3 from Q4, which not only boosted Q3 results, but also provide strong momentum heading into Q4 because now as a result, we have a head-start in addressing that large renewal cohort coming up in the next quarter.
And so feel really good about what that looks like. We're also seeing Plus attach rates better in Q3. So they continue to get better and better and stronger. And so feel really good about what that renewal cohort looks like. We continue to see very strong renewal rates, as I called out as well.
And so just putting a topper to the conversation back to what Bill was saying: Demand trends remain really healthy, pipeline into Q4 looks strong and very healthy and we remain really confident in the guide and feel great about the ability for us to pass the full beat in revenue in Q3 to the full year. And then on top of that, to be able to raise the bottom line guide 50 basis points at operating margin and 200 basis points on free cash flow really demonstrates not only the demand we're seeing, but the AI efficiencies internally we're getting to help really drive that bottom line expansion on top of the incredible top line growth.
[Operator Instructions] Your next question comes from the line of Tyler Radke with Citi.
Great. You talked about some pretty astounding consumption increases, 55x. Can you just talk to what do you think is sort of driving that type of consumption? I mean I imagine it's pretty broad based, but if you're seeing that outsized in a particular vertical or use case?
And then you talked about $500 million of analysis ACV by year-end. Just any sense on kind of how that tracks to your original expectations and what the upside could look like on the $1 billion target next year?
Tyler, I'll take that. This is Amit here. So on the consumption, the way things have worked very well for us is that once our customers start using agentic workflows, and once you're doing the agentic, you are starting to use a lot more of the assist because you're making a lot of calls back and forth 2 of the different processes and automating those systems.
So the volume you require for those agentic use cases is like 10x, 5x, 12x, depending on each of the calls. That's why the growth has been. And when we provided this prepackage agentic workflows to our customer, they're going live faster, they are starting to use those things quickly.
And this quarter already, we started seeing so many customers go live, and that's where the usage goes up much higher than we had before where it was more of a idea of summarization and things like that. Agentic is really the game changer for our consumption business and with customers who have got on this Now Assist packages are starting to now apply and use them more regularly.
And they're unlocking new new use cases as well, right, incident management, triaging, helping customers kind of solve a lot of the requests around the customer issue. And those use cases are very complex. And with agentic workflows, that requires a lot more work behind the scenes, but the automation happens and that's where the hockey stick starts happening for our use cases as well.
And may I just give you a couple of examples, and I'll turn it over to Gina on the math. Think about it this way, Lenovo, a very well-known fantastic brand they're resolving cases 35% faster and they achieved 100% customer satisfaction score with the Now Assist deployment.
Bell, a leading Canadian telecom company, you know them well, they're deflecting more than 3 million customer support calls annually, and they're automating 90% of dispatch-related tasks now on Now Assist agents. Griffith University in Australia, they've adopted the enterprise service management approach to enable easy-to-use services for students and the staff that serve those students and they deployed AI across ITSM and customer service management functions, and that's led to an 87% increase in overall self-service rate.
the CMDB competitive advantage that ServiceNow has in the marketplace has led us into with this agentic AI cross-functional support on the platform to new use cases in all functions of corporations, and that is only a ServiceNow-enabled skill. No other platform can do that. So I think that's really reason to believe.
And then lastly to your question on how the ACV for Now Assist is tracking? So yes, we're on pace to exceed $0.5 billion by the end of the year, which is tracking ahead of where we thought we'd be. You heard Bill and Amit talk about our assists tracking faster and growing faster also than we planned. So we are well on our way to that $1 billion. I'm not going to up the guide at this point, but you can expect that we expect that we will continue to track ahead of plan and continue to see pretty incredible traction for all of our AI products.
Your next question comes from the line of Michael Turrin with Wells Fargo.
Gina, the 3Q results as you're alluding to are impressive, especially given the uncertainty the company has been navigating throughout the year. The 1 question we're getting is around the fourth quarter subscription revenue guide for 18%. That number is a touch lower than where the CRPO growth rates overall seem to be settling.
So just any context you can give us to help bridge those 2 metrics? Is that public sector comment you're making more specifically tied the fourth quarter guide or are there other assumptions just given renewal dynamics and a few months that we know are very important for the company to be mindful of as well?
Thank you. So yes, public sector will be a factor in there. One thing I think is important, the full Q3 revenue beat we put into the full year and so remember that, that the full year is higher, and we raised not only in Q3, we also raised in Q2. The other piece that I would say is on-prem is definitely a factor of a bit in Q4. And so that's a piece that you need to understand, too.
Your next question comes from the line of Kirk Materne with Evercore ISI.
I'll echo the congrats on the quarter. Bill, you're mentioning that some of the bigger enterprises are starting to get rid of some of these pilot projects with AI, which would seem to lead to more consolidation to platforms like yourselves.
I was just wondering when you're talking to CEOs about AI, how important is it to be able to talk about AI and workflow from an industry context? Meaning, you all obviously have specialization in areas like government, financial services, how important is the fact that you can bring solutions that address specific industry workflow pain points as well as just more horizontal? Just curious on your thoughts on that.
It's a great question, Kirk. There's no question that the customers expect not for you to know their industry, they want you to know their industry cold. They also want you to understand before you show up their mission-critical processes, the objectives of the company and to be very specific and pointed on exactly how your technology is going to move their needle.
And we use our own AI platform to do that for every seller in the company. So when we show up, we show up with that domain expertise, the deep list of logos and we can get extraordinarily specific about what we're doing with the platform and what we could do for them with the platform.
And we also have thought about that in the coverage model and how we go to market. So where you have critical mass or you have large customers in a cohort like financial services, like public sector, as an example, like telco, like high-tech manufacturing and so forth, we try to structure the coverage model that way. And all the things that we do in the command center behind the scene are always industry-specific.
And Amit, you may want to build on that.
Yes. So Kirk, the other things we do is we have a team which is very focused on industry solutions. What they do is they build out data models, which are very specific to a particular industry. And if you look at examples like Ulta Beauty where we do retail store operations. Our agentic flows are built specifically for what you require to manage your retail store, the maintenance, the life cycle and the cases the retail store operator require help with because we've built that into our agentic platform and not just a generic offering, but very specific to that use case, so they can go live faster.
We're doing the similar kind of things for other industries as well. We do that for manufacturing, we do that for industrial production, we have done a lot of work around health care, financial services, telecommunication. And we partner also with companies who have very good domain expertise in there.
So we build join solutions we can take to market in that area. For example, we did think financial services with for dispute management, which is built together on our industry data model, which every customer can take advantage of. So a lot of things going on. It's just not that we provide you a platform which is generic, but also a lot more specific domain expertise built inside it.
Your next question comes from the line of Keith Weiss from Morgan Stanley.
This is [indiscernible] for Keith Weiss. I guess I'm just curious if there's any updates around Moveworks? And if there are any changes in how you're thinking about that process closing? And I guess just on that, I mean, the Now Assist performance has been really encouraging. And so just curious if you could provide some additional thoughts around what Moveworks brings to the table to continue to strengthen that AI suite?
Thanks so much. So with respect to Moveworks, we're expecting at this point that we'll be closing -- hopefully closing that deal at the -- towards the end of Q4. So very excited about what Moveworks is going to bring to us. But at the same time, pretty important to note that the incredible Now Assist results that we've had have been all on our own without Moveworks.
And so as you think about moving into 2026, ServiceNow plus Moveworks is going to add a whole other level to what we can provide to our customers. And I'll let Amit take like more specific about what Moveworks is going to bring.
So as Gina mentioned, I mean, I think we are -- our initial thesis around Moveworks still remains the same, right? We're looking at a company which brings a lot of good AI expertise and talent to allow us to accelerate our road map. But we've been doing a lot of work, as you see, with our new capabilities with the Zurich release and things we're doing around the AI lens and other things we've delivered today.
So those things are all progressing well. Customers appreciating it, and the adoption has been great. We will -- as Moveworks come on board, we will, of course, accelerate a lot more stuff together, but nothing is dependent on it right now.
Your next question comes from the line of Peter Weed with Alliance Bernstein.
I think one of the really innovative and exciting opportunities you've been talking about is the AI Control Tower. And I wanted to kind of pick your brain on how you see the demand from buyers? Is this the type of thing where people are investing in the Control Tower as they start on their AI journey? Or does the buyer really need to get to kind of a certain maturity level before they realize its need and then they kind of come back and invest in it. And if you think through that model, like how does the commercials ramp? And how material can this opportunity be for ServiceNow over time?
Yes. So Peter, on the AI Control Tower, it's been one of the biggest interest from any customer we speak to. Because every customer, when they're thinking of AI adoption and agenetic, they're worried about control. They don't know how to manage the security. They don't know what to do with trust, safety, regulatory requirements.
And the AI Control Tower solved that problem. As soon as we start talking to customers, it resonates instantly. That's why our business in this area, customer base grew by 4x in this quarter itself because there's so much proliferation of different pieces of technologies out there and customer base and they need something which can control it and manage it for them, just like we were doing that for various assets, we're now doing it for AI.
And what we have done is we have integrated all the different systems out there to give you full visibility and control. And that resonates and that's where the growth is coming for. If you look at our risk business, the security business, AI Control Tower is pulling that into a lot of more conversations than we would otherwise have been because of our end-to-end capability around security, risk, compliance and giving you full life cycle control and cost management around AI.
And we are very heterogeneous end-to-end. And that's where the use cases are emerging from. And that's driving a lot of consumption. As we said, the business will continue to grow in this area because we are probably the only provider like this in the industry today.
And to build on that, Peter, I recently was on a trip in Europe, and you take great companies, as an example, like an AstraZeneca, they're using the Control Tower to manage and govern all the AI initiatives at scale, and they've implemented ServiceNow agentic AI across the organization to drive employee productivity because they want to free up time for innovation to double the medicines that they bring to market and they want to do it faster than any competitor.
And I think Amit nailed it, but I would also especially when you get to Europe and Asia, ethical, compliant and secure is really radiating as important attributes of our platform because they see what's going on in the headlines with security challenges out there, and that's what this unified architecture does.
It's AI, but it's ethical, compliance, secure and you can coordinate all your efforts across legal, the security function, internal audit, IT. And these are really important matters and the AI Control Tower is going to give organizations that clean pain of glass, that simple control tower to drive AI strategy, governance, management and performance across all of their AI investments.
This AI sprawl that's gone on right now, whether it's built in-house proof of concepts or externally sourced dreams that haven't quite worked out are really getting cleaned up by the AI Control Tower in this platform. So I think having a single governance framework is absolutely a breakthrough for enterprises, and they all appreciate the C-suite, I can tell you that.
Your next question comes from the Brad Sills Bank of America Securities.
I wanted to ask a question also on Now Assist. Just given the momentum you're seeing here. Wanted to get your thoughts on the pricing change earlier this year. Do you feel like that has been well received. Has that been an unlock for you as you're starting to see some of the momentum here?
Do you have the right pricing model in place, you kind of feel that way? And then also some of the deal metrics you mentioned sound like you're getting to a place where probably have some pretty decent lighthouse accounts for reference with Now Assist. Do you feel that, that could be a catalyst for more Now Assist deals to come?
So the pricing we introduced for Now Assist and this idea of combination of subscription and consumption, the hybrid model, has been very well received by our customers. They like this idea of having flexibility as well as predictability in this model where we can give them the capability to adopt as they need to, and then they pay based on usage over time.
And then if they go run out of tokens, they can re-up as well. So that structure has worked perfectly for our customers. We're seeing a lot of interest in terms of adopting this kind of structure by other vendors as well because they're seeing what we have done works very well for everyone today.
So we're very happy with the structure that it's already been playing out with the way we expected in terms of consumption, the idea of adoption and usage going up very fast. While we, of course, get the subscription revenue upfront. So the combination has played out, and I think it's the right structure, and we continue to add more to it with other products as well. So you should expect continuous that kind of structure going forward.
And the other question you have around lighthouse accounts. There are a lot of customer examples we shared with you earlier Ulta Beauty, AstraZeneca, we're doing a lot of deflections using Now Assist and doing a lot of adoption around AI Control Tower as well as using this to automate their business processes.
So that lighthouse accounts, of course, help us to go and talk to other customers with a similar kind of use cases where you can get the adoption going very fast as well.
And Brad, I have to say just as a point of pride, when the world's most valuable company, it is one of those lighthouses. I can only tell you just really, really touches my heart. And I think every single part all 28,000 of ServiceNow to proudly say that NVIDIA runs ServiceNow. It's super exciting.
Your next question comes from the line of Arjun Bhatia with William Blair.
I had 2 questions, hopefully quick ones. Bill, first, I'm curious just in terms of where you see interest and adoption, is there a particular workflow that sticks out or that customers are adopting first? And then is it IT and then you see them expand to customer in HR and other workflows for your analysis SKUs?
And then second question, just in terms of monetization. I'm curious if the $500 million that you have planned by the end of the year, how much of that is the subscription uplift piece versus the token consumption or should we think of consumption kind of layering in more in 2026?
Thank you very much for the question, Arjun. I'll start and then give it to Amit, but I'll just focus on the category of CRM, if I might. It's fascinating to see what's happening and how quickly that dynamic is changing because of AI.
I recently met a CEO of one of the largest companies in the world, one of the most prestigious companies in the world, and they also happen to retail very glamorous wonderful products all over the world. And the conversation revolved around the social media and the idea of TikTok and the real-time understanding of what's going on in the market, but then also having a tremendous ability to use AI as a secure portal for the customer to configure price and quote all of their online interests and have that fulfilled in a way where they get the right product at the right price at the right place in the form factor that the customer wants and then ultimately, to service that account and make sure that customer is 1 for life.
The net present value of the loyalty effect is still every business' greatest asset. And when I explained how we did it and how that was unique in an end-to-end platform that we've built. And that was our AI, and it was a single customer experience and you can meet the customer where they are. And in fact, you can even automate that supply chain on the fly if you found that, that tip talk ad hit a strike zone for you in the marketplace.
And he was like, "Oh, wow, this is a whole different conversation because this is what I'm doing now, and this is how my people are spending their time and this is the fragmented nature of the customer relationship across multiple clouds." And I said, "I understand." And he said, "Please, can you bring your people in right away?"
And I said, "You got me, you don't need anyone else. Let's just do it." And he said, "Let's go for it." So that's where it's at.
I'll just add, I think Bill talked about the CRM use case. The one which we're also seeing a lot of interest is this idea of autonomous IT, where you have 0 cases been created, all automatically be solved for any kind of IT incidents. Security is another use case, which is becoming very, very common for us, where incident management for any kind of issue, which we might have inside the company with VPN or security-related stuff as well.
The idea of triaging and case resolution for those kind of use cases becoming a big part of this whole workflow where customers are adopting it very fast because it reduces the cost automate the system gets better efficiency, but also much more predictability in terms of how you run and operate your individual departments as well.
So it's helping that. Same thing happening with HR. We're doing something similar with finance, supply chain procurement. All of these areas have particular -- specific prepackaged flows we provide, which would make them much more automated going forward.
And then to your second question, Arjun, on the $500 million in expected ACV for Now Assist, subscription versus consumption. First, I want to just mention that we continue to see price uplift for now assist of over 30%, which is powerful. Of the $500 million, while we're seeing incredible growth in Assist consumption won't materially start impacting for a little while. So that $500 million at this point is just the subscription piece. So as you think about the flywheel and the longer-term opportunity, it's extraordinary.
We have time for 1 last question. And your last question comes from the line of Keith Bachman with BMO.
I wanted to drill down, if I could, on the security piece. It was highlighted in the prepared remarks and the question relates to, are you actually seeing an acceleration as security crosses into that $1 billion ACV threshold? And does it include benefits from AI within the context of security?
And if so, how? And Gina just on the last question, I just wanted to sneak in 1 more, your previous guidance on margins for '26 were plus 100 for operating and plus 50 for free cash flow. Does that still hold on the higher base? And that's it for me. Congratulations on the quarter.
So let me, Keith, address the security question you have. Definitely, the big tailwind we are seeing is AI creates large security issues for every company out there. And when you're starting to adopt so many different pieces of technology there in you need to be able to manage them, have visibility, control. And any incident happens, you have to do that proactively support that and fix that very quickly across the organization.
So the CSOs are coming to us for asking for help to really automate the processes of resolution, incident management and triaging those cases as well. So that's a big tailwind for us.
Second is around risk management as well because every company is worried about what exposure do you have, what systems are you using, how much you're paying for it? And what is the outcome you got out of it, right? So our risk management profile we created in our security business gives you that full visibility. So AI Control Tower as part of our security products really makes a huge difference.
So that's why we're seeing a very, very good adoption, interest. And as you heard, we crossed the $1 billion ACV threshold. I'm very, very excited about what we can do in this area. And we keep on investing to make sure that we take a lot more part of this market because there's a lot of demand driving this kind of request to us.
And then on your second question, Keith, on the previous margin guidance, the raises that we're making to 2025 op margin and free cash flow margin guidance certainly accelerates the trajectory of our margin accretion. I'm not going to update guides yet.
I'll share more specifics on 2026 and long-term margin outlook next year. We're certainly encouraged by the operational efficiencies that we're already seeing from because they're providing clearly incremental leverage and additional headroom for further margin expansion. However, as you know, if there's opportunities for us to make good ROI investments to accelerate growth, we will make them.
The other thing I'll just comment on, you're seeing a bit of lower CapEx as a result of data center spend rationalization as some of our workloads move to hyperscalers. And so we definitely are excited about the potential for incremental margin expansion. We always reserve the right to reinvest back into the business if we see opportunities for higher growth.
But what this ServiceNow business shows, I think, with our Q3 results and the guide is that we have incredibly durable long-term growth opportunities with absolute best-in-class margin profile that continues to accelerate and accrete.
Gina, if I may add 1 thing to your very perfect comments. This is the only enterprise software company in the world that for the last 10 years has operated above the rule of 50 plus between the 20-plus revenue growth and the free cash flow growth of the company, the only one in the enterprise.
So you have every reason to believe the next 10 are going to be even more exciting because of the AI revolution, we're pumped up.
Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes today's call. You may now disconnect. Thank you, and have a great day.
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ServiceNow, Inc. — Q3 2025 Earnings Call
ServiceNow, Inc. — Q3 2025 Earnings Call
📊 Quartal auf einen Blick
- Umsatz: Abonnementumsatz $3,299 Mrd (+20,5% YoY, konst. Währung; 100 bp über Guidance).
- RPO: Gesamt RPO ≈ $24,3 Mrd (+23% YoY); Current RPO $11,35 Mrd (+20,5% YoY).
- Profitabilität: Non‑GAAP-Betriebsmarge 33,5% (300 bp über Guidance); Free‑Cash‑Flow‑Marge 17,5%; Cash $9,7 Mrd.
- Deals: 103 Neukundenabschlüsse >$1M ACV (3 >$20M); 553 Kunden >$5M ACV.
🎯 Was das Management sagt
- AI‑Plattform: Now Assist, AI Control Tower und „agentic workflows“ als Kern; Now Assist auf Kurs >$0,5 Mrd ACV 2025, Ziel $1 Mrd für 2026.
- Go‑to‑Market: Any cloud/any model/any data‑Ansatz, Partner‑Integrationen (z.B. Figma, Genesis) und Branchen‑Fokus treiben Adoption.
- Sicherheit & Risiko: Security & Risk als $1 Mrd ACV‑Geschäft; Governance (AI Control Tower) als Verkaufsargument.
- Kapitalmaßnahmen: 5‑for‑1 Aktiensplit vorgeschlagen (Sonderversammlung 5. Dez.); Rückkäufe ~644k Aktien, ≈ $2 Mrd Autorisierung verbleibend.
🔭 Ausblick & Guidance
- Neues Ziel: Volljahres‑Aboeinnahmen auf $12,835–12,845 Mrd gehoben (+$55 Mio am Midpoint; ≈20,5% YoY).
- Margen: FY‑Operative Marge auf 31% (↑50 bp); FCF‑Marge Ziel 34% (↑200 bp).
- Q4‑Guide: Abos $3,42–3,43 Mrd (19,5% YoY; 17,5–18% konst. Währung), CRPO +23% YoY (19% konst. Währung), Operative Marge 30%; GAAP verwässerte Aktien 210 Mio.
- Risiko: Zeitliche Effekte durch US‑Government‑Shutdown wurden konservativ in die Guidance eingepreist.
❓ Fragen der Analysten
- Implementierung: Nachfrage nach Integration/Implementierungs‑Expertise; ServiceNow investiert in Forward‑Deployed‑Engineers (AI‑Black‑Belts).
- Monetisierung: Verbrauchs‑Hockey‑Stick (55x Assists seit Mai) — Now Assist derzeit vorwiegend Subscription ($500M ACV Ziel), Pricing‑Hybrid (Subscription+Consumption) gut aufgenommen; Price‑Uplift >30% genannt.
- Federal & M&A: Q3‑Federal stark, aber Deal‑Timing durch Shutdown unsicher; Moveworks‑Übernahme erwartet gegen Ende Q4, soll Roadmap beschleunigen.
⚡ Bottom Line
- Fazit: Starkes Beats‑Quartal mit Anhebung der Jahresziele: klare Bestätigung, dass AI‑Produkte Nachfrage und Margenhebel liefern. Kurzfristige Risiken sind Timing im öffentlichen Sektor und Integrations‑/Skalierungsaufgaben; mittelfristig bedeutendes Upside durch Verbrauchs‑Monetarisierung und AI‑Governance‑Angebote.
ServiceNow, Inc. — Citi’s 2025 Global Technology
1. Question Answer
Okay. Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Tyler Radke. I co-head the software sector here at Citi. Welcome to day 1 of the tech conference and kick off post lunch. We're excited to have ServiceNow, the CFO, Gina Mastantuono. Gina, I think this is the third or fourth year in a row that you've come. So thanks for supporting our conference.
I thought it would be great. You're in New York City this week, we were just catching up. You've been on the road talking to customers a lot this quarter. I know you have a bunch of meetings this week. But it would be great to just frame for the audience, what's top of mind when you're having conversations with customers and how is that different from prior years? Like what are the priorities for 2025?
Yes. Well, first of all, thanks so much for having me. Hopefully, after lunch, you're not also tired. We'll make this interesting for you.
Customer conversations are going extremely well. What I'd say is that everyone is focused on a few things: innovation, speed, ROI, right? And how can technology really help them in each of those areas. And what I would say is different today versus a year or 2 ago is it's all about pace. And it's all about speed and it's all about AI and how they can leverage technology and platforms like ServiceNow to really help move forward their AI agenda.
And the great thing is that ServiceNow is right there, and I think, positioned so well and poised for this moment to really enable not only productivity gains but business model innovation because AI right now, everyone is talking about it from a productivity and cost savings perspective. The real value long term is how we're going to reshape business models and how AI is going to help companies drive top line, get better vaccines and medications to market to patients even faster. And I love the use case for pharma -- for pharmaceuticals, right? Average clinical trials take 6.6 years, right? If AI is able to help companies get medications to product to market sooner. Not only is it more top line, significantly more top line, lower cost, better margins and wow, live saved, right?
So how do we really help customers not only think about cost savings, which is important, and everyone is talking about it, but how can AI really help reframe the dynamic on how businesses run going forward. So pace of change and pace of ROI is a huge area of focus for everyone that I'm talking to.
Right. And obviously, those are some pretty important examples broad-based across businesses that you're referencing. But for investors in the room, maybe just high-level frame how ServiceNow is helping those customers. Obviously, the platform has expanded dramatically since Fred Luddy founded the company. But how is sort of the vision evolved? And how are you helping them from an AI perspective?
Yes. So a couple of things. You bring up, Fred, so I can't not talk about his initial vision, which was remarkable. He was thinking about ServiceNow as a platform to help people do their work better, faster and stronger. And no one understood what the platform was 20 years ago. They're like, give me the best use case. And being in IT, his best use cases were all about helping people who we work with in the IT department, run their business and run their departments better.
And so fast forward 20-plus years, those use cases have proliferated, right? And so where we started in IT, we've brought in so dramatically into HR, customer service, developer with the platform, we are now really a platform company, first and foremost. And the ability to grow exponentially, mostly organically, gives us a really unique position in that we have one data model, one architecture, broad-based. And so we have AI now built into that one platform, which enables our customers to not only go north to south and touch data wherever it resides in any system because we're integrated with that, but then to action that data more broadly across the enterprise east to west. So whether that business process touches IT, legal, finance, HR, to be able to not only action it from the start, but get it to resolution all on one platform with the AI built in, it's a unique position for us.
So the strategy today of AI plus data plus workflow, really driving the orchestration of workflows, north to south, east to west, all autonomously with Agentic AI is the strategy that we're going after. And from what I'm seeing, really enables us to help our customers get to value in an Agentic AI-enabled world even faster. So that's our focus.
Right. And that's obviously a really exciting vision in terms of being this orchestration for AI, a huge, huge opportunity, hundreds of millions, if not more. But how do you think about the timing? What do you need to do from a product perspective to get there? I know historically, ServiceNow has developed a lot of great in-house functionality. You also recently did acquire Moveworks, which was one of the larger M&A deals that relative to everything you've done historically. So just help us understand what that vision looks like from an organic versus M&A perspective.
Yes. Well, our strategy from an M&A perspective hasn't changed. So we haven't grown top line revenue through acquisitions. So we don't have a whole lot of tech debt. We've been very focused on build, buy versus partner, where we've done a ton of organic investment and organic innovation, which allows us to have this one pristine model. When we invest R&D, the leverage that we get because all of the capabilities that we're building go across platform and cross products is fantastic. The ability then to where we add on these tuck-in acquisitions of capabilities for incredible talent and build that into the platform. That strategy hasn't shifted. It hasn't changed.
Where you'll continue to see us focus is all around that strategy, AI plus data workflow. And Moveworks, while certainly our most expensive acquisition, which hasn't closed yet. But is no different from a strategy perspective. So if you think about their beautiful front-end requester search engine, combining that with our back-end fulfiller, it's end-to-end, again, end-to-end AI plus data plus workflow, driving a seamless experience for our customers across the board. And so our strategy hasn't shifted. You'll continue to see us be disciplined with M&A in the future as we have in the past.
Okay. So still kind of tuck-in smaller form M&A is what...
I never say never, but that's certainly the strategy is more tuck-ins more. How do we think about delivering the best capabilities as quickly as possible? How do we get them to market and to our customers in our customer's hands as quickly as possible so they can get the ROI as fast.
Right, right. So I think it was last year where you sort of set the goal of $1 billion analysis, basically AI. [ Just in ]. Last year, you gave us the initial disclosure of kind of the analysis ACV, which was super exciting. So $1 billion is certainly a big number for next year. At the same time, we've seen some pretty prolific growth from a lot of AI start-ups out there, the cursors, obviously, OpenAIs, Anthropics of the world, some of these vibe coding platforms rapidly scaling to $1 billion without a lot of distribution. So how should we just think about like the conservatism of that $1 billion? Because in some ways, you could say you have a great customer base, you've got the distribution advantage. And clearly, there's massive demand signals for these businesses. So how do you just kind of think about that in the context of some of these private AI companies?
Yes. Well, I think -- so I think you have to bifurcate a little bit the consumer side and enterprise side. So you talked about Anthropic and OpenAI, incredible companies. But consumer focus, right? And so you always see the pace of adoption in consumer and these big tech trends much, much faster than the enterprise. And the reason for that is because the enterprise is complex, right? We have to manage governance, security, risk for any technology platform in a very different way in the enterprise.
And so it's why you haven't seen a whole lot of consumer companies do extremely well in the enterprise. It's also why you haven't seen a ton of companies that have been focused on SMB come up to the enterprise because the complexity is vastly different. The scale is vastly different. And with that complexity means that adoption is going to be a bit slower, right? You've got to make sure that you're checking all the boxes. It's why the platforms like ServiceNow are so well positioned because we're the trusted platform for the enterprise, especially in the IT department. So imagine now having to operationalize an Agentic workforce, but manage them and govern them and make sure that they're secure, make sure they're doing what they're supposed to be doing. You have to manage an agentic workforce, much like you have to manage a human workforce.
And so with our AI control tower, we're able to not only manage a genetic workforce in the ServiceNow platform, but we can help companies manage their internal agentic workforce, other platforms that they're building agentic workforces on and manage that holistically all in one place, securely governed and managed, it's a game changer. And definitely a competitive differentiation. But make no mistake, it's definitely going to be a slower adoption rate than a lot of these consumer companies because it's so much more vastly complex and because these -- the business logic and these business processes are so complex that they need to really take their time and get it right. It's why ServiceNow is well positioned and the first to even put out a monetization number like $1 billion in the areas that we play in.
Right. But you still feel very strong about that $1 billion?
I feel it's very strong and have great conviction on that $1 billion target.
Even with Moveworks not closed yet?
Even with Moveworks not closed yet.
Yes. Got it. Got it. And then as we think about the consumption element of the analysis and ServiceNow's AI revenue because obviously, that's different than signing the subscription and committed contracts. How are you seeing that consumption ramp up now that you've had a lot of exciting product innovation and product launches such as the recent knowledge conference.
Yes. Yes. So great question. So just for everyone's complication, we have a hybrid pricing model with our AI products in that it's a subscription to start and you get a finite amount of token, so a finite amount of capacity as you're building out the agentic workforce and agentic use cases. Then once you consume all of that, you need to buy more assist packs where the consumption element really kicks in from a monetization perspective.
We just launched in May, so it's still early days. And so we've talked about the fact that real material monetization won't kick in until back in to '26, '27. If you're thinking about our guide in 2026 is $15 billion and beyond. That being said, we're seeing month-over-month conversion and consumption increases exponential, right, even better than we had planned and expected. So what I'd say is that early days, but really having a ton of customers lean into how our AI product is going to help them redefine their business processes. And the more they build out, the quicker they'll use up those tokens and the quicker they'll need to add consumption on top.
Right, right. And for the -- it's great to hear that it's going better than planned. Like what are some of the biggest use cases where it's taking off that's kind of driving that upside?
Yes, I get that question a lot. I would say it's pretty much across the board. Our biggest use cases are all around our service desk. I think ITSM, HRSD and customer service. And that's all about how do we get folks answers to their questions and answers to their issues and resolving their issues faster with less touch than ever before. And so we're seeing -- it's really been broad-based. So there's not one area that's been enormous and other areas that have been lagging.
What I'd say is because we are so strong in IT, that those use cases are probably more visible because we're in more product sets and customers with those products. But those sales and the consumption has really been across the board. We have an incredible company in England that is over 1 million assists already as they're building more Agentic AI into the platform. And that use case is all around employees and getting employees answers to their questions without anyone having to talk to someone and they just drive much more productivity. That's one example. But it's across the board in IT and customer service as well as in our developer. So our creator, AI generating code, 50% or more is being put into production at first half without any changes needed. So there's real productivity and real gains associated with what's happening.
Yes. And one of the concerns we hear from investors just on the SaaS industry in general, but particularly in support is just the risk of seats declining. And I know that's something in the past you all haven't seen, but is there any changes to that? Or when do you kind of anticipate there could be some declines in seats?
Yes. So this question ebbs and flows. We get it, and then we put it to rest and then it comes back. Here's the thing. If labor costs are going down because of AI, the willingness to pay more for AI goes up. So it actually opens up a whole other TAM from a labor pool perspective, right? And so expectations are that people are willing to pay for technology that's going to help enable everything that we're talking about. And so if labor comes down and technology goes up, I bet you, Tyler, that your IT department is 85% -- 80% to 85% labor and 15% to 20% technology. If you're able to tackle just a piece of that 80% to 85%, but your technology costs go up a little bit, I think that's a winning profile for ServiceNow and for Citi.
Right. And probably 95%, keeping the lights on, right, in terms of the maintenance budget. And Gina, I did want to touch on federal because there was some interesting news this morning with the GSA announcement. And obviously, this is a big quarter. For federal, it's no surprise. Federal has been a challenge for a lot of software companies this year. But I thought you could just kind of frame for the audience the incrementality, if that's the word, of the announcement this morning. Was this something you were sort of expecting as it relates to the third quarter? Or was this maybe a positive surprise?
Yes. So first off, I'll just say, I've been so extremely proud of our federal business and our federal team. They are so connected with their customers. They're one of the best teams in the business. And to be honest, even throughout the uncertainty that we had in the first half, we've been right on plan and they've been right on expectations because they are so close with that customer.
Very exciting news announced today with the GSA agreement to help them get more of our AI products into their agencies to really help that enablement and help that adoption. And all -- and this is all around how do we really ensure licensing, complexity goes away. So it actually opens the aperture for a, some incremental agencies where we haven't been talking to. But on top of that, one of the that we had been seeing is just a slower pace of getting things done in the first half of the year. And this absolutely should help with really pace and just simplifying the whole process of getting deals done and getting -- and get the licensing in place. And so very excited.
What I'd say is it's obviously been something we've been working on. It didn't just get signed overnight. So from an incrementality perspective, we were expecting it, but it absolutely should help really open more doors. And as we think about moving into 2026, hopefully, that headwind that we've seen turns into a really strong tailwinds.
I got you. So more of a 2026 catalyst, obviously, nice to see, especially relatively early in September as you're getting some.
It's nice that it's early in September. And obviously, Q3 is a big time for us. So excited to keep that Fed business running strong. And more broadly, if you think about what the federal government and what this administration has been trying to do, it's all about transparency, accountability and cost savings. And this is where the ServiceNow platform has done so remarkably well for the agencies that we've done in. And so mid and long term, it actually is a huge tailwind for us because what we've been able to do in the agencies that we're in, we can go more broadly. We can go into more agencies now with GSA. And then everything that we've been so successful in doing for Fed is highly replicable outside of Fed.
So think state and local and think public sector outside of the U.S. And so mid and long term, I think the ServiceNow platform is so well positioned to really help all public agencies really become more accountable, more transparent, more efficient and really serve citizens of this country and other countries remarkably well.
Yes. Great. And maybe thinking about outside of Fed, I think you've talked about a strong pipeline heading into year-end. Obviously, macro uncertainty is still out there. But what have you seen in the last few weeks or months since we last spoke in July. I think you were one of the first software companies to report as usual. So how are you feeling about kind of the year-end?
I feel great. I feel great. So pipeline remains strong. Demand is really good. What we're trying to do and help our customers really think through how AI is going to really transform how they run their business, I think we're so well positioned. The conversations are at the highest levels, really, really focused on transformation in a different way than I've seen before. And more and more customers are really leaning in to consolidate on platforms that they trust as they're thinking about their AI strategy going forward. So I feel as good about my guide today as I did when I gave it.
Right. And that consolidation, I mean, that sounds like a good recipe for large deals, right, as you're taking on even more parts of the organization. And I guess on that note, the CRM and broader front office push has been exciting to watch. I know I think combined CRM and CPQ are over $1 billion. But where are you sort of seeing the biggest opportunity in that broad front office category? And are most of these conversations you're having at the highest level involving some element of that?
Yes. So we talked about at Financial Analyst Day in May that our customer business had crossed $1.4 billion as of the end of last year, and that's before CPQ. And subsequently, our sales and order management plus our CPQ acquisition has really enabled us to really enter more into the front office. And because that's where the customers are taking us, right, they're like you can do support so well, how can you connect service, support and fulfillment all in one platform in a modern way, customers are really looking for that. And so we've been really excited by the conversations that we've been having, the wins that we've been having in this space. And we continue to see over 30% growth in that area.
And so the opportunity remains large. I think reimagining CRM in a modern way is something that customers are asking us for and something that we've been leaning into. So at the highest level, many, many of the customer conversations include the CRM and customer service.
Right. And when you say CRM, is that like replacements of system of record CRM? Or is this more the service element or adjacencies to that system around here?
It could be both. And in many cases, so we're not saying you have to rip out your legacy systems. We can absolutely make it more efficient and more user-friendly to sit on top of it or around it. Or if you want to use us full stack, we can do those well. And so again, it's about leaning in and meeting our customers where they are, where they can get better functionality and efficiency out of systems that they already have in place. But at the same time, if they're looking to drive some cost savings and efficiencies, we can be the full stack at the same time.
Yes. Got it. So there's been a lot of discussion about the larger deals, the biggest customers out there, which obviously are super important. But I'd love to ask you about the commercial business and down market because I know that has been a big focus, both relying on the partner channel as well as some of the hires that you've made there. So can you just frame for us kind of that opportunity, what you're seeing competitively on that front?
Yes. So number one, you're absolutely right. There's been a huge focus on the larger deals and the customers getting bigger and bigger. And that's because the product portfolio continues to grow. And you have more customers consolidating across products, right? So we're not just using us for IT, they're using us for HR and customer at the same time as I, while at the same time, broadening even IT into risk and security, ITAM and then building AI into it, you've been really seeing deal sizes grow. And so clearly, that's a big area of focus.
But our commercial business has also been doing extremely well. It gets a little less attention maybe, but has continued to grow and it continues to be a huge area of focus for us. It's about landing the right new customers, right? And so when we talk about the right customer, we talk about enterprises or companies with $100 million of revenue or more and 1,000 employees or more. And so a couple of years ago, we talked about this that, that market, excluding China because we're not in China, is about 50,000, and we're at 8,000 today. So even just in commercial without having to go down, there's a lot of white space still for us. And then even in the very large enterprises, we're only about 50% penetrated. So there's a lot of still potential to get new customers who will then continue to grow and expand with us. And so it does continue to do extremely well our commercial, even though it doesn't get as much attention as some of the other bigger deals.
Right, right. One of the disclosures that you had at Analyst Day, and I know we've had this in years past, just the net retention rate for ServiceNow, which is remarkable how high it is for a business of your scale, close to 120%. A couple of questions there. I mean, how do you think about, a, the durability of that? Because on one hand, you do have this huge expansion opportunity very underpenetrated. But on the other, right, I mean there have been -- you are a large ticket item in some of these large companies where cost concerns run high. So how do you kind of think about the ability to continue to drive 20% ACV growth for existing customers over the long run?
Yes. So I'm thrilled that we're becoming a larger ticket for a lot of these bigger enterprises. That's obviously the goal. But at the same time, if you look at other software companies and how much customers are spending on each, there is room to continue to grow. And so we are just focused on continuing to innovate in our platform, continuing to drive incredible capabilities, now AI capabilities in that platform that will enable customers to want to continue to grow with us. It's all about value. If we are continuing to work with our customers in generating incremental value for them, they are never not wanting to pay for great technology.
And so it's all about innovating at the core and really making sure that our platform remains best-in-class, best-in-breed and continues to drive incredible value for our customers. There's plenty of white space still to grow even with our existing customer base and then add on top of it new logo growth as well.
Yes. So I did want to make sure we hit on one of your favorite topics, which is margins. And given we only have a few minutes left. But first, high level, like how are you using AI internally with ServiceNow? How do you think about the quantifiable savings or ROI that you've achieved thus far?
Yes. So I say all the time, we drink our own champagne. We are customer 0 for almost every single product launch we have and that enables us to drive incredible efficiency, which has been one of the reasons why we've had best-in-class margins, while at the same time, best-in-class growth and retention rates.
What I'd say is that -- and I said this back in May, if I looked at my hiring plan for my annual operating plan for 2025 in January when we said it, and then when I looked at that hiring plan again in May, we were able to reduce our planned hires by $100 million, which we were able to put back into the business. Some is driving incremental margin, but that enables us to continue to invest to make that platform incredibly capable for our customers. And so $100 million in just 2025 alone, and that's purely from the AI efficiencies that we're getting from our use of now on now, our use of the ServiceNow platform internally. I think that's remarkable.
And if you think about that hiring plan now is significantly lower as I exit '25, if I think about what my plan of record was for hiring in '26 back in January, that's going to only exponentially help drive more leverage in the model, right? And so it's why we've been able to even at the best-in-class growth rates we've had to really accrete margins each and every year even from a high base. And so you'll continue to see us do that. The big question I get is how much of that are you going to reinvest back into the business for growth, which is why I haven't given longer-term margin guides. But what I'll tell you is that while growth is our #1 priority, you can expect ServiceNow to continue to be disciplined in how we think about investments for growth.
And one of the things that I think is really unique about ServiceNow and it goes back to the one platform is that all of our investment, every dollar I spend in R&D goes a hell of a lot farther in ServiceNow because of that one platform approach. The ability go-to-market perspective, right? There's a unique leverage in the platform. There's unique leverage in the company. Add on to that, the AI efficiencies. And we have, I think, a pretty amazing business model for continued growth as well as margin appreciation.
Right. And so that $100 million, that's an annualized number or...
That was the actual number for 2025.
Yes, of savings, which is pretty remarkable. And when you say reinvesting, is that primarily -- is it cost savings and overheads, call it, G&A or maybe marketing or something and then reallocating a portion of that back to R&D. Is that kind of how to think about it?
Yes. So what I'd say, it's not just -- so G&A, we definitely see leverage in G&A, but obviously, G&A is a much smaller portion of our OpEx. So the real leverage, you'll get leverage from G&A, but the real leverage is coming from R&D and sales and marketing efficiencies. Some of that will be reinvested into particular areas. So think about really capable and highly technical AI resources from an engineering perspective and a go-to-market perspective, how they can work together to help get our customers to adoption even faster. If you think about really feet on the street go-to-market sellers, quota-bearing -- like that's where we're reinvesting dollars in those 2 areas.
I got you. Okay. And as you think about this business as it scales to $20 billion and beyond, what are the biggest kind of incremental sources of operating leverage? I know you talked about some of those. But as you look longer term, are there additional things we should be thinking about and how to sort of think about that pace of margin expansion?
Yes. I know, I love that you keep trying to get me to guide further. Well, listen, I think you'll continue to see similar types of leverage across the board. If you just look at our cost profile, you'll get G&A leverage. It's small on the total. But if you can continue to drive go-to-market leverage, sales efficiency, if you can continue to drive incredible efficiency, right, AI coding and getting things into production faster, if you think about support, right? And how do we continue to evolve support with the growing volume without growing head count at nearly as fast the pace, that is real leverage across the platform. And so you'll continue to see -- and I think it will exponentially grow even though I'm not going to guide you to how much yet.
Right. Right. Got it. Okay. Well, we have a couple of minutes left, and I did want to leave it to you to just kind of close for the audience what kind of you think the key takeaways out there related to ServiceNow should be, obviously, the application software market has been under a lot of pressure this year and a lot of debates around seats in SaaS. But just anything you want to leave the audience with and what the company is focused on for '25?
I think, listen, I think the relationship between people and technology for the last half century is very different at work than at home, right? And the complexity of enterprise workflows of enterprise business processes are very different than in the consumer landscape. And so what companies are going to do well in an AI-enabled world in the enterprise, it's the companies that have a platform that is secure, managed, can be governed, can be audited and can really help companies drive incredible AI productivity and efficiencies going forward.
And I don't think that there's anyone better positioned than ServiceNow. We have been the orchestration for enterprise workflows for the last 2 decades. And so the ability for us to continue to innovate, to continue to grow, to continue to be that orchestration layer, that's where the value is going to come from an AI technology, the ability to orchestrate workflows, AI plus data plus workflows, how do you touch all the data, but then action it. Data is only as good as what you can do with it, the business decisions that you can make with it and that you can action with it. And there's no one better positioned than ServiceNow to help our customers thrive in an environment that's ever changing and ever dynamic.
And so -- and the last thing I'll leave you with is that if the cost of people comes down because of AI, then people are going to be willing to pay more for AI. And so I think that hopefully will diffuse the whole seat compression, right? The consumption piece is a real, real monetization area and the hybrid model that we're employing, customers are really liking that because it's a nice base of predictability without having to upfront commit to huge consumption, and you can buy the consumption as you go. So our customers have been leaning in pretty heavily and really like that approach.
Great. Well, I think that's perfect to end. We're right at time. Gina, thank you so much for coming. Thanks for the audience for making us a pack session.
All right. Thanks, everyone.
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ServiceNow, Inc. — Citi’s 2025 Global Technology
ServiceNow, Inc. — Citi’s 2025 Global Technology
🎯 Kernbotschaft
- Positionierung: ServiceNow sieht sich als Orchestrierungsplattform für ein Agentic‑AI‑Zeitalter – Fokus auf „AI + Data + Workflow“, ein einheitliches Datenmodell und schnelle ROI‑Versprechen.
- Monetarisierung: Management bekräftigt das $1 Mrd. AI‑Monetarisierungsziel und erwartet materialisierenden Konsumumsatz ab 2026/27.
🎯 Strategische Highlights
- Produkt: Agentic‑AI, ein „AI Control Tower“ zur Governance und native KI‑Funktionen über IT, HR, Customer Service; Moveworks soll Frontend‑Suche mit Now‑Back‑End end‑to‑end verbinden.
- M&A: Disziplinierte Tuck‑in‑Strategie; Moveworks als größter Zukauf in jüngerer Zeit (noch nicht geschlossen), kein Wechsel der Buy‑vs‑build‑Philosophie.
- GTM & Pricing: Hybridmodell (Subscription + Verbrauch), Fokus auf kommerzielle Expansion, Front‑Office/CRM‑Adjacencies und staatlichen Sektor (GSA‑Deal).
🔭 Neue Informationen
- GSA: GSA‑Ankündigung vereinfacht Lizenzierung für US‑Bundesagenturen und sollte 2026 als Beschleuniger wirken.
- Moveworks: Akquisition noch nicht geschlossen; strategisch als Tuck‑in bestätigt.
- Effizienz: Intern genutzte AI‑Effizienz führte 2025 zu ca. $100 Mio. eingesparten geplanten Personalkosten.
❓ Fragen der Analysten
- AI‑Timing: Kritische Nachfrage zum Tempo der Konsumumsatz‑Entwicklung; Management erwartet spürbare Monetarisierung 2026/27, erste Conversion‑Signale besser als geplant.
- Sitz‑/Seat‑Risiko: Besorgnis über mögliche Seat‑Kompression; Management argumentiert, dass gesunkene Personalkosten Zahlungsbereitschaft für Technologie erhöhen.
- Margen & Reinvest: Nachfrage, wie viel der Effizienzgewinne reinvestiert werden; Antwort: Fokus auf R&D und Go‑to‑Market‑Ressourcen bei gleichzeitiger Disziplin.
⚡ Bottom Line
- Implikation: ServiceNow präsentiert ein klares, plattformbasiertes AI‑Narrativ mit glaubwürdigen Monetarisierungswegen und frühen Effizienzbelegen. Aktionäre sollten Konsum‑Metriken, Moveworks‑Closing und GSA‑Implementierung als Near‑Term‑Katalysatoren beobachten; mittelfristig bleibt Plattform‑Hebel für Wachstum und Margen zentral.
ServiceNow, Inc. — Deutsche Bank's 2025 Technology Conference
1. Question Answer
Okay. I think we are live. Welcome back, everybody. Brad Zelnick, Deutsche Bank Software Equity Research. And for this session, we are delighted to be hosting ServiceNow. None other than the company's President, Chief Product Officer and Chief Operating Officer, Amit Zavery. Amit, thank you so much for joining.
Thanks for having me, Brad. Great. Thank you, everyone.
Let's settle in. Exciting times for sure, exciting times for ServiceNow. Format of this presentation will be a fireside chat. I got a bunch of questions, I think that will hopefully leave us a lot smarter on all things, ServiceNow and get to hear about your perspective on the industry, which you've been around, I don't want to date you, but -- or age you, but you've got great perspective.
Thank you.
Maybe Amit, just to kick us off, can you level set everyone why ServiceNow is the AI platform of choice for the enterprise. How should we think about ServiceNow as a company? Is it a SaaS platform, an infrastructure software company, maybe none of these things? And what role will ServiceNow play in an AI-first future?
Thanks, Brad, for having me. I think as you rightly point out, ServiceNow does many things. But the core foundation for ServiceNow has been the AI platform or a platform of choice for automating a business process, right?
So we are very good at connecting various systems together inside an enterprise and making sure that you can really operate your business east to west and end-to-end. And ensure that your business is efficient, it's predictable as well as giving you the ability to efficiently predict how you can run and operate the things, right?
So ServiceNow has been very good at going inside every enterprise and helping them rethink their business processes, operationally make it efficient, but also understand the complexity underneath the covers. So you can abstract out of this complexity at the business process level so you can get enterprise efficiency and enterprise automation. So that's how you should think about it.
The platform, the way ServiceNow has built the product offering is really this one platform mindset. And the one platform means is that it has one common data model, one unified experience as well as ability to introduce a lot of new capabilities in the same technology stack, right? So that you can keep on modernizing without having to go and go to different platforms every time. So that's how we've kind of incorporated AI as well.
So now once you have this platform, you can do many things. And the big things people have been doing, of course, is automating the business process around different pieces of their functional areas, be it IT, HR, finance, supply chain, customers, and that's where the scale comes in from ServiceNow. So every customer once they get started with one thing, they can keep on adding more and more of these workflows on top of the same platform or build their own workflows.
And that gives us a lot of differentiation in the market as well as the customers appreciate the simplicity, but also the flexibility of growth coming out of the same kind of end-to-end platform as well. It's very hard to, as you said, it's like where do you put us? We are really this enterprise OS. Think of us as something which is running and operating a business end-to-end, east to west, north to south across every department you want and then working across all the things you might have invested in and modernizing it as you go along without having to keep on redoing everything.
The notion of an enterprise OS is extremely powerful and has really well served the company from its inception all the way to today. And Amit, you yourself are relatively new to the leadership team. What's the opportunity ahead that attracted you to ServiceNow? And how do you foresee making the greatest impact from here?
Yes. So I've been at ServiceNow around 10 months, but I've been a big follower of ServiceNow for many, many years. One of the things which attracted me to ServiceNow, one, I think if you look at AI, and I was doing a lot of work at Google Cloud in terms of building out a platform at GCP and then adding AI and making sure that customers can benefit from the large language model innovation happening. The part which was missing in many of these providers, including where I was at Google, was the ability to really now do it at an enterprise level to automate the business processes.
And I saw the value of that capability really resonate in terms of what ServiceNow was doing. ServiceNow was at this place where, as I said, they were enterprise OS. LLM helps automate a lot of these processes, but the enterprise context is provided by ServiceNow. The marrying of AI with ServiceNow, 20 years of foundational information about running a business was very compelling to me.
So when Bill called and when I talked to him about it, he had a great vision, he wanted to really grow this platform and solve many more problems than ever before. Meeting with Fred, the idea of humble and hungry really resonated with me as well. So it got me excited. And I have seen no other company able to do this one platform build-out, which can remain modern and give you that flexibility other than ServiceNow.
So that got me excited and interested. And I've seen this play out. Every customer I speak to who are using ServiceNow or looking to use ServiceNow are really looking at business transformation. And it's not about just IT transformation or technology transfer, it's a business transformation play. And the opportunity now for us to go to customers and do this with AI and turbocharging that automation was very, very compelling. So what I see going forward, I think there's a lot of opportunities for us. And we've seen that play out already since I've joined.
You saw the expansion we did. We're doing in our CRM, expansion we're doing in data and analytics, security and risk, what we're doing with our core business workflow. So we're starting to expand our TAM significantly because we have the foundational pieces and this idea of managing complex orchestration and complex workflow really gives us the ability to play in many areas and have a seat at the table because we can solve these complex problems for us.
So what I expect now is to be really the AI business transformation platform, delivering value to customers more and more significantly and changing the game, we are basically the AI platform today for every company out there who are looking to automate end-to-end.
There's nobody else doing that today. And I would expect to kind of continue investing, innovating and differentiating in that area, so we keep on growing in that space.
A lot of companies are talking about it ServiceNow is actually doing it.
We have customers live and their production in this area, and this multi-Agentic workflows are really happening on ServiceNow.
So just maybe shifting back to Q2 results. ServiceNow differentiated itself from peers by once again demonstrating elite level execution. Why do you think the company has been able to execute so well despite recent macro turbulence, especially given volatility in one of your fastest-growing verticals, U.S. federal?
ServiceNow has been made for this moment of automation and efficiency. And if you look at what's happening in every company, federal department and all, there's a lot of focus in terms of how do you become more efficient? How do you get better productivity? How do you really connect different systems together and get value out of it.
And for 20 years, ServiceNow is building these workflows. And once you infuse it and build it on top of AI and you add data to it, we change the game, right? And that's what resonates with every department and every company -- every enterprise I speak to. And the foundational pieces we have built out, and for example, we're working with a large department in Federal government with the Department of Defense area, who are now standardizing on ServiceNow because they -- what they're getting out of it is visibility across all these things, then the trust and safety required. In enterprise, a big difference, as you know, or anybody who's running complex systems, is very different than what you do in consumer space.
You have to have understanding of what compliance requirements are, what trust needed is, what is the security elements of it? And how do you put it as part of the platform and not something on the side. So what we're bringing to this conversation is really resonating and giving us this opportunity to really solve those complex problems and think of this at enterprise-grade level versus pieces of technology or spare parts, which somebody has to compile and bring it together. And I was talking to you earlier about like how people can build a car with a lot of these pieces, but does it drive?
Does it meet your standards? Does it really be able to maintainable? And that's what we're doing now with these complex AI systems and making it solution-oriented so that they can adopt it and then can, of course, make it usable in their environment, but a lot of things already come that way. And that has been the thing which we've seen with our results over the last many years, including Q2, and it continues to resonate with what people are now looking at with AI as well.
Makes perfect sense. Maybe if I can dig a little bit more on the U.S. federal opportunity. It seems the underlying intent of DOGE deeply aligns with ServiceNow, the value proposition of the underlying platform. When do you think we reach an inflection point where these agencies start to lean in further and ultimately drive re-acceleration in federal for ServiceNow?
Yes. I think we're starting to see that already happen, right? I mean there is a lot of standardization happening with ServiceNow in the Federal agency. Of course, I think the mission you see with DOGE and the U.S. federal government is to drive efficiency, improve how they operate and do more with less in some cases. and we are made for that. So I think we're seeing this department by department. You've seen that as being one of the large verticals for us for sure. But even if you see the results we're producing for these agencies, they are starting to use that as a standard for what they want to get out of software. And our usage levels are going up quite drastically.
There is a lot of value creation for all these departments as well. And we connect with various things they might be investing in already. So we've become this central nervous system connecting. And over time, you will see that kind of play out more and more because right now, there's a lot of rethink happening inside a lot of these government agencies.
So they might be reevaluating other pieces of the technology and how they want to connect it. But we still remain the core element as part of their overall infrastructure and the platform investment they're making.
That makes sense. As I think about the heritage of the company, ServiceNow is no doubt a core system of record for the enterprise. And in the age of AI, there's competition from other players to be the central orchestrator of AI agents. What gives ServiceNow the right to be the control tower for AI?
Yes. I think as you point out, ServiceNow has been always this central or enterprise OS. We've been always built around this idea that we will connect various things together, be it any system, any kind of cloud capabilities out there, any AI system as well as any kind of personas and with any kind of data model underneath the covers, any data which might be coming from various things.
So the right to play for us is very clear, right? One, we orchestrate all these business processes for years, for 20-plus years. AI is a natural extension of what we were doing. And even turbochargers is really a tailwind for us to really get us even more opportunities and more conversations with our customers because a lot of them are struggling to understand where to start, how to use AI, what use cases make sense, how to really go production with these things, and we have solved that problem.
So the right for us is really this idea of AI controlled tower because you need to watch over some of these things. And every company -- every CIO or C-level execs I speak to, they're worried about proliferation of random technologies inside the company, especially AI. And they have no control, no visibility as well as no trust as well as no way to kind of ensure it's secure.
What we do, we have two ways of looking at it. One, we build this product called AI Control tower which just like what we do today with CMDB, which has been kind of the gold standard for every enterprise to know what assets they have inside the company, be it hardware, software, operating system, databases, VMs or even machines. And now they look at the Wi-Fi controls and everything else, we track that for an enterprise.
Nowadays I want to add AI models, AI systems, everything into the same CMDB because a natural extension. If the software is an asset, an AI agent is an asset, so they want to put it in there, and we've been able to extend that very easily.
So whenever I talk to anybody inside an enterprise, they said, oh, this is something we have to do. It sells easily because they want that control. We have 100-plus customers now in like less than 2 months. We hit the year number in 2 months for what we expected with this product because everybody is struggling to understand how to control this. And we bring this trust and safety and compliance into the conversation. And second, given that we have this one platform story, our AI capabilities, the Agentic and the multi-Agentic workflows is part of the same cloud orchestration platform. So the orchestration work we're doing today with humans or processes are naturally extended to now AI agents.
And we work across, as I said, an open standard heterogeneous way. So AI agents could be ours, third parties. Bespoke people might have built them their own. And then we use a reasoning engine to figure out what you need to do for a task, but that's the orchestration, the brain is us because we've taken the 20 years of workflow data and applied that to the orchestration engine. So this is what you need to do for employee on boarding or this is how you resolve a customer issue related to shipping.
These are the 7, 8, 9 things you need to do inside this company. And then you break that task out, get that thing done and finish the task. The action-oriented aspect of it, gives us the ability to be the system of action across all these layers and be the orchestrator. And with AI Control power, we're getting the ability to now manage and ensure safety, compliance, the life cycle of AI. And that gets people going because now we've been able to get so many customers production and get value versus not knowing what's going on inside the enterprise. So that's the thing we're bringing into all those conversations.
Your advantage seems very clear when you articulate it that way. Maybe just as we think about AI, while it's very exciting, investors at least have expected more meaningful direct revenue benefit for software companies to date, not just ServiceNow. And we know thousands of customers are piloting apps, but it seems like meaningful enterprise-wide adoption has been a little bit more elusive. What do you think ultimately catalyzes proof of concepts into broad-based production?
No, I think there's a lot of experimentation going on, no doubt. And I think it depends on how you take this thing on. The AI definitely creates a lot of value. There's a lot of opportunity to really improve how you efficiently run your business, how you do things in a better way. But how do you combine deterministic as well as kind of dynamic thing to be more predictable. And that's what the problem we have solved with our Agentic and multi-Agentic workflows and orchestration engine, where we can connect various systems together and take them in a production environment versus giving you pieces of it. So a lot of the things which have failed and typically, when I talk to a lot of the groups who are trying to implement AI, there's a lot of excitement to do it in yourself, DIY.
Because they think you can get some pieces of AI technologies and put it together and somehow you'll build an app, which looks nice, but then you realize not maintainable. It doesn't understand enterprise context. It doesn't have understanding of trust, safety, compliance and bringing all these various pieces together, which are changing at a different rate is very hard to keep up with.
So the failure rates I've seen has been much higher in those areas where people want to just take spare parts and build something out versus where we have been successful, and we have -- again, if you look at our numbers with Now Assist last -- whenever we announced publicly, $250 million in annual contract value and on target for $1 billion next year.
For AI specifically is because we are talking about production quality, real-life systems, which customers have gotten a value out of. So you look at -- we're working with many companies, maybe standard Charter is using -- bank is using AI control tower with our AI agents, orchestration engine with RaptorDB as a full production environment for running and operating the AI systems.
Because now they can now have some control, but they're also getting a solution. So the success for any company has to be oriented on like what can you get, which is enterprise grade and defense context because a lot of context in enterprise is not in documents. And people might think that I can read a document and I can figure out how business runs in a particular department, never happens.
Otherwise, all enterprise systems would have been very perfect for many years. We've been -- I've been in enterprise software for 35 years, and I realize every time people talk about, oh, I can solve this legacy thing or change these things just because I've got new technology, never has happened. You have to coexist with existing environments.
And what I think will -- what is happening is that context is missing because a lot of context is in humans' brains. A lot of people who work in the department and they change quite frequently. So that consumer-grade AI doesn't work in many cases because the context as well as the enterprise capabilities are missing.
So what we are doing differently is building the solution, solving the end-to-end problem and understanding how to integrate with various complex systems which might exist and improving that condition. And that's where the success rate is much higher for us with implementations we have done with our customers versus a lot of the reports you see in the market about failures, which are more those kind of side projects, somebody is experimenting without the knowledge or the experience in many areas.
It almost feels like ServiceNow has an unfair advantage. I don't want to get too far ahead of ourselves. But...
I think the experience we've had for years and we've solved this problem, we can bring that to help customers basically.
That makes sense. And just on a related thread, AI and production at scale requires having a data strategy and a data estate that's AI ready, if you will. What can ServiceNow do to help customers lacking a robust data strategy, realize the promise of AI?
No, you're 100% right. I think the data and getting the data strategy right really is a very critical part of an AI, if you want AI to be successful. And I think the way we've been thinking about it, that's why we launched something called Workflow Data Fabric. Our data product in there connecting various systems using zero copy architecture where you don't have to move things around, but I still get the context and the metadata associated with all the systems that might have could be running in Snowflake, Databricks or other data warehouses like Oracle, Teradata, BigQuery, other things like that.
And we provide that ability to have context and metadata-driven ways to analyze and bring it at a business process level versus a data level. So a business process where you can do insight to action across all the segregated and fragmented data sources and compiling the metadata, and we bought this company, data.world for data cataloging and knowledge graph and things like that, allowing that lineage and the data understanding to improve your processes as well as give you actionable insights, has been the game changer.
So we have to solve that, and it's something which -- since I've joined, we've been pushing aggressively and that business has been really doing well because customers are seeing value of doing that at a business process level versus just integrating data sources, which is what most of the companies do today.
Like they take various data sources, they say, all we'll consolidate into one more data lake. And then you again have fragmentation, then you create another integration. It becomes very, very unattainable. The changes we are bringing in is like still allow you to keep your existing systems, but make it much more work productively to look at it from the business process and enterprise level versus individual data level. And that, I think, has a big important step to take for AI.
Got it. I want to shift gears a little bit. Amit, you said that you've been in the industry for 35 years. You've got tremendous perspective. And there are investor fears out there that AI will ultimately prove destructive to the software industry as we've known it. You worked through many category-defining companies along the way. What gives you the confidence that AI is net good for the industry overall and even more so for ServiceNow?
I think if you have any technology, you have to be smart about where to use it. I mean, every technology shift, there's always been apprehension whether it's going to help you or is it going to create more issues? Or does it change the overall themes around how you build things out, right?
As long as I think you understand the value AI creates in the overall ecosystem and use it effectively, it is going to be very valuable. AI technology today in terms of what you can -- what it understands from documents or be able to do reasoning, it's very powerful. And one of the things which we're lacking in enterprise software was be able to do things from much more dynamically versus deterministically.
So that's the value it creates where you can have flexibility and changes happen on the fly as needed while you have the underlying system still be able to operate. So I do believe AI is going to be additive to improve how people operate and run their environments. But by itself, not understanding context and saying that, okay, now let my large language model decide my -- how to run my business is going to be ineffective, right?
So it's just a matter of where you -- what I see with large language models as well as the Agentic workflows, it is very powerful. But without having all the things which cover trust, safety, enterprise-grade understanding of the data, bringing different systems together because nobody is going to rip and replace. And a lot of the way technology evolution has people, oh yes, you're going to throw this away, you're going to dig this one. It never happens because it doesn't work that way. Companies can't shut down.
So understanding that and then applying it effectively and not building a new brand-new platform every time to replace because what has been the biggest problem for enterprises like every time it's like, get to this one, replace this one. It has to be continuum. And what -- how you bring that into the existing platform, letting customers get value from it and not doing AI for the AI's sake. And sometimes customers should even know there's AI underneath. Why should it matter? It should be outcome-driven. So what we've been forcing with ServiceNow is like what is the outcome customers trying to do? What is the intent? And do I self solve this intent and the outcome using AI or my standard software or whatever it is, it doesn't make a difference to me as long as I'm solving the intent and customers are happy as the outcome.
If somebody asked for, as I said, employee on boarding, can I get the employee onboarded instead of did you make a mistake and terminate the employee? That's what AI can do if you don't apply it properly.
So you have to marry the outcome with what the expectations are and ensure guaranteed outcome and you will succeed very well. So I think AI is going to be valuable, and we do believe we are investing aggressively in it, and there's definitely a lot of differences we're making with it. But we're giving in the context of what works inside an enterprise and how can you solve the real problem versus like, oh, this is a nice new shiny toy.
Translating that back to ServiceNow's ambitions and putting numbers to it, the company expects to achieve over $1 billion in annual contract value from Now Assist by the end of 2026. While you've already made significant progress, how much traction with the consumption element of your mix is required to achieve that target?
Yes. So this is without -- I mean, the way we have priced and the Now Assist we have, that's uplift is the Pro Plus SKU, right? And we have in Q1, I think we announced a number of $250 million ACV already. We plan to hit $1 billion next year, and it's on target. So that continues to grow very well.
And we're seeing -- the big shift, we announced Agentic capabilities, multi-Agentic workflows and integration early this year. Our customer base who is using Now Assist with Agentic is just significantly growing, right? I think 9x is what we saw as a number over the quarter-over-quarter, right, in terms of number of customers who are adopting Agentic. And that drives consumption of our Now Assist.
The Now Assist is the way we price it is a subscription with some kind of -- with some capacity of Assist. Basically Assist means the calls you make to our Agentic workflows. Any time you automate these things, you're making those calls. In the first phase of AI was more summarization, which is a very minimal number of calls you need to make on the Agentic side. And it's just saying, okay, now summarize the case and help me get that information in a much easy way to comprehend.
Now what we're seeing in use cases like triaging a case. incident management, resolving complex tickets, customer issue resolution. Those are much more complex business process as well as the large Agentic workflows. And that is consuming a huge amount of assist on the subscription customers that bought. So they are not burning down those assist as part of our subscription.
And since as I said, we started early this year, a lot of these subscriptions are going to come up for renewal over a few years. And a lot of the customers we're seeing already hitting 50% of capacity. So what we have told -- what we see is end of next year, year after, you'll see even bigger and bigger assist packs being bought or renewals at a higher consumption rate -- commit rate associated with that. So that's how we are planning for this one.
So today, our $1 billion revenue is planned for next year continues to be on track, but we expect that to continue to increase because our Assist usage is going up a lot.
I think it's fair. That's helpful context. I think it's fair to say the entire industry is trying to figure out how to adapt to what is clearly a new frontier. I think you have a lot of experience in having embarked on other frontiers and your experience from GCP and dealing with being right there on the leading edge of the consumption model.
Right. I think that the thing which is probably maybe one point to mention is the customers also -- when I speak to many customers, they want the predictability and flexibility, combination, right? And you can only achieve that by not going that buy by a drip because then you have no predictability. You can't control. In large enterprises, you can have many groups just doing random stuff.
So having the subscription structure with some kind of debit card kind of model, it works very well for them because they know what they're going to be spending. They can control something. We can give them some ideas. We can get also predictability in our revenue as a vendor. It's a win-win with both customers. The customers I have pitched this to so far, everybody loves it.
And similar thing happened in cloud, as you know, right? Initially, people say, you're going to charge use a credit card and buy AWS services. Their credit card buying is like less than 1% of the revenue is in that now, people do commits, which is basically burn down your commits. And then when you need more, you renew or buy more commits, right?
And that's what exactly is happening in this structure as well, where we have some predictability, but also some flexibility for customers.
Along those lines, I mean, the software industry, I think, has a very good track record of capturing the value that it creates. But as we think about these pricing models, it's an evolution, at least for the industry.
For sure.
And I would imagine if we look back in 3 or 5 years, it won't be exactly perhaps what it looks like today at ServiceNow. How do you get comfortable that AI Now Assist are ultimately good for pricing and the value you're able to extract from each and every customer?
It's a good question. I think if we don't going to do value -- we don't go to generate value for customers as a vendor, we'll die. That's been the DNA of ServiceNow. And when I just talk to everybody inside the company, it's very clear the customers has to benefit. And they have to see value of the investment they're making in ServiceNow. And we do everything possible, one, to make sure customers use our products properly and getting the value out of it, but also they can measure that tangible outcomes. The same thing with Now Assist, right?
We provide them some easy way to calculate ROI. We give them some ideas of what this kind of different workflows you're doing, what kind of execution required is, what is the sizing associated with that? And what is it replacing?
And how much efficiency you're getting also whether it's helping your CSAT, is it helping your bottom line, all that kind of stuff, right? So our Now Assist, as I said, one, it automates. Second, it kind of makes complexity go away and allows you to change things on the fly as needed based on your new business needs.
And the pricing, what we have done is value-based because some of this workload, we provide like 48 end-to-end workflows, multi-Agentic workflows, connecting multiple systems, not just ServiceNow, could be SAP, Concur, Salesforce, Workday, all those kind of things. And we can tell them, hey, this is what your cost will be like that. And if you had to do this thing without this, it will be 10x most of the time. And that's how we show them the value and our sales teams, our solution architects and everybody else articulate that on a regular basis.
And that's how we've grown because it has to be co-investment. What we do with Now, we had announced this program called Now Next AI, where we're bringing a lot of our technical resources to help customers adopt the first few use cases of Now Assist because a lot of customers don't know what makes sense, where to start with. And we want them to be very effective as well as get good outcomes instantly.
So we bring technical resources who have AI black belts and showing them the value of the investment they're making in ServiceNow. And once they get going with 1 or 2, it just skyrockets.
I think we'll use the term forward deployed engineers, which is a model that's increasingly common and one that I imagine is going to work really well. I know we're going to -- we only got a few minutes left here. There's a number of topics I want to hit on. Just product road map-wise, I don't expect you're going to announce a new product here on stage with me today.
But just what are you doing differently to meet the moment in terms of leveraging AI, both internally and allocating resources to meet AI market demand and be able to intercept the curve of what the client needs from an AI perspective going forward?
So I answer 2 parts, right? One, internally, for sure, we do believe we have a big, big believer in using the technology we built and adopt it internally, right? So doing your own champagne kind of mindset we call Now a Now. We've implemented a lot of the Agentic cases, like 400,000 use -- flows we have delivered inside the company now, right, using Agentic. And out of that, basically seeing a $350 million of enterprise value created, savings of $100 million this year itself.
So our organic growth of headcount is slowing down because we don't need to keep on investing everywhere. We can automate a lot of other things. We also -- they're doing a lot of deflection in our customer case volume. So for example, our customer service team, we barely have grown our headcount there, even though my case volume has gone up 40% over -- because our business has grown considerably over the last few years.
So we're able to self-service that, deflect that and reduce the amount of time required to solve that problem without a lot of human interaction. Our sales productivity has gone up because they can get answers to a lot of the questions they want in a much faster way, right, in seconds versus hours or months. Right?
So those things are happening already internally. And a lot of these things are driven by no doubt the products we are building and a lot of new things we've done, right? I mean this year, we launched, as I said, workflow data fabric that's been growing. That's a new product investment.
You will be surprised in terms of how well we're doing around security and risk. A lot of the incident management across every enterprise and CISO, we've become kind of the gold standard for them to run and operate any incident which happens to the company. All the large security providers like CrowdStrike and sort of Palo Alto, Wiz and others, they integrate with us because they need that actioning framework because we are the kind of the action -- system of action, getting things done versus just giving you information back.
And that's what people pay us for because we can go and update systems, make changes happen in an automated fashion instead of swivel chair, which you have to do otherwise, right? And this Agentic flow is really kind of accelerating that movement. And that's what the internal value has been created, but we should be able to showcase the same value to our customers.
With respect for time, you mentioned data.world, 2 other really important acquisitions. Moveworks has yet to close, Logik.ai. We don't have enough time to dig into both of those other 2. I'm going to lean towards Logik.ai, if that's okay, because I think it's the one that maybe people might be less familiar with.
And we've heard ambitions to build on CSM and expand in the front office for many -- over many years. But it feels like this is now a seminal moment. What is Logik.ai bring to the table? And why might it be such an important unlock for the front office opportunity?
No, I think for me, the way to think about our -- where we want to invest is anywhere where there's complex orchestration required an outcome-driven mindset required. So if you're not familiar with Logik, Logik.ai is this next-generation CPU configured price quoting tool. And they really use AI to take complex queues and create a BOM out of it where they can go and create a quote for a customer. If I'm inside a company trying to quote some very complex products to a customer from perspective of you want to sell these different parts and the pricing might be very complex. So you need approvals and reviews for pricing.
The pricing engine is a big part of it and then create a succinct code, which customers can now understand what it is and they can review it and send back an order. So it's a very outcome-driven kind of a product. Removing complexity for companies to be able to create that code is a big, big requirement.
And there are a lot of attempts at it. A lot of companies have delivered products before, which are getting now re-platformed. What -- with Logik, it really changes the game from all those old technologies to AI-driven CPQ. Becomes a core part of our CRM product because customer service, sales order management and CPQ go hand-in-hand because it's complex orchestration, very outcome-driven. And we can basically do the whole flow with many different constituents involved, right?
You have a product person, you have a legal person, you have a salesperson, you have a partner involved. Those different constituents want to collaborate. And that's what the workflow would do and orchestrate that through Agentic processes. So I'm very excited about -- we have closed, I think, 10 deals in 10 days since they were part of in Q2 because customers are seeing a lot of value. And there's a lot of rethinking going on in the CPQ world where the old products don't work.
There are new things coming out, and we're already ahead of the game, and it expands our CRM capabilities in the marketplace. So this is a great opportunity. We're very excited that they are part of our team and great company, great product and lets us grow into many new areas.
Awesome's. We're just about out of time. I want to sneak in one very quick one. You can answer it very quickly, but you recently signed a significant deal with Google Cloud and your expected cloud spend has ramped up significantly for your most recent 10-Q filing. How has your infrastructure strategy evolved? And what strategically can you achieve with a partner like Google?
I think everything is customer-driven for us, right? So it's the view for me with even Google Cloud and other, we also have a relationship with AWS and Azure. So we are supporting all hyperscalers And they really use AI to take complex queues and create a BOM because customers want to take that commit through the marketplace and use it to buy ServiceNow.
So we have to be in all those hyperscalers. So GCP has just noted, we have announced that we will be available in all hyperscalers, and we continue doing that. We'll support all the large language models. We keep on supporting that. So it's an open platform, and GCP is just part of the strategy we always had in place since I joined to make sure that we make ourselves available wherever customers want to use us. So that we can have access to every market.
And we also have a large go-to-market relationship with GCP. We co-innovating as well in product areas as well. You'll see a lot of launches happening in that area.
Awesome. Amit, really great to see you. Thank you so much.
Yes. Thanks for having us.
Always a pleasure. This was really informative. Thank you.
Thanks, everyone.
Thanks, everyone.
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ServiceNow, Inc. — Deutsche Bank's 2025 Technology Conference
ServiceNow, Inc. — Deutsche Bank's 2025 Technology Conference
📣 Kernbotschaft
- Kern: ServiceNow positioniert sich als "Enterprise OS" und will die zentrale Orchestrierungs‑ und Kontrollschicht für KI‑gestützte Automatisierung in Großunternehmen werden. Die Strategie: Plattform‑First (ein gemeinsames Datenmodell), Agentic/Multi‑Agent‑Workflows und Trust/Compliance als Differenzierer.
- Fokus: Monetarisierung über Now Assist (Consumption + Subscriptions), Data‑Fabric zur Datenkontextualisierung und gezielte Kaufintegration (data.world, Logik.ai, Moveworks).
🎯 Strategische Highlights
- Plattform: Einheitliche Architektur erlaubt End‑to‑end‑Workflows über IT, HR, CRM, Security und ermöglicht schnelleres Roll‑out von KI‑Use‑Cases ohne Rip‑and‑Replace.
- AI Control Tower: Produkt zur Inventarisierung und Governance von Modellen/Agenten (Enterprise‑CMDB‑Gedanke) — schnelle Kundenadoption wegen Compliance‑Fokus.
- Go‑to‑Market: Now Assist als Wert‑/verbrauchsbasierte Preisstruktur, unterstützende Services (Now Next AI) und Front‑office‑Erweiterung durch Logik.ai (AI‑CPQ).
🔭 Neue Informationen
- Now Assist: Management nennt $250M Annual Contract Value (ACV) bisher und reiteriert Ziel: >$1B ACV bis Ende 2026; Nutzung/Consumption treibt Upsell bei Renewals.
- Adoption: AI Control Tower: "100+ Kunden in ~2 Monaten"; Logik.ai: rascher Deal‑Start (10 Abschlüsse in 10 Tagen).
- Produkte: Workflow Data Fabric (Zero‑copy, Metadaten/Knowledge‑Graph) als Daten‑Backbone für KI‑Use‑Cases.
❓ Fragen der Analysten
- Federal: Wann kommt der Inflection Point? Management sieht bereits Standardisierung in Behörden, erwartet schrittweise Beschleunigung pro Behörde.
- Monetarisierung: Wie skalieren Consumption‑Modelle? Argument: Assist‑Packs, Commit‑/Subscription‑Mix und Messbarkeit des ROI treiben Renewals/Upsell.
- Datenstrategie: Workflow Data Fabric und data.world sollen fehlenden Enterprise‑Kontext adressieren — Kernfrage bleibt Integrations‑aufwand bei Kunden.
⚡ Bottom Line
- Implikation: Der Fireside Chat untermauert ServiceNows Narrativ als AI‑Orchestrator mit klaren Kommerzialisierungswegen (Now Assist) und gezielten Produktkäufen. Chancen liegen in hoher Plattformbindung und Consumption‑Upside; Risiken in Umsetzung der breiten Adoption, Messung von ROI und erfolgreicher Integration der Zukäufe.
ServiceNow, Inc. — Q2 2025 Earnings Call
1. Management Discussion
Thank you for standing by. My name is Kathleen, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the ServiceNow Second Quarter 2025 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions]
I would now like to turn the call over to Darren Yip, Senior Vice President, Head of Investor Relations and Market Insights. Please go ahead.
Good afternoon and thank you for joining ServiceNow's Second Quarter 2025 Earnings Conference Call. Joining me are Bill McDermott, our Chairman and Chief Executive Officer; Gina Mastantuono, our President and Chief Financial Officer; and Amit Zavery, President, Chief Product Officer and Chief Operating Officer.
During today's call, we will review our second quarter 2025 results and discuss our guidance for the third quarter and full year 2025. Before we get started, we want to emphasize that the information discussed on this call, including our guidance, is based on information as of today and contains forward-looking statements that involve risks, uncertainties and assumptions. We undertake no duty or obligation to update such statements as a result of new information or future events. Please refer to today's earnings press release and our SEC filings, including our most recent 10-Q and 10-K for factors that may cause actual results to differ materially from our forward-looking statements.
We'd also like to point out that we present non-GAAP measures in addition to and not as a substitute for financial measures calculated in accordance with GAAP. Unless otherwise noted, all financial measures and related growth rates we discuss today are non-GAAP except for revenues, remaining performance obligations, or RPO, current RPO and cash and investments. To see the reconciliation between these non-GAAP and GAAP measures, please refer to today's earnings press release and investor presentation, which are both posted on our website at investors.servicenow.com. A replay of today's call will also be posted on our website.
With that, I'll turn the call over to Bill.
Thank you, Darren, and welcome, everyone, to today's call. ServiceNow's Q2 results were outstanding. They continue our long track record of elite level execution, and we are at the forefront of enterprise AI. Subscription revenue growth was 21.5% in constant currency, 2 points above our guidance. CRPO growth was also 21.5% in constant currency, 2 points above our guidance. Operating margin was 29.5%. That's over 2.5 points above our guidance. Free cash flow margin was 16.5%, up 3% year-on-year. We had 89 deals greater than $1 million in net new ACV, 11 of those deals were greater than $5 million in net new ACV. All our workflow businesses performed very well in the quarter.
Technology workflows had 40 deals, over $1 million, including 4 over $5 million. ITSM, ITOM, ITAM, security and risk were all in at least 15 of the top 20 deals. CRM and industry workflows continued its strong momentum and 17 of our top 20 deals with 17 of those deals over $1 million. And core business workflows also had a great quarter and 16 of the top 20 deals with 7 deals over $1 million. The global environment is the fastest changing in history. Outcomes like beat-and-raise are a testament to the ServiceNow AI platform, our world-class team and partner ecosystem.
Let's talk about what's driving the growth. It's AI, data and workflows. On AI, now assist net new ACV to date beat expectations once again in Q2. Our key AI Pro+ deal count, including ITSM, CSM and HR was up over 50% quarter-on-quarter. We also closed our largest now as this deal to date, at over $20 million. We had 21 deals with 5 or more now assist products, and plus products were included in 18 of our top 20 deals. The AI hype cycle has not slowed for good reason. Enterprises in every industry and every region of the world have AI transformation as priority number one. IT budgets are highly resilient and increasingly focused on strategic mission-critical AI platforms. Our position is highly differentiated because AI work is cross-functional work.
ServiceNow integrates the entire tech stack, on-prem or in the cloud, any system, any LLM, any data source and we bring all of that data into a single model. From there, we elevated to the workflow layer where you take action on that data wherever it lives. Then we move into the AI layer, not just automation but true AI agents executing real tasks to drive outcomes across business processes, hire to retire, procure to pay, design to product quote to cash and sales to service. The long history of enterprise tech can be described in a single word, pain, that's because people and devices and apps and data and clouds, they don't work well together. Without ServiceNow, we run the real risk of a new generation of pain this time with AI agents scattered around like spare parts. We have no intention, ladies and gentlemen, of allowing that to happen.
Control Tower isn't just a name for our solution. It's the ultimate metaphor that how ServiceNow helps customers govern the agenetic enterprise. We help customers take advantage of everyone's innovation, ours and others we put investments together. We make it all work with demand as high as it is. Our next AI program is called Now Next AI. And this is getting our engineering teams deployed to get customers live fast. These are only a few of the many reasons you're seeing real momentum in these results. and we're only just getting started. Q2 has also showed ServiceNow's growing differentiation in enterprise data. Workflow Data Fabric was included in 17 of our top 20 largest deals. Customers recognize the value of combining data, analytics and AI. They embrace our vision of workflow data fabric and agents working together to drive faster, smarter outcomes. On the underlying technology level, RaptorDB Pro continued to gain traction in every major region beat expectations in Q2.
As I summarized earlier, all our workflows are growing, especially CRM, front office workflows. The CRM opportunity for ServiceNow is massive. According to industry experts, Agentic AI represents a seismic shift that could render traditional CRM obsolete. By the end of this decade, enterprises will adopt systems of action driven by autonomous front-end agents. The future isn't a CRM screen, it's omnipresent AI agent embedded in everyday tools. With our sales and order management solution and our acquisition of Logik.ai. We're not just entering CRM. We're reimagining it now. We're delivering a fully integrated AI-powered front office, sales and service, streamlined operations and dramatically improved time to revenue. And customers are responding to our innovation. We secured several notable wins with strong momentum in CRM and widespread adoption of our end-to-end capabilities, one of the largest building supply companies in the U.S. selected ServiceNow CPQ to support configuration and quoting at scale for their largest distribution network.
Exxon Mobile, plans to implement ServiceNow AI and agents to deliver enhanced employee experiences, improved operational processes and fast response time across its enterprise services. Standard Charter will use ServiceNow AI control tower with rated to help govern and secure and realize value from agentic AI, Merck & Company, is adopting the ServiceNow AI platform to transform security operations, enhancing control of our IT assets, reducing risk and strengthening data compliance across the enterprise. The state of California is using ServiceNow CRM across multiple departments to better serve its constituents, employees and the business community. Banco do Nordeste, Doldafield is transforming customer service with ServiceNow AI, delivering tailored solutions that anticipate customer needs and deepen engagement across the broad network of customers and partners. And to it is expanding its long-time relationship with ServiceNow to remove friction with done for you a genetic AI experiences for their employees. Starbucks a multiyear ServiceNow customer is using our AI capabilities to enhance its technology ecosystem, rolling out ServiceNow and select support centers to drive greater satisfaction at every touch point. The North Carolina Department of Transportation will use ServiceNow AI control tower to govern all of their AI solutions across the agency, ensuring industry compliance, and control as they scale their modernization efforts. In a very exciting new partnership, Cap zone, impact investments and ServiceNow are developing a national network of next-gen solutions to modernize mission-critical facilities.
ServiceNow's risk management, enterprise asset management and AI-powered automation capabilities will create a fully digital maritime manufacturing capability in the United States. There's no greatest satisfaction in seeing world-class brands working with ServiceNow. There's no better example than our great partner and friend and video. They are redefining employee support with ServiceNow AI with intelligent AI agents that proactively resolve issues, deliver personalized help and provide answers in milliseconds. Customers are not only choosing our tech they're investing in our team. Under Amit Zavery's leadership, our product, engineering and design teams are the best in the enterprise. They're building too much net new innovation to cover in these remarks. That's a good thing.
ServiceNow has delivered a complete integrated enterprise-ready agentic platform for every agenetic requirement. This includes AI control tower AI agent fabric and a no-code AI agent studio in just 60 days. We've already surpassed our initial net new ACV expectations per AI control tower for the full year. Today, we're announcing a genetic workforce management, a new standard for hybrid team leadership. This allows employees and agents to work seamlessly and securely with each other to deliver real business outcomes. We also acquired Data.world to deliver innovative data governance, and these solutions are built for this agentic AI era, which is why it's so precious to us. This is the only data catalog platform built on a knowledge graph with the highest user adoption in the data, catalog and governance category period. We just have so much to talk about in this company right now through partnership expansions with NVIDIA, U.K. Cheese, Zoom and countless others are illuminating the centricity of ServiceNow in enterprise AI. That's why we see new recognition in Forrester waves, IDC Marketscape and Gartner Research. It's why millions are applying to work for the company so they can be part of this movement. We made an intentional choice at ServiceNow to put AI to work for people. Yes, ServiceNow AI is driving substantial productivity increases for our customers. And while efficiency and productivity are major benefits, it doesn't stop there. This is a breakthrough innovation of Lyxor, unlike anything we've ever seen in human history.
People and AI together will create new businesses, new discoveries and catalyze economic growth in every corner of the world. The world works with ServiceNow because we are delivering AI to empower people everywhere. So they can be the ones who lead their organizations forward to new horizons. I'll leave you with this point. Analysts predict a genetic AI will be ubiquitous, embedded in software platforms and applications, transforming user experiences and workflows. AI is the new UI, and that's why the software industrial complex of the 21st century is converging into ServiceNow as the extensible AI operating system for the Agentic enterprise. This gives us a monumental future value creation for our customers and shareholders. Thank you for your time.
Now I'll hand things over to our President and Chief Financial Officer, Gina Mastantuono. Gina, over to you.
Thank you, Bill. Q2 was a spectacular quarter across the board. We significantly beat the high end of our guidance across all top line and profitability metrics. Among many highlights, strong adoption of our analysis products continued outperforming expectations in the quarter once again. AI efficiencies internally were also a meaningful tailwind to margin expansion.
Let's get into the details. Q2 subscription revenues of $3.13 billion, growing 21.5% year-over-year in constant currency, 200 basis points above the high end of our guidance range. driven by strong execution and some early on-prem renewals. RPO ended the quarter at approximately $23.9 billion, representing 25.5% year-over-year constant currency growth. Current RPO was $10.92 billion, representing 21.5% year-over-year constant currency growth, a 200 basis point beat versus our guidance.
From an industry perspective, transportation and logistics delivered a standout performance, net new ACV over 100% year-over-year. Technology, Media and Telecom had a fantastic quarter, growing over 70% year-over-year. Retail and Hospitality and Energy & Utilities also saw strength, each growing over 50% year-over-year. Once again, we achieved a robust 98% renewal rate showcasing ServiceNow strategic importance as the AI platform for business transformation. We ended Q2 with 528 customers generating over $5 million in ACV. What's more? The number of customers contributing $20 million or more increased by over 30% year-over-year. We closed 89 deals greater than $1 million in net new ACV in the quarter, including 11 deals over $5 million. In Q2, all top 20 deals included 5 or more products, illustrating the power of our platform. Our continued focus on winning the right new logos also bore fruit in Q2. We landed 11 deals over $1 million in net new ACV, including 2 over $5 million, growing average new logo ACV over 100% year-over-year.
Within CRM, our push into the front office gained further momentum in the quarter. The addition of Logic.ai is already driving exclusive growth in CPQ with 9 deals closed in June alone. Our now assist net new ACV to date also continues to trend very well beating expectations once again, fueled by an increase in both deal volume and size quarter-over-quarter. As Bill noted, this includes 21 deals with 5 or more now assist products. Our unique platform approach to AI is clearly resonating with customers. Our newest plus SKUs products are off to a stellar start ITAM now assist net new ACV serves nearly 6x quarter-over-quarter, with average deal sizes more than tripling. Now assist for SecOps and risk combined for net new ACV more than double quarter-over-quarter. Our flagship products are also delivering exceptional results. ITSM and CSMs deal value quadrupled year-over-year, while ITOMs tripled and HRSD doubled. And in creator, now assist average deal sizes also quadrupled year-over-year.
Turning to profitability. Non-GAAP operating margin was 29.5%, over 250 basis points above our guidance, driven by our top line outperformance AI OpEx efficiencies and the timing of marketing spend. By utilizing our own AI innovations in-house is now on now, we leverage tools like CodeAssist and cogeneration to unlock significant capacity for our engineers. Our free cash to margin was 16.5%, up 300 basis points year-over-year. We ended the quarter with a robust balance sheet, including $10.8 billion in cash and investments. In Q2, we bought back approximately 381,000 shares as part of our share repurchase program with the primary objective of managing the impact of dilution. As of the end of the quarter, we had approximately $2.6 billion of authorization remaining. Together, these results continue to demonstrate our ability to drive a strong balance of world-class growth profitability and shareholder value. Moving to our outlook. As I called out last quarter, U.S. federal agencies are navigating changes from tightening budgets to evolving mission demand. The team executed very well against that backdrop as market conditions played out as we anticipated in Q2. We remain confident that our guidance appropriately reflects these trends heading into Q3 and continues to set us up for success for the remainder of the year. I would also note that my commentary for both 2025 and and Q3 does not include any contribution from Wood works, which we expect to close late in the second half of 2025 or early 2026. With that in mind, for 2025, we are raising our subscription revenues by $125 million at the midpoint to $12.775 billion to $12.795 billion, representing 20% year-over-year growth or 19.5% to 20% on a constant currency basis. We continue to expect subscription gross margin of 83.5%, operating margin of 30.5% and and free cash flow margin of 32%. Finally, we expect GAAP diluted weighted average outstanding shares of $210 million. For Q3, we expect subscription revenues between $3.26 billion and $3.265 billion, representing 20% to 20.5% year-over-year growth or 19.5% on a constant currency basis. We expect CRPO year-over-year growth of 18.5% or 18% on a constant currency basis. As a reminder, this includes 200 basis points headwind due to our larger-than-average customer cohort that renewed in Q4. We expect an operating margin of 30.5%. Finally, we expect $210 million GAAP diluted weighted average outstanding shares for the quarter. In conclusion, Q2 was another fantastic quarter fueled by solid execution and resilient demand, with a robust pipeline and expanding market opportunities, we are well positioned as we enter the second half of the year.
For countless ServiceNow customers and partners, Knowledge 2025 cemented ServiceNow's leadership in enterprise AI. The newly created pipeline is up over $1.2 billion already. This solid pipeline and the momentum we have exiting the first half of the year put us well on our way to reaching our $15 billion-plus subscription revenue target for 2026 and with it, $1 billion and now assist ACV. This quarter's performance is a testament to the talent and dedication of our team. Bill and I are truly thankful for the relentless effort our employees put in every day. We couldn't be more honored to lead such an exceptional group.
With that, I'll open it up for Q&A.
[Operator Instructions] And your first question comes from the line of Alex Zukin from Wolfe Research.
2. Question Answer
Congratulations on another clearly elite quarter. Bill some of your peers, I think it's unclear if the demand environment has improved much maybe or changed much since the start of the year. But something seems different in the way that you guys are executing. Maybe you can you just talk about what's driving this seemingly better-than-expected execution. Is it something that's changed in the traction of the AI product? Is it something that's changed in the competitive field? Maybe just what's different this year, first half in spite of a difficult backdrop that's allowing you to maintain this level of execution.
Well, thank you very much, Alex, for your comment. And I see you already got a research note out to your clients, you're moving at the pace of ServiceNow. It's called instantaneous execution. The one thing that can't easily get measured in an earnings script or in the numbers is the heart and the courage of a culture and part of this is gigantic. And this hungry and humble culture that started with red looting and has continued to this day has never given up on anything. But to answer your question specifically, AI is what changed. And agenetic AI is transforming the business model every company in the world. They see the difference tweens, ServiceNow and the other ones. And I would just sum this way. We got the best product on it. I'm sure we'll have time to give you an update on the many innovations that are into the product. It's stunning. The experience is stunning and the results that customers can derive from it is amazing. And I said for some time, nobody has to lose for us to win. But as the agenda I story has gotten so strong and the platform has gotten so strong, the customers are looking to consolidate the past. And really lean into ServiceNow. And the business cases as a result of that customer headset change are actually getting even bigger. And that's across all industries by the way.
And finally, and I really do want to make this point clear. AI work is cross-functional work. It is not one dimensional into a silo. Teams work on processes across functions organization charts are going to change. Work is going to be AI work, and it will be cross-functional. And our own company we have 450,000 agents in the workflow right now. And all of the supporting functions from customer support to IT support to risk, compliance, security, most of this is now over 80% being done by agents. So Agentic is real. The business cases are extraordinary. Gina has told the Street -- it will be $350 million value to us this year. We think it might even be more in terms of what we can take out and objects, not to mention, happiness and productivity. If you just think about the sales curve, for example, it's a 50% improvement in sales productivity, not to have to do the setup work. That's also true for the engineers. So this is a fundamental step function change, and you can only get exponentiality out of thinking across company. Yes, you can start with us in any given silo, but we're moving out to all functions. And when you look at the deals, all the big deals. You look at all 20 of them, they have multiple instances in those functions of a genic AI, which means we're winning at the departmental level, but we're really winning with the CEO. We've become the CEO's agenetic AI story in enterprise software. And notice I didn't say SaaS. We actually don't live in a SaaS neighborhood. We live in an enterprise AI neighborhood on a one-on-one platform, and that differentiation is now being comported to our customers and to our partners in a clear and articulate manner. And that's why we're different.
Super clear. Maybe, Gina, just quickly one for you. There's a lot of anxiety. I know from the investor community about DOGE, about federal activity in general in the public sector. It seems like it delivered to your expectations. But maybe can you give us a flavor for the pipeline, the conservatism in the numbers for Q3 and how we should think about that in the back half?
Yes. Great question, Alex. So market conditions pick out as we anticipated, and the team executed extremely well against that backdrop. Our federal team is this the best in the business, and I couldn't be prouder of them. And despite the noise actually in the court of U.S. public sector closed 6 new logos in Q2 alone. And so again, just continuing to execute despite the uncertainty. That being said, for the remainder of 2025, we're absolutely building prudence in around our assumptions for U.S. Fed, right? And so they continue to navigate tightening budgets and shifting mission demands with increasing urgency. So we feel good that our guidance contemplates appropriately those trends into Q3, and I feel good about where that stands.
Your next question comes from the line of Mark Murphy of JPMorgan.
Bill, with the AI control Tower, I think you said that it was beating targets for the full year already and it's only July. It's hard to comprehend. Are you seeing signs that customers might use that as the central control plane for all of their agents, including third-party agents from OpenAI and Microsoft and others. And then the -- if the NebetronLLM, the one that you're building in conjunction with NVIDIA, if that succeeds, do you think the ServiceNow agents can offer better reasoning and maybe start to replace the third-party agents so they don't spread around like spare parts, I think that was your term?
Yes, it was my term. And Mark, thank you very much for the question. I'll make the big point on the AI platform for this transformation. And then Amit will give you some color on the product. And I think you're going to be extremely excited. But here's the idea. Think about any cloud, okay, any cloud. We're the only ones that cooperate with all 3 of the hyperscalers. Oracle 2, I think any data source I think any -- when I say any data source, think about those systems of record, think about those data warehouses and data lakes. Think about any model, so any LLM model, all of the -- they're all good. They all do different things and they're all good and think about any agent. So these agents need to be managed just like people need to be managed. So our AI controller will manage our agents and all the other ones, too. And yes, Mark, the big picture is a CEO should want ServiceNow's AI platform for business transformation. They should want our AI controller to manage not just our agents, but all the other agents, too. These agents will team up, they will work together and they will collaborate together a chorus business processes. And in many ways, the early results of what we see is the agents are a lot more collaborative and more team-oriented and more results oriented than people. So this is going to be a real fun one to watch, and I'll let Amit give you some color on the products.
All right. Thank you, Bill. Mark, as Bill was mentioning, the AI control tower definitely provides a central nervous system and ability to really manage all the complexity companies have with AI deployments. But beyond that, as we talk about adopting various large language models for our reasoning engine, of course, we made a lot of good progress with NVIDIA in the Nemotron model, and that's 1 of the options we do provide customers, and that has given ability to raise speed up the reasoning, planning and execution of any request we get to our AI system. And then we still continue to make sure that we provide these other choices, be it open AI, Gemini as well as cloud for customers to choose other model, which makes sense for their use cases. But we provide prescriptive waste through our air control tower to select the right ways for executing our planning engine for those use cases as well. So that continues, and our investments in AI are paying off for customers bases, which are getting bigger and bigger every day.
Your next question comes from the line of Brad Zelnick of Deutsche Bank.
Bill, ServiceNow, you guys have outlined very bold ambitions within front office workflows. Now with Logik.ai closed, can you talk more about the most immediate opportunities whether it's service, sales or marketing? And where do you see the lowest hanging fruit right ahead of you?
Thank you very much, Brad, for the question. First of all, the CRM opportunity for ServiceNow really is huge. And we've moved away from a CRM screen and AI agents are going to be embedded in an omnipresent way in everyday tools and no more swivel sharing the workflows will be organized, They'll be agentic and legacy systems will be a customer's choice but they'll see the difference between end-to-end order, fulfill and service on one common platform. And I think that's a big thing. You're going to see a lot on the order management side, the configuration price and quote maneuver we made is really big. To get 9 deals closed in the company, we just got just tells you the pain that's out in the market right now that we intend to address. Service management is clearly something that's going to continue to excel very, very quickly. So I would say sales and order management are now coming into full view. And we're also seeing in different industries, different opportunities and one that's kind of on our vision right now is public sector because every public sector entity across the world is following with telco manufacturing and many other industries have already done. They want to replace fragmented legacy CRM stacks, and they want a unified platform that's fast is smarter and purpose built with AI for modern business. So I think you probably have some more color on that, Amit, but if you would like to add something.
So Brad, I think in the CRM, as Bill mentioned, we are looking at doing very well in the whole CSM and SM space, but we added on top of that the sales order management and CPQ. But the way to think about our CRM strategy is really around any kind of complicated workflows, which is outcome-driven. So if you look at customer service, you want to get an issue resolved, we are very good at that. You want to send an agent to go and help you resolve the issue, we are very good at that. Sales order management, you will get an order out. We process the whole workflow to get that order done. And similarly on CPQ side, you want to get a coat out, which requires a very complex configuration, pricing and multiple people involved. So if you look at any of the CRM workflows, we can pretty much solve most of those things now with our workflow engine, but we are now providing a very prescriptive ways for making it happen across the various different domains. And that's where we are winning every day.
And I would just also -- we do this by industry. So for example, if you think about agentic AI for insurance, you can see an accident turn into a settled claim on the fly. And you can see our agentic AI solve the case at the point of the accident on a mobile phone. And so that workflow that Amit is talking about is tailored, tuned and trained specifically for the insurance industry. And those agenetic AI agents are agents of insurance. and they know the industry. And by the way, not everybody that gets in an accident speaks the same language. So it also can speak to the human beings that are involved in the incident in any language on the fly. So just think about solving claims management for insurance as one example, only ServiceNow with our workflow automation, agenetic AI and the ability to really put that from the incident all the way through to the back office in real time. Only ServiceNow can do that. So it's those cases that we're focusing on.
Your next question comes from the line of Kash Rangan of Goldman Sachs.
Great honor to follow the great Brad zone. Bill management team, it's impressive that $12-plus million revenue run rate scale UTIs then put up 22% growth. So that's a great accomplishment. Bill, I wanted to ask you and anybody else want to chime in, that's great, too. There is a notion that this infrastructure build-out taking up on by the hyperscalers to help propel the open AI and topic models. This consumed a lot of capital and arguably, a lot of IT budgets as well. And that the lot of the cycle goes, the more the question becomes what to make of enterprise software since you are one of the -- you want to be the DESCO the 21st century. I'm curious to get your thoughts on what is at the end of the day, the core asset of ServiceNow that will allow the company to prosper in the world of AI when there is great unknowns about what is magical, we don't know anything about the AI, but it's going to medically do CRM. It's going to automate everything by itself of beating the need for some critical technologies that we've come to expect to be the foundational aspect of the softness. I'm sure you have a very different viewpoint being out there in the industry, but I'm curious to get your updated take on their thesis.
Thank you very much, Kash. Those are excellent companies. They're doing very creative and exciting things, and they all want to partner with us because of our leadership in the enterprise. And so what is differentiated about us. Trillion transactions, $65 billion workflows in flight across the global economy. Think about compliance, think about the regulatory environment, think about the risk posture think about data complexity, think about the adjoinment that they get from the ServiceNow platform where it is a domain-specific platform where it's secure, it's lightning fast, and it's inexpensive to run, and it integrates with all these exciting new companies. They are exciting, but there's also a complexity around enterprise-ready solutions that takes time. And so I think as that time is passing we're not sleeping. We're getting stronger and better by the day. And I think they will lean on us for our enterprise-ready solutions and end up being really good partners because that will help them prosper even more also, so it's interesting to me that you ask such an intelligent question, and that's why I believe we're the best positioned enterprise software company in the world, which is why I repeatedly say, we don't live in a neighborhood we're actually inventing our own paradigm of the agentic AI enterprise and what it's going to look like. We're not following anyone else's past. And some of that was good luck because the platform started by Fred Luddy started in IT because IT people knew at best, but it quickly migrated to the employee and the customer and the engineer and now it's across the board, including business operations. We understand the complexity of the enterprise. And if you think about 6 decades of complexity and pain to understand that takes a lot. And also those excellent companies that you mentioned, they're busy with other things. And so I think they're going to lean more into ServiceNow, not less into ServiceNow, but there will be others that won't become obsolete, and the market will determine the rules of the game. But into questions now where customers are saying to me, why do I have 10 of these and 8 of those and 11 are the other things? Can you just get them out of here because I want the savings. So it's the customer that's driving this. And when they hear all any cloud, any data source, any LLM model. Any agent, we cooperate with the whole ecosystem, so all of your investments to secure on our clean pain of glass across the enterprise. That's when they realize it's a different company I'm dealing with here. And I like everybody else.
Your next question comes from the line of Karl Keirstead of UBS.
Bill, I'm just wondering if you saw any even incremental change in broadly the selling environment in 2Q. What I'm getting at is perhaps 3 months ago in the midst of fairly historically high level of customer uncertainty about macro tariffs, maybe that resulted in some hesitation. And perhaps with the storm passing, the environment got a little bit better in May, June. I don't want to put words in your mouth, but I'd love to hear you describe how that demand environment changed, if at all?
Thank you very much, Karl. I don't think the demand environment changed dramatically. I think the demand environment is wide open for AI innovation. Obviously, the workflow data fabric and a change in CRM. Those are transformative things that have remained very consistent here and the customer's wallet is wide open for that level of innovation. I don't think it's as much the demand environment changing as it is the same. In the sense that change geopolitical scenarios, economic tariff scenarios, all these things have become the new norm. And so companies in preparation for that need an agentic AI layer of technology to operate their companies. I mean just think of an auto manufacturer, if they have to respond to a tariff scenario, they don't have time to change the rules in a very large system, they want to, in real time, change the pricing or the supply chain methodology or the partners that are going to sign up in different countries to advance the lower cost nature of what they have to give to the consumer to actually sell a car. But this is true in all industries. Everything is changing. And if the industry isn't changing or responding to a global scenario like that, they have to change to new skills for a new workforce and a new paradigm, new ways that customers will experience a relationship with their product. And if it's not seamless, if it's not gorgeous. And if you don't meet them with an agentic AI agent when everyone else is sleeping, they know you don't get it. So this is a once in a lifetime chance for a true native AI thinking, a company like us. We think AI. Everything is AI. And so every industry, every scenario, every relationship plan revolves around these proof of concepts where we can go into C-suite decision-makers and show them how they can go from this position to a new paradigm, and they all want it. And in some cases, you're right. budgets have been moved around to do different and exciting things and they should. But at the same time, when you can lay a business case on them for the enterprise that complements everything else beautifully, they're all in. So our biggest challenge is just making sure we stay in front of the C-suite. It's not just one suite member that's making these decisions, decisions are being made in teams. And that's why I say cross-functional work is AI work. And that's where we have thrived. And that's what we need to continue to win.
Your next question comes from the line of Matt Hedberg of RBC Capital Markets.
Congrats from me as well. The success with Pro Plus is certainly stunning and analysis ACV target is something that obviously we still all think about from Analyst Day. I'm curious, as you've started to see some early consumption adoption with analysis pack, can you talk about like how those are resonating with customers, how they're using them and how you might think that revenue source could grow?
Yes. So the process has been adopted very quickly by customers. I mean the way we allow customers to do is they have a bunch of us available as part of the Pro Plus subscription. And our usage has gone up? Or is it 9x over the last 3 months. So it has been -- customers are using different different use cases. As soon as they start getting a genetic use cases deployed, they start consuming this assists and they keep on adding more and more Pro Plus capabilities in the deployments as well. So it is starting to grow, and our revenue associated with Pro Plus is for the numbers, that continues to grow because of the way we have delivered this.
And I would just add, Matt, continues to grow above expectations, and we feel really good about the guide that we put out there for $1 billion in ACV by 2026.
Your next question comes from the line of Keith Weiss of Morgan Stanley.
Congratulations on another really solid quarter from ServiceNow overall. First question for Gina more on the margin side of the equation, outperformed really nicely in Q2 on overall operating margins. both you and Bill are talking about some would seem like pretty significant productivity enhancements and productivity gains in engineering and sales productivity, yet the full year operating margin guide remains stable at 32% -- 30.5%, sorry. Is there incremental investments that you guys are making perhaps in the like sales engineers to get people up and running analysis? Or are there timing differences that we should be aware of? Or is it just conservatism in the guidance that more of that productivity gain doesn't flow through into the full year operating marketing?
Yes. Great question, Keith. Not surprised by it. So really thrilled with the productivity efficiency gains that we're seeing from AI. We talked about at knowledge $100 million in savings in headcount alone in 2025, and we're seeing that come to fruition as planned. Part of the Q2 upside, as I noted in my prepared remarks, was driven by the timing of marketing spend, some of which has shifted into Q3 and Q4. So that doesn't impact the full year outlook. In addition, we're maintaining some prudent expense management to ensure we can absorb any potential margin headwinds from Moveworks if it closes in the back half of the year. And lastly, I would say we're definitely still investing for growth to meet demand for AI transformation. So think about hiring quota-bearing sales and engineers while leaning in very heavily from an R&D and technical selling perspective, specifically on AI talent. And so we're 100% seeing the efficiencies. I'm not being prudent because I don't think the efficiencies are coming through. I just reserving the opportunity to lean into investments because the opportunity we're seeing with AI is so massive.
Got it. And those technical engineers that you're talking about, we sort from other vendors like SAP last night I was talking about a higher level of like engineering in the customer necessary to get people up on AI. Salesforce talking about similar dynamics. Is the cost of sale for AI just hires? Does it require you guys to be -- have more engineers like on site to help people understand agenetic, understand how to get their data together, understand all the steps necessary to actually make this work?
Yes, Keith, I think on the engineering side, custom one, I think AI is top of mind for every customer we speak to. Second, they want help understanding how to use this technology and the best people who can help them are people who have build some of these things. So we are really working and innovating in most of the cases with the customer. It's not like going and just going and working with customers, but we're bringing a lot of that capabilities back into our products is building out more and more IP. So that would be traditional engineering work. Now we're doing it with customers. So the cost doesn't go up from a sales perspective. We are just to be able to now create new use cases, which we get deployed to many more customers going forward, which we would have done over time anyway. So it's really not a cost equation here. It's more to do with what kind of learnings we can provide to a customer to make them successful and how we can deploy better and bigger use cases so we can grow our business as well.
Right. And remember, we continue to accrete our operating margins each and every year. And so we feel really strongly that it makes sense to deploy some of these efficiencies, especially early on in this transition to really help our customers get to value fast because as you know, as we talked about at knowledge, once those assist start ramping up, that ramp for revenue is going to be large. And so the quicker we can get our customers to value, the better off they are, the better off we are. And so it's a great place for us to be investing some of these productivity gains.
Your next question comes from the line of Derrick Wood of Cowen.
Gina, I had 2% upside to your revenue guide is pretty high relative to historic trends. Anything to call out on what drove such robust upside? Did you have a higher self-hosted mix? Was there better linearity that some part of the business come in much better than expected. And then the jump up in mix from technology workflows was pretty notable. Can you unpack what drove that? And if you think that was more onetime or a start to a new trend?
Yes. So on your first question, with the 2% upside of revenue, so number one, net new ACV outperformance with the strong execution from the ServiceNow team was just fantastic. So that's a big part of it. But yes, we did also see stronger-than-expected on-prem performance. which is largely driven by some early on-prem renewals from the second half of '25. And so I would say about half and half, right? So I feel really good about that upside. And then on the jump in net new ACV mix and technology workflows, we talk about not looking at it from a quarter-over-quarter because some big deals can shift that mix pretty dramatically. And so I wouldn't read too much into the quarterly mix shift. That being said, and because as Bill alluded to in his prepared remarks, all of our workflows continue to perform extremely well. Tech workflows in particular, this quarter saw some notable strength led by ITAM with over 70% growth year-over-year in net new ACV followed by security and risk that grew both over 60%. And so ITAM marks its largest deal to date. So continued traction in our core -- of our core as well as great performance across the board, CRM core business solutions as well as creators. So I wouldn't look at the mix in one quarter in particular. But yes, we had a phenomenal quarter with our core business. .
Your next question comes from the line of Mike Cikos of Needham.
I just -- it's impressive to see the results here, and I know we're talking about a massive amount of innovation for the platform. We're talking about RaptorDB, what's happening with Now Assist. I'd just be curious to get a sense. Can you help unpack, I guess, new logos coming to the ServiceNow platform? Are you in any way seeing an increased volume of enterprises voting your way, just given this innovation and what you guys are tackling on the AI front?
So I'll start there. So new logos coming to the Now Platform are going extremely well. We've been very focused over the last several years on the right new logos, the logos who can expand with us and grow with us over time. And so not only are we really happy with our new logo growth. But the ACV of the new logo lands continues to get larger and larger each quarter. And so really feel good because these new logos are going to be the growth vectors of the future. And so while certainly a good percent of our business comes from existing customers growing that those new lands remain important and making sure that they have the ability to grow and expand with us is a big piece of that value prop, and we've been very happy with our new logo growth as well as, again, the size of those lands getting bigger and bigger.
If I can add as Gina is mentioning the new logos we've seen also in the commercial space. because AI is starting to give us an opportunity to have conversations with many customers who probably were not initially thinking about deploying AI across the -- across the whole environment. So we started to have those conversations where we're unlocking a lot of new opportunities with commercial customers who are now starting to deploy simple, easy-to-use products in their environment and get advantage of AI to run efficiently.
And Mike, just to reiterate what I said in my prepared remarks, we landed 11 deals with new logos, over 1 million in net new ACV, [ 2 ] over [ 5 ], an average new logo ACV grew over 100% year-over-year. So I really feel good about our new logos.
That's great to hear. And maybe just for a quick follow-up. I know in the prepared remarks, Bill had also cited this this now next AI program. Can you just elaborate on that? Is there any additional hiring for that engineering team that we should anticipate? I'm assuming if there is, it's in the guide, but does that touch on enterprises versus commercial versus what we were just talking about. Any color on that program would be helpful.
Mike, This is for Now Next AR program, it is really a very senior level, very strategic customer-related program, which we started a C-suite and start working with the leaders over there in the customer site to figure out what are the use cases, how we can help them really accelerate their ability to adopt AI. So from that perspective, we have a lot of people already inside ServiceNow, who have a lot of expertise in AI. We're bringing our [ engineering and IT ] talent, our sales consulting channel, solution consultant talent into those conversations is a much more deliberate clear fashion versus starting at the bottom and then taking our time to really grow that conversation. So that's really what's happening now. And a lot of the strategic discussions are leading into a much broader use cases and opportunities for us, which we can go and get that delivered because the product does work today instantly as soon as we start talking to our customers about those use cases. So there's really not much additional hiring. It's really kind of taking the right kind of expertise to the right use cases and deploying it with customers. And that's working with all the large enterprises we have had discussions with.
And I would just add, Mike, that any investment in hiring is 100% already in that guide.
Your next question comes from the line Gregg Moskowitz of Mizuho.
Truly remarkable now with this momentum that you guys are exhibiting. Maybe switching gears a bit. There have been several sales leadership changes at ServiceNow for the past few months or so in the U.S. Europe and APJ. Bill, how are you feeling about the go-to-market today across each of your 3 theaters?
Greg, thank you very much. I feel fantastic about the go-to-market. These are really proven executives, Adrian in APJ is one of the premier athletes in the enterprise software industry and had a stellar career at Oracle. So he understands the enterprise extremely well, and he understand scale. So we're at that scale stage now. So when you see us make a move, it's generally because sometimes the insiders could be looking at the biggest job of their life, and it's helpful to give them a little hand with someone who's seen the movie before, but also has appreciation for our unique culture. In America, we have Tom Hannigan, who has now got a global job because he did such a good job. And we have Steve Walters, who ran our public sector business like a finely tuned Swiss watch, so he deserved a promotion too. And these are 2 great guys. And we have a really deep bench. We've been working on talent here for many years now. And with 1.5 million people that applied, I think there's plenty of people that are ready to keep us all on our toes. And then in Europe, we have a fantastic, steady leadership at the top, and we have built out country management with the best talent in the industry, also in South America. So actually, I've never felt better and Paul Fipps who is now running all global customer operations is somebody that I've known many years. He's been a superstar outside of the company. When we brought them in the company, every big challenge he's taken on, he's knocked it out of the park, and he is absolutely the right guy to run the corporation at the field general and teaming up with Amit and obviously, the rest of our colleagues, I just think he is just the best of the best. So I couldn't be happier with the field that we have at the top of the house. And I also know that they're keeping everybody else on their toes because we're a growth company, and we expect everybody to have an elite level of execution underneath them. So the movement continues.
Your next question comes from line of Brad Sills with Bank of America.
I wanted to ask a question about the business mix across the 3 major line items here. It's been pretty consistently in that low 50s for technology, call it, 30-ish for CRM and industry and core business workflows and in the mid-high teens for creator. I wonder if the analysis cycle with agents, could that shift the business materially in one direction or the other. In other words, could that bring you into workflows outside of IT in a more meaningful way? Or do you see that balance as kind of consistent with where it is today over time as the agent cycle unfolds?
Brad. So I think definitely, you saw the mix today. But with AI, we're also starting to provide ability to customers to use a lot of our workflows together. So you start seeing AI kind of drive a lot of Pro Plus and the ability to use multiple different functional areas, different workflows at different functional area requirements.
In terms of new areas, no doubt, it is for the CRM emerge. We're seeing the similar kind of things happening with a lot of new workflows and build on top of creator emerging in many different industries. You will start seeing industry use cases emerge, which will be provided a package workflows for us. We're doing a lot of work in security and risk, which is a completely new area. We had this incident management today for security and integrated risk management, but a lot of new areas around governance and how do you manage identity of agents and things like that across the enterprise as well. So that will create new opportunities for different workflows as part of our product portfolio.
And we have one more question from Peter Weed.
Obviously, a fantastic performance. And that, I guess, leads to kind of one of my top of mind topics Gina, you talked about remaining judicious on budget and having capacity to invest where needed. I think over the last few quarters, the one area of head count that has been more modestly invested in sales and marketing. And I believe some of that was leading capacity to bring in the sales and Moveworks when that closes. Is there a point at which you would trigger bringing in and hiring more aggressively if you were worried about Moveworks not closing or that deal getting pushed out further and further? Because there seems like there's so much opportunity ahead that you want to make sure you've got ramped reps in the field. Like how are you thinking about that operational decision and when you might need to be bringing in more head count there?
Yes. So what I'd say is that, first and foremost, we're not worried about Moveworks closing. It is, from our perspective, a timing issue, number one. Number two, there's lots of head count in the sales and marketing head count that you see. We 100% continue to invest in quota-bearing reps who are on the street -- feet on the street, meeting with customers every single day. There's lots of sales operations, marketing, marketing operations in those numbers. And when I talk about AI efficiencies, you would imagine that we are seeing them across the board in the go-to-market operations as well. And so we remain very tight with Paul Fitz and his needs on a go-to-market perspective, and we will not be slowing down hiring, especially in those critical areas, especially on technical sellers as well. as we move into this AI-agentic world that we're living in. So we're not slowing down there. We continue to hire and what you're seeing is a lot of the efficiencies in the operations side of both the selling and marketing teams.
And if I may just, Peter, just give a call out to our great marketing and communications department. Our brand is now the 42nd most valuable brand in the world. And our campaign and our brand ambassador led by Colin Fleming and our great brand embassador and friend, Andres Elba is really resonating as we put AI to work for people and our communications team working with Colin has truly been outstanding, and the relationship with the analyst community, the media community, the investor relations community led by Darren, we're just very proud of the infrastructure and the support that every department gives to one another to create this masterpiece called ServiceNow. So I just really wanted to register that. I'm so proud of the brand and how it's resonating in the global economy. And we're just getting started. I mean we made like one of the biggest jumps and brand equity in the history of technology, and we're not going to stop there. We're going to keep going.
Fantastic momentum and thank you for the clarification and it's exciting the investment going on.
And that concludes our Q&A session and today's call. Thank you, everyone, for joining. You may now disconnect.
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ServiceNow, Inc. — Q2 2025 Earnings Call
ServiceNow, Inc. — Q2 2025 Earnings Call
📊 Quartal auf einen Blick
- Umsatz: Subscription-Revenue $3,13 Mrd. (+21,5% YoY, konstant Währung; 200 bps über Guidance)
- CRPO/RPO: Current RPO $10,92 Mrd. (+21,5% YoY); RPO gesamt ≈ $23,9 Mrd. (+25,5% YoY)
- Profitabilität: Non‑GAAP Operating Margin 29,5% (≈250 bps über Guidance)
- Free Cash Flow: FCF-Marge 16,5% (+300 bps YoY)
- Deals: 89 Neue >$1M ACV (11 >$5M); 528 Kunden >$5M ACV; Now Assist/AI stark in Top‑Deals
🎯 Was das Management sagt
- AI‑Plattform: Kernerzählung: Agentic AI + Workflow Data Fabric als Differenzierer; Now Assist, Control Tower und RaptorDB Pro treiben Deal‑Größen.
- Go‑to‑Market: CRM‑Vorstoß (Logik.ai, CPQ, Order Management) und Branchenfokus (Versicherung, Energie, öffentlicher Sektor) als Wachstumspfade.
- Investitionen: Now Next AI‑Programm, Data.world‑Akquisition für Daten‑Governance; Management betont Produkt‑ und Partner‑Ökosystem (NVIDIA u.a.).
🔭 Ausblick & Guidance
- Jahresziel 2025: Subscription‑Revenues um $125 Mio. am Midpoint angehoben auf ~$12,775–12,795 Mrd. (≈20% YoY); Subscription-Gross‑Margin ~83,5%.
- Profitziele: Operative Marge 30,5%; FCF‑Marge Ziel 32% (Full‑Year Annahme inkl. Produktivitätsgewinnen).
- Q3: Umsatz $3,26–3,265 Mrd. (≈20–20,5% YoY); CRPO‑Wachstum ~18,5% (inkl. 200 bps Headwind durch große Cohort‑Erneuerungen).
- Hinweis: Guidance schließt erwartete Beiträge von "Wood works" (Closing H2/2025–früh 2026) nicht ein.
❓ Fragen der Analysten
- AI‑Differenzierung: Analysten fragten nach Control Tower vs. Dritt‑LLMs; Management betont Multi‑LLM‑Kooperation, Nemotron (NVIDIA) als Option und zentrale Steuerung aller Agenten.
- CRM & Logik.ai: Nachfrage nach konkreten kurzfristigen Umsatzhebeln; Management nennt CPQ‑Wins und Order‑Management als "niedrig hängende Früchte".
- Risiken & Kosten: Fragen zu Fed/Public‑Budget‑Unsicherheit, Grenzfälle bei Moveworks/“Wood works”‑Timing und Margen‑Reinvestitionen; CFO bleibt vorsichtig, betont Timing‑Effekte und dass Einstellungspläne in Guidance enthalten sind.
⚡ Bottom Line
- Bewertung: Starkes Beat‑&‑Raise: AI‑getriebene Umsatz‑ und Deal‑dynamik bestätigt die Plattformstory; Guidance wurde moderat angehoben und Margen bleiben robust. Kurzfristige Beobachtungspunkte: Abschluss der angekündigten Übernahme (Timing) und die konkrete Skalierung großer AI‑Projekte im Kundenbestand.
ServiceNow, Inc. — Mizuho Technology Conference 2025
1. Management Discussion
All right. We're going to go ahead and get started with our next session. Thank you, everybody, for joining us. Before we begin, given that it is the Excel voting season, if you value the work that we do, we very much would appreciate your support.
With that, we're very excited to have Josh Kahn from ServiceNow with us today. Josh is SVP and General Manager of Core Business Workflows at ServiceNow. Also happy to have Alex Yuan from the Investor Relations team here as well. Josh has been with ServiceNow since 2016. In fact, he previously led the development and growth of Creator Workflows, which became the company's second workflow to eclipse $1 billion in ACV. Prior to ServiceNow, he also held leadership roles at tech companies that include EMC and Veritas Symantec. Josh, thanks so much for being here.
Yes, really excited to be here. Thank you.
Of course. So just to kick things off, maybe just tell us your primary responsibilities at ServiceNow, what functional areas fall under the core business workflows category that you run? And also why it's important that enterprises have a unified portal across these areas.
Yes. So I run what we call core business workflows. And that is really, if you think about it, kind of the back-office functions that an enterprise has. So you'll find in there HR, procurement, finance, legal, supply chain, facilities. And these functions do a number of different things, but very common types of work across them. One big thing they do is service employee requests. So all employees need something from every one of those departments at some point in their day or week or year. And so making it easy for employees to go and get that, whatever it is, whether it's help with their paycheck or help with getting a seat in a new hybrid work environment, it's really important to make it easy for those employees to do that.
It's also important to make it really productive for the teams that are providing those services to do it. This can often be a really big expense. A lot of companies are starting to do things where they're -- one, with ServiceNow, they're able to automate a lot of that work, but they're also looking at how they can staff it in lower-cost geographies and do other things to really take that cost out. So that's kind of where that employee -- that single unified experience comes in and why that's important both for employees and for the departments.
But there's another reason all these functions are together at ServiceNow. And that's because a lot of these departments spend way too much time on manual work. And that manual work is a result of a common technology landscape. They each have their own systems, and they've built it for their particular function. HRL have 33 different systems in addition to an HCM. And so their people end up having to do a lot of work, swivel chair, going back and forth, pulling data together to analyze it and not enough time really doing the high-impact work that they need to do in that department. And so in core business workflows, we're building agentic AI capabilities and workflow to help those people in the departments do their work more effectively as well.
Okay. Very interesting. Now last year, just thinking back to the 2024 Investor Day. So ServiceNow identified a TAM of $275 billion by 2026. The creator and finance and supply chain workflows piece of that was $84 billion. Last month, the company's TAM was raised to $350 billion. We didn't get an updated breakdown by market, but just high level, Josh, what are the largest components of the $85 billion or so TAM that, again, falls within your group?
Yes. So if you look at the TAM that we're focused on, it's things like the HR space, which is a very big TAM. If you look at finance and supply chain, very large, procurement, very large. Each of these in its own right is a really meaningful TAM. And we're building software that will help us capture more and more of that TAM. But I think it's also important to realize the category of software that we play in very often doesn't exist in these departments today. This layer of engagement where you can automate functions across multiple underlying systems where you can provide one engagement layer.
And so yes, we're going to be able to grow our share in that TAM, but we're also expanding that TAM by providing a new layer. And so what we have to do to be able to continue to win that footprint and expand that TAM is create value for the users in these departments. And so that's one thing that we make sure we're doing, whether it's by shrinking the service desk and letting them save money on that while they serve employees better, or helping a procurement user and a sourcing manager identify savings faster and execute on those sourcing events and across the board, those kinds of activities.
Okay. Great. And then since your group does, again, span many important departments, who are you typically selling to within the organization?
Yes. I mean -- and in every case, the CIO is always an advocate for us, often not the decision-maker for a lot of the products that I'm selling, but an important influencer. And sometimes actually, they will have decision rights. But we're typically selling to the CFO in terms of savings across the entire back office. We're often selling to a Head of Global Business Services.
And so for folks who haven't heard that term before, a lot of companies are really starting to organize around these functions and say, "Hey, we might have 10 divisions in our company that are all doing procurement differently. One is doing it great, some are doing it okay, one is doing it terribly. If we bring all those together into a shared service, we can really save a lot of money, have greater business impact. And so they'll often call that global business services and organize around it and put a leader -- senior leaders in charge of that.
So the CFO cares a lot about the impact of these departments, the spend that goes into these departments, but there's also a global business services lead in many organizations who's a great candidate for us to sell to because when they hear what our platform does, they're pretty convinced it's exactly the technology they've been looking for.
And -- this is not part of the scheduled program, by the way.
When they hear what our platform does, the sounds go off and they realize [indiscernible]
Right. Well, hopefully, that will subside as we continue to talk. But the Head of Global Services, that's an interesting comment, Josh. Is this something that's becoming more pervasive amongst Global 2000 companies?
Yes, it is definitely. We're seeing it more and more. I'll say, interestingly, I see a lot of it in EMEA. Americas, we see it a lot. And vertically, I see it often in industries that are constrained in terms of margins. So consumer CPG, manufacturing, seeing a little bit of heat in oil and gas. So companies where they're really looking at how do I save money in places where it's not going to impact our continued growth. And so they want to save money there to invest in more growth, and those are the kinds of places that we're seeing it.
Okay. Awesome. And then are you seeing greater success in selling multiple workflows to enterprises? Or are these predominantly bought and implemented kind of one at a time.
Yes. So we do see incredible growth, as you've heard on the earnings call, incredible growth in multiproduct deals and even customers expanding to more products after they've deployed a first one. What I typically see is there's usually a burning platform. And so when we -- one of the great things about putting core business workflows together is it elevates this conversation into the C-suite.
So if we're selling HRSD or HR service delivery, we're often selling to the head of HR. If we're selling procurement, we're selling to the head of procurement. But when you put all of this together and you talk about an agentic platform for back-office transformation and you talk about the ability to get better outcomes from every one of these departments, it pops you up to the C-suite because right now, they're worried about tariff uncertainty. They're worried about macroeconomic erosion. They're trying to figure out how does agentic AI play into their strategy. And so that is the conversation of core business workflows. And so we get into the C-suite and then the question becomes, where do you want to start?
And so we have a lot of customers that will buy multiple products. And then it's up to them in terms of priorities on what's the first thing, how fast can we go in parallel. And we have a lot of great resources for our customers to advise them on that. We have a lot of -- we have a fantastic partner base that really helps with that. And a lot of what I'm -- what we're doing in core business workflows, they have a big SI that's guiding a transformation. And so we can plug into that SI's transformation plan and be the technology enablement for what that SI is advising them on strategically.
Okay. And actually, it's interesting because we very recently spoke with one of your GSI partners, and they called out finance and supply chain workflows, FSC as a particular area of strength just because it was eliminating so much inefficiency, so much redundancy at that -- at their customers.
100%. I'll give you an example of a really compelling business case you can find in there. We had one customer who -- when their employees created purchase requests, that's like, hey, I need something. It has to go through some approvals and then it becomes a purchase order, which is actually where the stuff gets ordered from the supplier. They were having a bunch of failures in that process for various reasons, bad address, bad cost center, all kinds of very tactical things.
But the impact of that was that the goods didn't get ordered and they had workers in the field standing around with their hands in their pockets because they didn't have the parts they needed. And so they ended up paying over $20 million a year in expedited shipping fees because this process would get delayed, then they would have to expedite so that they didn't have a business impact. And so by streamlining that process, they're able to take that $20 million in spend out and invest it in something far more productive.
So I give that to you as just one kind of business case that we see when we look into these departments and we say, seems like a kind of a simple process issue, but it actually has massive impacts on the business.
All right. Yes. Fantastic. And then just last month, you introduced your core business suite. So how will this improve the value prop going forward?
Yes. So what I've noticed with a lot of our customers is one of the first things they do in each department because every department has to do this, is they build that service desk case management layer. Our platform itself, we have one platform across all of our products, one platform, one architecture, one data model.
But the reality is we've kind of done case management slightly differently for each of the departments. And so by bringing the core business suite together, we're making that easier to deploy across all of these departments. We're making it easier to manage. And we're helping those customers go quickly to expand from -- often they start in IT or HR. We're helping them expand very rapidly across finance and legal and other departments with that service desk experience.
And so that's really important because being the employee engagement layer, as we talked about in your first question, is really, really an important service we can provide. So Core Business Suite gives them that engagement layer and then it makes it really easy to deploy this case management in a consistent way across the enterprise. That allows us to then go in and help the knowledge workers in each of those departments effectively do their jobs.
Okay. And is the suite mainly targeting midsized enterprises? Or is it large enterprise as well?
Yes. So right now, we're focused primarily on sort of the lower end of the enterprise customers with this. We have very, very good penetration in large enterprise customers, and we're continuing to focus on how do we speed the deployment for smaller customers so that it's easy for them to start using ServiceNow and to get going quickly. And this is an important piece of that effort.
Yes. Makes sense. And then, Josh, what does the pricing look like for this? Is it quite a bit more attractive to incentivize broader business function deployments across this customer segment?
Yes. So we really are very fortunate in our portfolio because we can continue to add more and more value to customers. No matter where we start, we have a lot that we can offer them to go from there. So this -- the core business suite is really intended to be something that is easy for them to decide to buy and easy for them to deploy. And so once they've done that and they're creating value, the only question is where do you want to go next? And so it really is intended to be that offering that is kind of fast, frictionless and creates value.
Okay. Great. And then -- so with that, let's actually dive in a little deeper into AI, which is core, not just to ServiceNow's overall strategy, of course, but very much to your group as well. So maybe just kind of walk us through, Josh, the evolution of Gen AI at ServiceNow over the past couple of years. So starting with Pro Plus or Now Assist, of course, also now encompassing agentx. And last but not least, the recent announcement to acquire Moveworks.
Yes. So I'll rewind even a little further back on AI as a whole and say, we started in sort of 2018, buying small companies that were doing different kinds of AI.
Like Element AI.
Absolutely. We got a lot of incredibly talented people, a great research arm, some good technology. But even before that, we bought companies to do things like natural language understanding, machine learning. And so there's a lot of AI that has been in the product already, and it is in our Pro SKUs where believe it or not, when you file a ticket that says, "Hey, my laptop is not working and my phone is not working," something like that at a department, there's often a whole layer in there whose job is just directing that to the right team. And so with machine learning, you can study past tickets, past priorities, past categorization and automate that and remove that layer.
So we've been using that for years for our conversational capabilities with natural language understanding, for our machine learning, and we had a really talented group of people doing a lot of research, doing a lot of product delivery. So generative AI came along, and we started with generative AI, doing the things with generative AI that it's great at. intent understanding, what does that person mean by what they're typing or what they're saying and language generation. So we used it to help our agents get up to speed on a case more quickly, summarization. Hey, what's been going on in this case? What have they tried so far? Where are we now? So really saving agents more time.
We also put it into our Now Assist products for IT and HR and customer service management to help understand when someone came and said, I need something in that service desk, what do they mean? When they use regular words, sometimes they can be hard to understand and it can be complicated to create the right topics, but can we just automate that with Gen AI? And that's what we did with Now Assist.
But agentic AI is a whole extension of that to where there's incredible reasoning capabilities now. And so we realized the power of AI agents and said, okay, we really fundamentally need to build an entire agentic platform. And so what does that mean to build an agentic platform? Well, first, you need a way to have -- to orchestrate across a number of different agents. So when someone comes in and says, I want to take some time off in July, am I going to have enough time to take 3 days off? You need to understand what they mean. You need to understand how many days they have. You need to understand where to go get that information.
And so the orchestration layer understands what they're doing, but then it also understands the army of agents that are available to it and then can say, "Oh, you're asking about time off. I'm going to go call the time-off agent and ask the time-off agent to solve this for you." So you've got to have that orchestration engine. You've got to have the ability to build agents and for agents to kind of work together with that orchestration engine. And then you have to have those agents a way to get things done. And those get things done is like call SuccessFactors or Workday and ask about PTO. You need that integration out of the box and available to it.
So we built that architecture and that platform. Then we realized, hey, we're going to build a bunch of agents ourselves because we can just use all of the things that are in our products today and package them into agents and really accelerate the amount of agents that we can deliver. But our customers are going to want build their own. They're going to have their own ideas, their own use cases. They're going to want to change our prompts. And so we needed a studio. So we built the studio. Then you say, okay, now you've got all these things out there running, somebody is going to have to monitor these things.
So that agentic platform is really about the orchestration and the framework there. It's about a studio to create and modify. It's about a control tower to monitor, and it's about the AI agents that business owners like me in the company or product owners like me in the company go and build for our specific personas. Does that make sense?
Makes a lot of sense. And then Moveworks?
Yes, sorry. So we announced our intent to acquire Moveworks earlier this year. We're still working through all of the sort of regulatory hurdles and working through that process. Moveworks is a natural complement to the capabilities we already provide today. So if you look at the importance of that employee engagement layer and you think about, all right, we're delivering a service desk. We need the ability to understand what employees are doing. We need the ability to simply automate those capabilities, summarize information, but you can't always resolve it. So you need a case management framework. And sometimes you actually need classic workflow. It's -- everything isn't going to be agentic. There's reasons to do a classic workflow.
So when you look at what Moveworks brings and what ServiceNow brings, the combination of the 2 is going to be an incredibly powerful layer for that employee engagement and that sort of top of the pyramid in terms of employee engagement and departmental productivity.
Okay. And then, Josh, just to ask a question because some investors have wondered why it was necessary to buy Moveworks. I think you just articulated pretty clearly why. But I think what's underlying that is just there's this kind of thought and in some cases, a bit of a concern that like whether this signals a significant shift in ServiceNow's M&A strategy. So it would just be helpful to sort of hear your perspective on that.
Yes. I mean, look, our M&A strategy has always been something we internally call [indiscernible]. I don't know how broadly that's gotten out into the market. But look, when we buy companies, in every case, we're excited about the talent and what they've built. And in every case so far, we've had them replatform onto the ServiceNow platform. That's why we still can offer one platform, one data model, one architecture.
Moveworks has an incredibly talented team. There's a lot of really, really good people across every function in that company. And they have complementary technology to ServiceNow in a lot of cases. And so we're going to be able to take those 2 things and put them together, those people with our people, that technology with our technology, and we're going to be able to go faster than anyone in the market at building into this really important space.
Okay. Terrific. And then just as it relates to agentic, again, we're obviously very early days, but what do you think will be sort of the primary core business workflow use cases that either customers are talking to you now about or that you sort of expect is kind of on the horizon?
Yes. So when you look at -- everybody is doing agentic right now. And even if they're not, they're talking about whatever they're doing as agentic. So when you look at the role we play, we have the workflow data fabric and we have integrations that can connect to any underlying system of record. I've talked to customers who actually will have over -- I mean, I've talked to customers that have over 100 instances of ERP from the same vendor, but it's often -- they've got a few things from SAP. They acquired a company that had JD Edwards. They've got a little Oracle over here.
So this underlying technology landscape is very, very heterogeneous. And even if they only have one core system in a department, like they're just on SuccessFactors or they're just on Workday, there's typically 30 or 40 other systems that they use for powering HR, comp and benefits, something specific for talent, talent acquisition, talent development, learning. So you look at these environments and what ServiceNow is able to do historically is drive workflow across all these underlying systems.
Employee onboarding is the classic example. If an employee is going to show up to work, they need a place to sit or at least a place to be able to reserve when they come to the office. They need IT equipment. They need access to all the systems. They need active directory accounts, payroll, they need to get paid. You need a document to the government that they're eligible to work. All of these things sit across not only different systems, but different departments.
So ServiceNow has played there historically. agentic AI is going to be, in a lot of cases, very, very similar. These employees in these departments, take an HR business partner. They are today doing talent planning. To do talent planning, you have to look at what talent you have in place and how they're doing in their roles. That's in one place. You have to look at what skills you need in the enterprise for the enterprise growth plan that kind of comes from another place. It's often unstructured. You need to look out at LinkedIn and what people are outside that might fill this role.
So we can help them do all that with AI agents, pull in all that information from AI agents and present it to them so then they can actually start acting on the plan. And so that's where we're looking for example, in HR, in sourcing and procurement, sourcing managers have to look at how their suppliers are doing, how they're doing in -- how much spend in a category, how many people they're buying from in that category? Can they consolidate spend? Are their suppliers performing well? All of that analytics to be able to go and do a sourcing event that says, "Hey, in this category, we really need to rethink our strategy."
So what's different about ServiceNow, one is we can combine workflow and agentic. But more importantly, a lot of the underlying systems are saying, "Hey, we're doing agentic AI now. We're an HCM and we're going to do AI agents." But they -- and they say, we've got all the data, but they don't. They're missing the other 33 or 50 systems. They're building AI agents often because their user interface is so bad that nobody can figure it out. So now they can just conversationally say, give me my team's comp instead of figuring out how to get there.
But they aren't building these same agents that orchestrate these real business outcomes. And I think that's where we're focused today is where can we create concrete business value in a place that is differentiated from a lot of that underlying legacy technology.
Okay. That's great. And then I guess just maybe switching gears for a bit and taking a step back since, again, it is topical. But any update, Josh, that you can provide just current business environment or just kind of in general, what you're seeing and hearing from customers?
Yes. What I see is a real desire to find cost savings proactively. I think there's -- I mean there's tariff uncertainty overall, but there's certainty that tariffs will evolve and it will increase costs for a lot of organizations. And so those organizations have a choice between creating -- reducing their margins that they're able to offer, raising their prices or reducing costs in another part of the business so that they can continue to operate on the financial plans and models that they communicated to shareholders and that they have.
And so I hear a lot of discussion about that, which is where can we find cost savings. I hear a tremendous amount of discussions around we think AI agents are really powerful. We think they can save us money, but we're not sure yet exactly where that is. Can you ServiceNow work with us to co-innovate and find spaces where our engineers who are doing this will work with ServiceNow engineers, and that's something that we're actively engaged in a lot of customers with. We call it now Next AI.
So I think those are really the 2 biggest themes I hear is not certainty that the macro is going to erode, but certainty that tariffs are going to change things. The macro could erode and agentic AI is something no one can walk past right now.
Okay. Very interesting. Why don't I pause there? If you have any questions, please do raise your hand. We have mic runners in the room as well. Yes. Just wait for the mic runner and then -- thank you.
A question we often get from our investors is if AI is going to accelerate, is there a risk to the software companies that price on a seat-based basis? So on a relative basis, obviously, you should outperform a lot of software peers for a lot of the reasons that you had mentioned in terms of automating a lot of these tasks, et cetera. But how do you think about the trade-off between consumption-based pricing and seat-based pricing as you continue to accelerate some of these AI offerings?
Yes. So we're fortunate that we built a pricing model that balances the 2. So we have seat-based pricing with a consumption limit built in. So when the consumption goes to a certain point, the customer will start paying more for that. The customer will be getting more value as a result of that. And so as you look over time, we're in a really good position to evolve with customer expectations and the market in that dimension.
And so if you look at our balance of kind of seat-based revenue and consumption revenue today, it could look very different in the future in a very seamless glide path for ServiceNow. And so that was a very intentional design because when we were building this I guess now it's a couple of years ago, there was a lot of uncertainty about what usage would look like, what cost profiles would look like per sort of AI use case. And so we built that flexibility in.
At the time, people really weren't ready to buy on strictly a consumption basis. They needed something a little more predictable. And I think we're starting to see as they're using it, they're understanding the usage patterns, they're understanding the value, and that's going to help them start to make different decisions about how they want to buy, and we'll be in a perfect position to be able to sell in that way.
And of course, so to your point, right, you've had hybrid and this consumption overlay for a while. But now that there's agentic workflows, that really moves the consumption meter in a much more pronounced way, right?
100%, 100% and the value. I mean this is really -- you have to create value with what they're spending. And I think this cost environment, that's going to become even more critical. And so the agentic use cases, yes, they drive that usage meter up, but they also do things that drive far more business value. And so the recognition of that business value is emerging as fast as the reality that it does cost more when you're doing those more powerful things.
Perfect. Any other questions? If so, please raise your hand. We've got about a minute left. So maybe I'll just ask one last one, Josh. So -- and sorry to do this. I know it's a bit like picking your favorite child. But within core business workflows, what are you personally most excited about? What is the greatest potential to become materially larger for ServiceNow when you and I are talking in 3 years or so?
Yes. Well, the HR business is sort of the biggest business, the oldest child. And I think there's still so much more to do there, and that is super exciting. So I'm going to -- I won't talk about all my kids, but it's hard to answer and just pick one. So I think in the HR space, I love serving employees with technology because it means we can impact everyone in this room. We can impact everyone who works in any environment from deskless workers to knowledge workers to executives. And so that's really fun to bring that -- bring delight to everyone in this room and bring delight to the people that serve the people in this room. I love that personally. I think it's really exciting, and it's fun.
But I think there's -- building some of these new businesses that are coming along is really exciting and rewarding because we're changing the way people think about those businesses across source procurement, across facilities and more. And I think when you can bring something new to people that they hadn't thought about before and then co-innovate with them on, oh, now that you have this, where can we take it? Those innovation opportunities are super exciting.
All right. That's fantastic. So with that, we need to wrap up, but please join me in thanking Josh for a terrific discussion.
Thank you. Thank you.
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ServiceNow, Inc. — Mizuho Technology Conference 2025
ServiceNow, Inc. — Mizuho Technology Conference 2025
📣 Kernbotschaft
- Kernbotschaft: ServiceNow positioniert Core Business Workflows als zentrale Employee‑Engagement‑Schicht für HR, Finance, Procurement, Legal etc. Fokus auf Back‑office‑Automatisierung mit agentic AI (orchestrierte KI‑Agenten) auf einer einheitlichen Plattform. Core Business Suite soll Rollout und Skalierung beschleunigen; TAM zuletzt auf $350 Mrd. erhöht (vorher $275 Mrd. beim 2024 Investor Day).
🎯 Strategische Highlights
- Highlights: 1) Einheitliche Plattform/Datenmodell ermöglicht Workflow über heterogene Systeme (Beispiel Employee Onboarding). 2) Agentic‑Plattform mit Orchestrierung, Studio und Control‑Tower plus vorgefertigten Integrationen für konkrete Prozess‑Automatisierung. 3) Go‑to‑Market: Fokus auf CFO/Head of Global Business Services; Suite adressiert schneller einsetzbare Enterprise‑Segmente; Pricing: Seat‑Modell mit Consumption‑Overlay.
🔭 Neue Informationen
- Neu: Offizielle Einführung der Core Business Suite zur Standardisierung von Case‑Management; angekündigte Übernahmeabsicht von Moveworks (ergänzende Agent‑Funktionen), derzeit noch unter regulatorischer Prüfung. Keine aktualisierte TAM‑Breakdown oder verbindliche Integrations‑Timelines geliefert.
❓ Fragen der Analysten
- Q&A‑Kerne: 1) M&A‑Strategie/Moveworks: Management spricht von Talent+Tech und Replatforming, aber vermeidet konkrete Zeitpläne. 2) Monetarisierung von AI: Risiko Seat‑ vs. Consumption‑Pricing; Antwort: hybrides Modell mit integriertem Usage‑Meter und möglichem schrittweisen Übergang. 3) Vertrieb/Adoption: Nachfrage nach Multiprodukt‑Deals, Käuferzentren verschieben sich ins C‑Suite‑Level; Interesse an Mittelstandsbeschleunigung.
⚡ Bottom Line
- Fazit: Positives langfristiges Setup: größerer adressierbarer Markt, stärkere Produktintegration und agentic AI können Upsell und nutzungsbasierten Umsatz befördern. Kurzfristig bleiben Risiken: regulatorische Genehmigung (Moveworks), Integration/Execution und der Nachweis echter, monetarisierbarer Kosteneinsparungen. Wichtige KPIs für Anleger: frühe ROI‑Use‑Cases, M&A‑Timelines und Verschiebung zu Consumption‑Umsatz.
Finanzdaten von ServiceNow, Inc.
Umsatz
Der Umsatz stellt die Summe aller Einnahmen eines Unternehmens z. B. für dessen Produkte oder Dienstleistungen dar.
Umsatz (TTM) einfach erklärtDirekte Kosten
Direkte Kosten sind die Kosten, die direkt im Zusammenhang mit der Herstellung des Produkts oder der Dienstleistung entstehen.
Bruttoertrag
Der Bruttoertrag gibt an, wie viel vom Umsatz nach Abzug der direkten Herstellkosten im Unternehmen verbleibt. Berechnet man den prozentualen Anteil vom Umsatz, spricht man von der Bruttomarge (engl. Gross Margin).
Brutto Marge einfach erklärtVertriebs- und Verwaltungskosten
Die Vertriebs- & Verwaltungskosten (engl. Selling, General & Administrative expenses, kurz SG&A) beinhalten alle Aufwände für Marketing und den Verkauf sowie die allgemeine Verwaltung des Unternehmens.
Forschungs- und Entwicklungskosten
Die Forschungs- und Entwicklungskosten (engl. research & development costs, kurz R&D) geben Auskunft darüber, wie viel das Unternehmen in die Forschung und die Entwicklung seiner Produkte investiert. Vor allem prozentual vom Umsatz und im Vergleich zu direkten Wettbewerbern sind die Kosten interessant.
EBITDA
Das EBITDA (Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation and Amortization) ist der Gewinn des Unternehmens vor Zinsen, Steuern und Abschreibungen. Berechnet man den prozentualen Anteil vom Umsatz, spricht man von der EBITDA-Marge.
Abschreibungen
Abschreibungen stellen Wertminderungen von Vermögensgegenständen des Unternehmens dar (z.B. durch Abnutzung von Maschinen).
EBIT (Operatives Ergebnis)
Das EBIT (engl. Earnings Before Interest and Taxes) ist der Gewinn des Unternehmens vor Zinsen und Steuern, das auch als operatives Ergebnis bezeichnet wird. Berechnet man den prozentualen Anteil vom Umsatz, spricht man von
der EBIT-Marge.
Nettogewinn
Der Nettogewinn stellt den Gewinn oder Verlust nach Abzug aller Kosten dar.
Nettogewinn einfach erklärtaktien.guide Premium
| Mär '26 |
+/-
%
|
||
| Umsatz | 13.960 13.960 |
22 %
22 %
100 %
|
|
| - Direkte Kosten | 3.271 3.271 |
35 %
35 %
23 %
|
|
| Bruttoertrag | 10.689 10.689 |
18 %
18 %
77 %
|
|
| - Vertriebs- und Verwaltungskosten | 5.732 5.732 |
16 %
16 %
41 %
|
|
| - Forschungs- und Entwicklungskosten | 3.080 3.080 |
17 %
17 %
22 %
|
|
| EBITDA | 2.713 2.713 |
31 %
31 %
19 %
|
|
| - Abschreibungen | 836 836 |
41 %
41 %
6 %
|
|
| EBIT (Operatives Ergebnis) EBIT | 1.877 1.877 |
27 %
27 %
13 %
|
|
| Nettogewinn | 1.757 1.757 |
14 %
14 %
13 %
|
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Angaben in Millionen USD.
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ServiceNow, Inc. beschäftigt sich mit der Bereitstellung von Cloud-Computing-Lösungen für Unternehmen. Das Unternehmen bietet Service-Management für Kunden und Einrichtungen, Orchestration Core, Service-Mapping, Cloud- und Portfolio-Management, Edge-Verschlüsselung, Leistungsanalyse, Service-Portal-Designer, Visual Task Boards und eine Datenbank für das Konfigurationsmanagement. Das Unternehmen bietet seine Lösungen für die Branchen in den Kategorien Gesundheitswesen, Bildung, Regierung und Finanzdienstleistungen an. Das Unternehmen wurde im Juni 2004 von Frederic B. Luddy gegründet und hat seinen Hauptsitz in Santa Clara, Kalifornien.
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| Hauptsitz | USA |
| CEO | Mr. Mcdermott |
| Mitarbeiter | 29.187 |
| Gegründet | 2004 |
| Webseite | www.servicenow.com |


