ServiceNow Inc

The Dow Jones Industrial Average on the New York Stock Exchange closed down more than 600 points on Tuesday (September 8), pressured by a surge in oil prices due to escalating tensions in the Middle East, while investors closely watch inflation data this week to assess the Federal Reserve's interest rate outlook. The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed at 52,786.07 points, down 628.18 points, or 1.18%. The S&P 500 closed at 7,673.52 points, down 45.08 points, or 0.58%, and the Nasdaq closed at 26,421.41 points, down 85.58 points, or 0.32%. WTI crude oil prices rose 1.7% after Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen attacked energy infrastructure in Saudi Arabia, a US ally, injuring more than 70 people and raising concerns that the Middle East conflict could drag on and impact global oil supplies. Meanwhile, the yield on the 10-year US Treasury note rose to 4.796%, and higher bond yields increase borrowing costs and reduce appetite for risk assets. Eight of the 11 S&P 500 sectors closed lower, led by healthcare, which fell 2.55%, followed by financials, down 1.43%. Energy stocks rose the most, gaining 1.01%, followed by utilities, up 0.85%. Software and software services stocks in the S&P 500 fell 1.4%, marking a second consecutive day of declines, with Intuit down 4.14%, Salesforce down 3.9%, and ServiceNow plunging 5% after OpenAI announced the launch of its latest AI model, "GPT-6 Astra," touting it as the most powerful and efficient flagship model ever created. Analysts at Argent Capital Management commented that OpenAI's release of GPT-6 Astra has sparked a new wave of concerns that AI technology could disrupt the software business, reviving an old trend: semiconductor stocks and those benefiting from data center investment perform well, while software stocks lag. Intel shares surged 9% and Qualcomm rose 3.2% after reaching agreements with Amazon to develop custom-designed AI chips. Apple shares fell 1.2% just one day before the company unveils its latest smartphone under new CEO John Ternus, with the product launch event scheduled for today (September 9) at Apple Park in Cupertino, California, under the theme "Surprise and Shine." Cryptocurrency-related stocks declined as Bitcoin fell below $80,000, with Coinbase down 3.1% and MicroStrategy plunging 4.4%. Investors are watching US inflation data this week for clues on the Fed's rate path. The US Labor Department is set to release the Producer Price Index (PPI) on Thursday, September 10, and the Consumer Price Index (CPI) on Friday, September 11. Analysts expect CPI to rise 3.4% year-over-year in August, matching July's increase, and core CPI, which excludes food and energy, to rise 2.4% year-over-year in August, down from 2.5% in July. The CME Group's FedWatch Tool indicates investors assign a 60% probability that the Fed will raise interest rates by 0.25% at its September 15-16 meeting.

Serval, a San Francisco-based startup, has launched Catalyst, an AI platform that automates the creation of IT workflows, moving beyond traditional ticket-based systems. Catalyst analyzes help desk history to draft workflows, skills, forms, and policies, and even creates background agents to proactively fix issues. CEO Jake Stauch says the goal is "automating automation itself," shifting IT admins from manual builders to architects. During beta, over 90% of customers used Catalyst as their starting point, with Ramp building workflows 50% faster and Mercor onboarding over 4,000 experts. This positions Serval against ServiceNow, which reported $3.88 billion in subscription revenue for Q2 2026 and closed its $2.85 billion acquisition of Moveworks in December 2025.

Intuit shares plunged 11% in premarket trading after the financial technology platform issued fiscal 2027 revenue guidance of $23.279 billion to $23.512 billion, below the $23.7 billion analysts expected, though its fiscal fourth-quarter earnings and revenue beat estimates. The disappointing outlook dragged other software stocks lower, with the iShares Expanded Tech-Software ETF down over 1%, ServiceNow off more than 2.5%, and Workday and Salesforce each down 2%. Zoom Communications fell 7% after its third-quarter earnings per share guidance of $1.46 to $1.48 came in short of the $1.50 FactSet consensus. Kohl's declined 5% after reporting a 0.9% drop in second-quarter comparable sales, worse than the 0.6% decline expected, but the retailer raised its full-year outlook, partly due to $150 million in tariff refunds, and restarted share buybacks of up to $100 million in 2026. On the upside, J.M. Smucker climbed 5.6% after fiscal first-quarter revenue of $2.22 billion topped the LSEG consensus of $2.13 billion, SolarEdge jumped nearly 7% following a UBS upgrade to buy on a new FCC policy, and Semtech rose more than 5% after beating earnings estimates with adjusted EPS of 71 cents versus 61 cents expected. Box gained over 2% on revenue beat, while Boston Scientific fell more than 3% after disclosing a cybersecurity incident causing product disruptions, and SAP dropped almost 4% after a UBS downgrade to neutral on slow agentic AI delivery.

Sustainable Growth Advisers, in its second-quarter 2026 investor letter, disclosed that it met with ServiceNow President and Chief Legal Officer Hossein Nowbar to discuss the company's recent acquisition activity and the need for clearer shareholder communication. SGA said management disagreed with its characterization that the acquisition strategy had become more aggressive, describing the transactions as an unusual convergence of several deals rather than a fundamental change in approach. The investment firm emphasized that the lack of timely communication surrounding these transactions contributed to investor uncertainty and undermined shareholder confidence, and it encouraged ServiceNow to provide more proactive disclosure around significant strategic decisions. ServiceNow shares closed at $128.48 on August 21, 2026, with a market capitalization of $132.85 billion.

Atlassian Corporation reported fourth-quarter fiscal 2026 revenues increased 28% year over year, with cloud revenues up 31% and RPO up 44%, as strong AI adoption helped drive customer expansion. More than 80% of Fortune 500 companies now use Rovo, and Rovo-assisted actions increased 50% sequentially, while customers using Rovo are growing ARR at more than twice the rate of non-adopters. The Teamwork Graph now spans more than 200 billion objects and connections, and management said AI and the Teamwork Graph are among the top two reasons customers upgrade to the cloud. Atlassian faces stiff competition from Salesforce, whose Agentforce ARR surpassed $1 billion in the first quarter of fiscal 2027, and ServiceNow, whose AI ACV crossed $1 billion during the second quarter of 2026 and is expected to exceed $1.5 billion by year-end. TEAM shares have returned 0.5% year to date, and the Zacks Consensus Estimate for fiscal 2027 earnings is $5.52 per share, revised down 7.9% over the past 30 days.

Parnassus Investments Chief Investment Officer Todd Ahlsten warned that Salesforce and ServiceNow could face growing pressure on their seat license business models as AI agents reduce the need for human software users. Ahlsten said on Bloomberg Tech that the seat license model is going to be under a lot of pressure, citing the rapid growth of Anthropic, OpenAI, and Google's Gemini. He argued that if AI allows companies to get more work done without adding employees, they may no longer need to keep adding Salesforce or ServiceNow licenses alongside headcount. Bain & Company found that about 65% of more than 30 SaaS vendors introducing generative AI had adopted hybrid pricing, layering AI usage or feature-based charges on top of traditional seat pricing. Salesforce said its Sales and Service products were still seeing year-over-year seat growth, and its 10 customers making the heaviest use of its AI agents increased their total Salesforce spending by 1.5 times over the previous year, while ServiceNow CEO Bill McDermott said roughly half of net new business revenue now comes from non-seat-based models.

Palantir's U.S. commercial revenue surged 149% year over year to $764 million in Q2, a growth rate that starkly separates it from ServiceNow's mid-20% subscription growth. ServiceNow reported total revenue of about $3.9 billion with subscription revenue up roughly 23% in constant currency, and its AI annual contract value crossed $1 billion, but growth remains tied to its large installed base. Palantir's total revenue rose 93% to about $1.94 billion, and it raised its full-year U.S. commercial forecast to more than $3.42 billion, implying at least 134% growth for 2026. ServiceNow's remaining performance obligations reached about $29 billion, with current RPO at about $13.2 billion growing just over 21%, underscoring its durability versus Palantir's hypergrowth.

CloudSEK has identified more than 2,500 organisations that may have been potentially affected by a major AI supply chain incident involving LiteLLM in March 2026, with approximately 434,000 automated software-development pipelines linked to the exposure. The potentially affected organisations span critical industries including technology, cybersecurity, banking and financial services, telecommunications, manufacturing, consulting, logistics, and enterprise software, with high-confidence matches associated with major global organisations including NVIDIA, Samsung Electronics, Cisco Systems, Siemens, S&P Global, ServiceNow, Deloitte, Vodafone, X Corp, Zscaler, FedEx, Volkswagen, Thales and London Stock Exchange Group. The incident occurred after cybercriminal group Team PCP compromised LiteLLM, and malicious versions were reportedly available through the Python software repository PyPI for only around 40 minutes, yet CloudSEK's analysis identified approximately 434,000 CI/CD pipelines potentially connected to the exposure. Potentially accessible information included cloud credentials, source-code access, server keys, software-development secrets, AI API keys and other credentials that could give attackers access to critical business systems, and CloudSEK stresses that appearing in the dataset does not automatically mean an organisation was successfully breached but should be investigated urgently. CloudSEK has released a free exposure-checking tool to help organisations determine whether credentials or infrastructure associated with them appear in the identified dataset.