ServiceNow Q1 beats guidance, raises outlook on AI workflow demand
ServiceNow’s AI tools are still getting budget, especially when they drive six-figure deals. That is the signal monday.com must read ahead of its May 11 earnings.
ServiceNow just showed where enterprise AI money is still going: into products that sit inside daily workflows and help close larger contracts. The Santa Clara company said Now Assist customers spending more than $1 million in annual contract value grew more than 130% year over year, even as buyers kept watching budgets closely. That kind of growth is what separates AI that gets discussed from AI that gets funded.
The first quarter was strong by the numbers. ServiceNow reported $3.671 billion in subscription revenue, up 22% from a year earlier, and $3.770 billion in total revenue, also up 22%. Current remaining performance obligations reached $12.64 billion, while total remaining performance obligations hit $27.7 billion. Management also raised its 2026 subscription revenue outlook by $205 million at the midpoint, to a range of $15.735 billion to $15.775 billion. In plain terms, ServiceNow is still seeing long-term enterprise commitments, not short-lived experiments.
For monday.com, that is the part worth studying. Enterprise buyers are not rewarding generic AI features just because they exist. They are backing tools that cut service bottlenecks, route work faster, and deepen account commitment. That is the same fight monday.com is in across work management, CRM, service, and dev, where product teams need to prove that AI changes throughput, not just headlines.
monday.com’s own numbers show why this matters. In its fourth-quarter and full-year 2025 results, the company said revenue rose 25% year over year to $333.9 million in the quarter and 27% for the full year, with a 14% non-GAAP operating margin. It also said monday vibe was the fastest product in company history to top $1 million in ARR, a sign that AI tied to actual execution can move from demo value to revenue.
The larger account base matters just as much. monday.com said it had more than 250,000 customers worldwide as of December 31, 2025, including 4,281 customers above $50,000 in annual recurring revenue. Customers above $50,000 represented 41% of total ARR, while net dollar retention was 110% overall and 116% for customers above $50,000 and above $100,000 in ARR. Those are the metrics that tell sales teams, product leaders and engineers the same thing ServiceNow’s quarter did: buyers will still pay for AI when it lowers friction and expands the workflow footprint.
monday.com filed its 2025 annual report in March and said its platform connects work management, CRM, service and dev on the same AI layer. It will give investors the next update on Monday, May 11, 2026, at 8:30 a.m. Eastern Time. The question is whether its AI story is starting to look less like a feature roadmap and more like a budget priority.
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