A powerful one-two punch from a rival’s blockbuster earnings and a fresh Wall Street endorsement sent ServiceNow stock rocketing more than 6.5% this week. Shares closed at $108.73, and the volume told an even louder story: nearly 40 million shares changed hands—roughly four times the daily average. Options traders piled in as well, snapping up over 168,000 call contracts, a 37% surge above typical turnover.
The first jolt came from Snowflake. The data-platform bellwether delivered a surprisingly strong quarterly report, raised its full-year guidance, and unveiled a multi-billion-dollar cloud partnership with Amazon Web Services. Snowflake’s own shares exploded more than 33% higher, and the market read the tea leaves as a bullish signal for the entire enterprise-software sector: companies are still spending aggressively on AI-powered solutions that build on existing infrastructure. ServiceNow, which had not released any fresh news of its own, was swept up in the wave.
The second catalyst arrived from Bank of America. Analysts at the bank initiated coverage with a Buy rating and a price target of $130—a level implying significant upside from current levels. Their thesis hinges on ServiceNow’s pivot to “Agentic AI,” where the platform evolves from a workflow tool into the central governance and control layer for enterprise artificial intelligence. This is no mere chatbot play; autonomous AI agents that make decisions and execute tasks will require a command center, and ServiceNow is positioning its AI Control Tower to fill that role.
That vision crystalized at the company’s Knowledge 2026 event, where ServiceNow unveiled the “Australia Release” of its Now Platform—the first step toward country-specific versions and a sharper focus on autonomous operations. The expanded AI Control Tower can discover, secure and measure AI agents across corporate systems. Two new partnerships were also announced: ServiceNow is a launch partner for Boomi’s Workflow Data Network Passport Program, and it struck a multi-year global collaboration with Experian that brings Ascend data and decisioning tools directly into the platform.
The strategic narrative is backed by solid numbers. First-quarter subscription revenue came in at $3.671 billion, up 22% year-over-year. Even more telling for future growth, current remaining performance obligations (cRPO) rose to $12.64 billion, a 22.5% increase that analysts view as a reliable barometer of pipeline health. Total revenue hit $3.77 billion, a 22.1% jump, and the security-and-risk unit—bolstered by the Armis and Veza acquisitions, now bundled under the “Autonomous Security and Risk” label—crossed the $1 billion mark in annual contract value. Gross margin stood at roughly 76.6%, a level that underscores the business’s quality.
Should investors sell immediately? Or is it worth buying ServiceNow?
Management used the solid quarter to lift its full-year subscription guidance to a range of $15.74 billion to $15.78 billion, representing growth of up to 22.5%. The longer-term ambition is even bolder: ServiceNow aims for more than $30 billion in annual subscription revenue by 2030, with at least 30% of new annual contract value coming from AI products.
Yet the rally also reflects a sector-wide sigh of relief. In the weeks leading up to Snowflake’s report, fears had been mounting that autonomous AI could cannibalize traditional software subscriptions. ServiceNow’s AI Control Tower and its agentic strategy are designed to prove the opposite: that AI will drive incremental spending on governance, security and workflow orchestration. The real test will come in the second half of the year, when the company’s own contract data will show whether AI customers are actually expanding their commitments or simply shifting budgets.
Competition remains a live wire. Salesforce is charging into the same market with its Agentforce platform, and the battle for the enterprise AI control plane is only beginning. ServiceNow’s ability to defend its margin structure and growth momentum against that rival will be the central proving ground in the quarters ahead.
For now, investors have two reasons to feel confident: a strong peer read-across and an analyst who sees $130 in the cards. The company’s next quarterly report—the first to include the general availability of the AI Agent Advisor and Intelligent Approvals, launched this May—will show whether the catalysts are translating into genuine customer traction.
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