ServiceNow (NOW): Company Overview, Stock, Financials & Latest News

Quick summary: ServiceNow, Inc. (NYSE: NOW) is a Santa Clara, California based enterprise software company founded in 2004 by Fred Luddy. The company built its business on IT service management software and has since grown into a broad workflow automation and AI platform used by most of the Fortune 500 to manage IT, employee, and customer processes.

ServiceNow reported full year 2025 total revenue of $13.28 billion, with subscription revenue of $12.88 billion, up 21 percent year over year. Momentum carried into 2026, with first quarter subscription revenue of $3.67 billion, up 22 percent, and the company raised its full year subscription revenue guidance to between $15.74 billion and $15.78 billion.

Even so, ServiceNow stock has been under pressure in 2026. Despite beating guidance on nearly every metric in the first quarter, shares fell sharply the day after earnings on investor concerns about the pace of AI driven growth, and the stock traded down roughly 30 to 40 percent year to date through early July, near $105, before a mid year analyst upgrade helped shares recover some ground. The company is led by Chairman and CEO Bill McDermott and does not currently pay a dividend.

Quick Facts

Full Name	ServiceNow, Inc.
Ticker Symbol	NYSE: NOW
Founded	2004, originally as Glidesoft, Inc.
Founder	Fred Luddy
Headquarters	Santa Clara, California
CEO	Bill McDermott, Chairman and CEO since 2019
Employees	Approximately 29,000
Industry	Enterprise cloud software, AI powered workflow automation
FY2025 Revenue	$13.28 billion, with subscription revenue up 21 percent
Market Capitalization	Approximately $109 to $110 billion (as of early July 2026)
Dividend	None, ServiceNow does not currently pay a dividend
Stock Exchange	New York Stock Exchange

What Is ServiceNow?

ServiceNow provides a cloud based platform, called the Now Platform, that helps large organizations digitize and automate workflows across IT, human resources, customer service, and security operations. Rather than selling a single application, ServiceNow sells a platform that connects people, processes, data, and systems so that routine work, such as resolving an IT ticket or onboarding a new employee, can be automated and tracked from start to finish.

In recent years, ServiceNow has repositioned itself as what it calls an AI control tower for business reinvention. Its Now Assist product suite embeds generative AI and autonomous AI agents directly into existing workflows, allowing customers to automate more complex, judgment based tasks rather than only simple, rules based processes.

Company History

ServiceNow traces its origins to 2003, when Fred Luddy, a former chief technology officer at Peregrine Systems, began building a new company just before his fiftieth birthday after Peregrine collapsed amid an accounting fraud scandal that wiped out a large part of his personal net worth. Luddy incorporated the company as Glidesoft, Inc. in 2004, building the first version of the product from a desk in his own house, and later renamed the company ServiceNow.

The company’s early focus was IT service management, offering a browser based alternative to the legacy on premise ticketing systems that dominated corporate IT departments at the time. ServiceNow priced its initial public offering in June 2012 at $18 per share, raising about $210 million and valuing the company at roughly $2 billion, with Frank Slootman serving as CEO and Fred Luddy as Chairman.

Over the following decade, ServiceNow expanded well beyond IT service management into human resources, customer service, security operations, and eventually a broader application development platform. Bill McDermott, previously CEO of SAP, took over as ServiceNow’s CEO in November 2019 and was later named Chairman in 2022, steering the company toward a more aggressive AI and customer relationship management strategy, including the introduction of Now Assist and a series of acquisitions aimed at expanding the platform’s reach into cybersecurity and conversational AI.

Founders

ServiceNow was founded by a single named founder, though he credits a small group of early volunteers for helping get the company off the ground:

Fred Luddy, who founded the company in 2003 and 2004 after serving as chief technology officer at Peregrine Systems and Remedy. Luddy served as ServiceNow’s first CEO from 2004 to 2011, later became Chairman, and continues to serve on the company’s board as Chairman emeritus and a product advisor.

Early contributors credited with helping build ServiceNow’s first product alongside Luddy include David Loo, Don Goodliffe, Bow Ruggeri, and Patrick Casey, though Luddy is recognized as the company’s sole founder in ServiceNow’s official history.

CEO

Bill McDermott has served as ServiceNow’s Chairman and Chief Executive Officer since November 2019. Before joining ServiceNow, McDermott spent nearly a decade at SAP, serving as co-CEO from 2010 to 2014 and sole CEO from 2014 to 2019, where he was widely credited with expanding SAP’s cloud business. He began his career at Xerox in 1983 and has often spoken publicly about his earlier experience owning a small delicatessen on Long Island before entering the technology industry.

Under McDermott’s leadership, ServiceNow has pushed aggressively into artificial intelligence, positioning the Now Platform as what he calls the semantic layer and AI control tower that lets enterprises deploy AI models safely and effectively across existing business processes. He has also expanded ServiceNow’s ambitions into the customer relationship management market, an area traditionally dominated by rivals such as Salesforce.

Headquarters

ServiceNow is headquartered in Santa Clara, California, in the heart of Silicon Valley. The company was originally based in San Diego, where Fred Luddy started the business, before relocating its corporate headquarters to Santa Clara as it scaled following its 2012 initial public offering. ServiceNow maintains additional offices and data centers across North America, Europe, and Asia Pacific to support its global customer base.

Business Segments

ServiceNow reports its financial results as a single operating segment, with revenue split between subscription revenue and professional services and other revenue. Within its platform, however, the company organizes its offerings around several major workflow categories:

Technology Workflows, including IT service management, IT operations management, and security operations, ServiceNow’s original core market.
Employee Workflows, covering human resources service delivery, workplace service delivery, and legal and contract operations.
Customer and Industry Workflows, including customer service management, field service management, and industry specific applications for sectors such as telecommunications, healthcare, and financial services.
Creator Workflows and Platform, including the App Engine and Automation Engine, which let customers and partners build custom applications on top of the Now Platform.

Layered across all of these categories is Now Assist, ServiceNow’s generative and agentic AI product line, which management has highlighted as one of the fastest growing parts of the business.

Products and Services

IT Service Management

Core IT ticketing, incident, problem, and change management tools that remain ServiceNow’s largest and most established product line.

IT Operations Management

Tools for monitoring, event management, and AIOps that help IT teams predict and resolve infrastructure issues before they affect users.

Customer Service Management

A platform for managing customer support cases and field service operations, increasingly positioned to compete directly with traditional CRM software.

HR Service Delivery

Workflow automation for employee onboarding, case management, and other human resources processes across large organizations.

Security Operations

Tools for managing security incidents and vulnerability response, strengthened by ServiceNow’s planned acquisition of cybersecurity asset intelligence company Armis.

Now Assist and the App Engine

ServiceNow’s generative and agentic AI product suite, along with low code development tools that let customers build and extend workflow applications.

Revenue Breakdown

ServiceNow’s revenue is overwhelmingly subscription based, reflecting its software as a service business model. In the first quarter of 2026, subscription revenue again made up the vast majority of total revenue.

ServiceNow Q1 2026 Revenue by Type

Source: ServiceNow Q1 2026 earnings release, April 22, 2026. Total Q1 2026 revenue was $3.77 billion, up 22 percent year over year.

Subscription revenue has consistently made up roughly 97 to 98 percent of ServiceNow’s total revenue in recent years, underscoring how central recurring, contract based revenue is to the company’s financial model and its predictability for investors.

Financial Performance

ServiceNow’s total revenue has grown consistently since 2021, continuing to compound at a rate uncommon for a company already generating well over $10 billion a year in revenue.

ServiceNow Annual Total Revenue, 2021 to 2025

Source: ServiceNow annual earnings releases, fiscal years 2021 through 2025.

Key recent financial results include:

Full year 2025 total revenue of $13.28 billion, with subscription revenue of $12.88 billion, up 21 percent year over year.
Full year 2025 free cash flow of $4.6 billion, up 34 percent, reflecting the high cash generating nature of ServiceNow’s subscription model.
First quarter 2026 total revenue of $3.77 billion, up 22 percent year over year, with subscription revenue of $3.67 billion, both above the high end of company guidance.
First quarter 2026 net income of $469 million, or $0.45 per diluted share, up slightly from $460 million a year earlier.
Current remaining performance obligations, a key forward looking bookings metric, of $12.64 billion as of the first quarter of 2026, up 22.5 percent year over year.
Total remaining performance obligations of $27.7 billion as of the first quarter of 2026, up 25 percent year over year.
Full year 2026 subscription revenue guidance raised to between $15.74 billion and $15.78 billion, implying growth of roughly 22 percent.

Management noted that subscription revenue growth in the first quarter of 2026 faced a modest headwind of approximately 75 basis points from delayed closings of several large on premise deals in the Middle East, tied to regional conflict, even as the underlying business continued to outperform its own targets.

Stock Information

ServiceNow trades on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol NOW. Despite a long track record of consistent revenue growth, the stock has seen unusually sharp swings in 2026 as investors debate how quickly the company’s AI investments will translate into accelerating growth.

ServiceNow Stock, Approximate 12 Month Price Range

Approximate figures as of early July 2026. ServiceNow shares have traded in an unusually wide range over the past year, so treat this as a general reference, not a real time quote.

Selected NOW Stock Metrics, Early July 2026
Recent Trading Range	Approximately $103 to $108
52 Week Range	$81.24 to $211.48
Market Capitalization	Approximately $109 to $110 billion
Trailing P/E Ratio	Approximately 63
Forward P/E Ratio	Approximately 24 to 25
Trailing EPS (TTM)	$1.68
Beta	Approximately 0.95 to 0.96
1 Year Performance	Down roughly 40 to 50 percent

ServiceNow shares fell sharply in after hours trading following the company’s first quarter 2026 earnings report, even though the quarter beat guidance on nearly every headline metric, reflecting investor sensitivity to the pace of AI monetization across enterprise software stocks broadly. In July 2026, at least one major analyst upgraded the stock, arguing that fears about AI disrupting ServiceNow’s business model had been overstated relative to the company’s underlying growth and retention metrics.

Dividends

ServiceNow does not currently pay a dividend to shareholders. Instead, the company has prioritized reinvesting cash flow into research and development, AI product expansion, and strategic acquisitions, while also returning some capital to shareholders through share repurchase programs.

Dividend Frequency: None
Dividend Yield: Not applicable
Capital Allocation Priority: Research and development, acquisitions such as the planned purchase of cybersecurity firm Armis, and share buybacks aimed at offsetting dilution from employee stock compensation

ServiceNow’s board has authorized several billion dollars in share repurchases in recent years, including an additional $3 billion authorization in January 2025, reflecting a preference for buybacks over dividends as the primary way to return capital to shareholders.

Competitors

ServiceNow competes across several enterprise software categories, from IT service management to customer relationship management. Its main competitors include:

Salesforce

The dominant player in customer relationship management software, increasingly overlapping with ServiceNow as both companies push into AI powered customer service.

SAP

A large enterprise software vendor that competes with ServiceNow in parts of the human resources and business process automation markets.

Microsoft

Competes with ServiceNow in IT service management and workflow automation, while also serving as an AI model and cloud infrastructure partner in some deployments.

Atlassian

Offers IT service management and workflow tools, such as Jira Service Management, that compete directly with ServiceNow among mid sized and technical organizations.

BMC Software

A longtime competitor in IT service management and IT operations management, particularly among large enterprise customers.

Workday

Overlaps with ServiceNow’s employee workflow and human resources service delivery products, though the two companies focus on different core markets.

Frequently Asked Questions

What does ServiceNow do?

ServiceNow provides a cloud based platform that helps large organizations automate and manage workflows across IT, human resources, customer service, and security operations, increasingly powered by generative and agentic AI.

Who is the CEO of ServiceNow?

Bill McDermott has served as ServiceNow’s Chairman and Chief Executive Officer since November 2019. He previously led SAP as CEO from 2014 to 2019.

Where is ServiceNow headquartered?

ServiceNow is headquartered in Santa Clara, California. The company was originally founded in San Diego before relocating its headquarters following its 2012 initial public offering.

Does ServiceNow pay a dividend?

No. ServiceNow does not currently pay a dividend and instead returns capital to shareholders primarily through share repurchase programs, while reinvesting the majority of its cash flow into growth. This is general information, not personalized investment advice.

Why did ServiceNow stock fall in 2026?

ServiceNow stock fell sharply after its first quarter 2026 earnings report even though the company beat guidance on nearly every metric, reflecting broader investor concern about how quickly AI investments across enterprise software companies will translate into faster growth. The stock partially recovered in the middle of the year after at least one major analyst argued those concerns had been overstated.

What is ServiceNow’s largest source of revenue?

Subscription revenue is by far ServiceNow’s largest revenue source, making up roughly 97 to 98 percent of total revenue, with the remainder coming from professional services and other revenue.

Who founded ServiceNow?

ServiceNow was founded by Fred Luddy in 2003 and 2004, following his earlier career as chief technology officer at Peregrine Systems.

What are ServiceNow’s main competitors?

ServiceNow’s key competitors include Salesforce, SAP, Microsoft, Atlassian, BMC Software, and Workday, depending on the specific product category, such as IT service management, customer relationship management, or human resources workflows.

This article is for general informational and educational purposes only and does not constitute financial, investment, or legal advice. Stock prices, financial metrics, and company details change frequently. Always verify current figures with official ServiceNow investor relations materials, SEC filings, or a live market data source before making any investment decision.

Sources: ServiceNow Investor Relations shareholder letters and earnings releases (2021 through 2026), ServiceNow SEC filings, and recent market and news reporting from outlets including Reuters, CNBC, Yahoo Finance, and Forbes.