{"slug": "a-winner-in-every-category", "title": "A Winner in Every Category", "summary": "CrowdStrike trades at 34.4x forward revenue, Cloudflare at 32.6x, and Shopify at 11.3x, each commanding premiums over their category medians by carving out AI-focused paths, according to a market analysis. The report highlights that AI agents are driving demand for security, network routing, commerce, and data services, with ServiceNow's AI book crossing $1 billion in annual contract value and Salesforce's Agentforce reaching $1.2 billion ARR with 205% growth. Despite a general decline in SaaS multiples since 2021, the top of the market is strengthening as investors reward AI-centric leaders.", "body_md": "The collapse in SaaS has depressed multiples. But in nearly every category, a leader thrives.\n\nCrowdStrike trades at 3.9x the security median ; Cloudflare at 3.4x infrastructure ; & Shopify at 8.1x Commerce median.\n\nEach of them has carved out an AI focused path.\n\n**CrowdStrike** at 34.4x forward revenue. Palo Alto trades at 22x. Every AI agent an enterprise deploys is a new endpoint to defend, & defending it requires the trillion security events a day CrowdStrike’s Threat Graph already correlates 1.\n\n**Cloudflare** at 32.6x. The nearest peer, Snowflake, trades at 17.5x. More than half the traffic crossing its network is no longer human 2, so every agent that reaches a customer becomes a request Cloudflare routes, inspects & eventually bills for.\n\n**Shopify** at 11.3x. Its Commerce peers trade at a 1.4x median. Shopping agents send orders that convert new buyers at twice the rate of other channels, & because they write straight into Shopify, that demand lands at the take rate Shopify already charges 3.\n\n**Samsara** at 10.8x. Vertical SaaS’s median is 4.0x. The 25 trillion data points a year crossing its platform, dashcam imagery & maintenance workflows that, as Sanjit Biswas put it, aren’t found on the Internet 4, are the training data no foundation model can buy.\n\n**ServiceNow** at 7.4x. The Productivity & Collaboration median is 3.4x, & Atlassian trades at 5.1x. Enterprises buying agents need somewhere to govern them, which is why ServiceNow’s AI book crossed $1b in annual contract value & is targeted at 30% of total ACV by 2030 5.\n\n**Figma** at 6.7x. GitLab, the only other Developer & Design name here, trades at 4.6x. As AI commoditizes the code, judgment about what to build becomes the scarce input, & more than 80% of Figma’s customers above $10k in ARR now consume AI credits weekly 6.\n\n**Twilio** at 5.6x. RingCentral in Communications trades at 2.4x. Voice agents have to reach humans over someone’s network, & that pull accelerated Twilio’s voice revenue past 20% for a sixth consecutive quarter 7.\n\n**Salesforce** at 4.0x. The Marketing & Sales median is 2.3x. Agents are only as useful as the customer record they act on, which is how Agentforce reached $1.2b ARR & grew 205%, more than half of it sold back into the installed base 8.\n\nNone of these are the fastest-growing name in their category. CrowdStrike grows 23% & trades at 34.4x, while Rubrik grows 46% in the same category & trades at 10.4x. Salesforce grows 11%, slower than almost everyone.\n\nBut the market believes in the AI story, the harness, the inference revenue, the durability.\n\nAlso violating the narrative : nearly every category in public software rallied last quarter, & in Security & Developer & Design every name gained.\n\nSince 2021, the ceiling has fallen from 100x 9 to 34x, & only eleven names now clear 10x. But the top of the market is rosying.\n\nSee that little elbow at the very bottom right?\n\n-\n[https://www.fool.com/earnings/call-transcripts/2026/03/03/crowdstrike-crwd-q4-2026-earnings-transcript/](https://www.fool.com/earnings/call-transcripts/2026/03/03/crowdstrike-crwd-q4-2026-earnings-transcript/)[↩︎](#fnref:1) -\n[https://www.fool.com/investing/2026/08/07/more-than-half-of-cloudflares-network-traffic-is-n/](https://www.fool.com/investing/2026/08/07/more-than-half-of-cloudflares-network-traffic-is-n/)[↩︎](#fnref:2) -\n[https://www.fool.com/earnings/call-transcripts/2026/05/05/shopify-shop-q1-2026-earnings-transcript/](https://www.fool.com/earnings/call-transcripts/2026/05/05/shopify-shop-q1-2026-earnings-transcript/)[↩︎](#fnref:3) -\n[https://s29.q4cdn.com/853855404/files/doc_financials/2026/q4/CORRECTED-TRANSCRIPT_-Samsara-Inc-IOT-US-Q4-2026-Earnings-Call-5-March-2026-5_00-PM-ET.pdf](https://s29.q4cdn.com/853855404/files/doc_financials/2026/q4/CORRECTED-TRANSCRIPT_-Samsara-Inc-IOT-US-Q4-2026-Earnings-Call-5-March-2026-5_00-PM-ET.pdf)[↩︎](#fnref:4) -\n[https://finance.yahoo.com/markets/stocks/articles/servicenow-reports-second-quarter-2026-201000482.html](https://finance.yahoo.com/markets/stocks/articles/servicenow-reports-second-quarter-2026-201000482.html)[↩︎](#fnref:5) -\n[https://s206.q4cdn.com/973901332/files/doc_financials/2026/q2/Figma-Q2-26-Prepared-Remarks.pdf](https://s206.q4cdn.com/973901332/files/doc_financials/2026/q2/Figma-Q2-26-Prepared-Remarks.pdf)[↩︎](#fnref:6) -\n[https://www.fool.com/earnings/call-transcripts/2026/04/30/twilio-twlo-q1-2026-earnings-transcript/](https://www.fool.com/earnings/call-transcripts/2026/04/30/twilio-twlo-q1-2026-earnings-transcript/)[↩︎](#fnref:7) -\n[https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/0001108524/000110852426000125/crm-q1fy27xexhibit991.htm](https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/0001108524/000110852426000125/crm-q1fy27xexhibit991.htm)[↩︎](#fnref:8)", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/a-winner-in-every-category", "canonical_source": "https://www.tomtunguz.com/a-winner-in-every-category/", "published_at": "2026-08-11 00:00:00+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-08-11 16:09:08.918795+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["artificial-intelligence", "ai-products", "ai-infrastructure"], "entities": ["CrowdStrike", "Cloudflare", "Shopify", "Samsara", "ServiceNow", "Figma", "Twilio", "Salesforce"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/a-winner-in-every-category", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/a-winner-in-every-category.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/a-winner-in-every-category.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/a-winner-in-every-category.jsonld"}}