ServiceNow vaunts agentic AI and announces 22% annual revenue growth

ServiceNow has declared full-year revenue close to $11bn, representing 22% year-on-year growth, as it announces a battery of agentic AI product updates

Brian McKenna,
Enterprise Applications Editor

Published: 30 Jan 2025 17:17

ServiceNow has reported full-year revenue of $10.98bn, representing 22% year-on-year growth. Fourth-quarter revenue was close to $3bn, growing by 21% year-on-year.

The supplier is making its artificial intelligence (AI) efforts front and centre of its messaging.

Bill McDermott, chairman and CEO of ServiceNow, said: “AI is fuelling a top to bottom reordering of the enterprise technology landscape. Leaders are embracing the ServiceNow platform as their AI agent control tower to unlock exponential productivity and seamlessly orchestrate end‑to‑end business transformation. We are still in the early days of a massive opportunity. ServiceNow’s innovation, growth and profitability put us in a class of one.”

In its results statement, the company said it has 2,109 customers with more than $1m in annual contract value (ACV), representing 12% year‑on‑year growth in customers, and nearly 500 customers with more than $5m in ACV, representing 21% year‑on‑year growth.

It added that the number of customers buying two or more of ServiceNow’s Pro Plus AI capabilities doubled quarter-on-quarter. It said it has nearly 1,000 agentic AI customers.

Gina Mastantuono, ServiceNow president and chief financial officer, said: “Our GenAI net new ACV stepped up meaningfully in Q4, as the number of Now Assist service desk deals grew over 150% quarter‑over‑quarter. We’re just scratching the surface of what’s possible.

“The moves we’re making in 2025 aren’t just about maintaining our lead – they’re about expanding it. We are setting ourselves up to define the future of agent‑powered automation, solidify ServiceNow as the AI platform for business transformation, and deliver strong growth year after year.”

At the same time, the supplier announced some product updates, including AI Agent Orchestrator, which connects teams of AI agents working across tasks, systems and departments to drive workflows; AI Agent Studio, a low-code/no-code tool allowing customers to build customised AI agents; and thousands of pre-built, ready-to-deploy AI agents, designed for workflows across IT, customer service and HR.

Raj Sharma, global managing partner at EY, said in support of ServiceNow’s agentic AI technology: “AI agents are critical to empower teams with intelligent capabilities working in collaboration between humans and AI. This is why we are working with ServiceNow and our ecosystems partners to harness the full potential of agentic AI across our AI platforms at enterprise-scale, enabling us to integrate and contextualise data across our entire organisation in real time, with the high levels of trust and transparency we need built in.”

And another customer, Rachel Cameron, head of transformational programmes at Rolls-Royce, added: “Rolls-Royce has always been at the forefront of engineering excellence and innovation, continuously finding ways to improve efficiency, resilience and employee experience. By integrating ServiceNow AI agents, we are streamlining operations, reducing manual effort and enabling faster, data-driven decision-making. AI-powered automation is helping us deflect service desk tickets, optimise workflows and provide intelligent insights, allowing our teams to focus on high-value activities while ensuring our operations remain efficient, secure and future-ready.”

SAP: 10% annual revenue growth

ServiceNow’s results were announced in the same week as those of its chairman and CEO Bill McDermott’s former company, SAP.

SAP announced full-year revenue of €34.2bn, representing 10% year-on-year growth, and fourth-quarter revenue of €9.4bn, up 11% year-on-year.

The German-headquartered supplier also highlighted its AI story. CEO Christian Klein said: “Q4 was a strong finish to the year, with half of our cloud order entry including AI. Looking at the full year, we exceeded our cloud goals, accelerating cloud revenue and current cloud backlog growth against a much larger base. Total cloud backlog now stands at €63bn, up 40%. Revenue growth has returned to double digits. Looking ahead, our strong position in data and business AI gives us additional confidence that we will accelerate revenue growth through 2027.”

In its results statement, SAP highlighted its October 2024 announcement of “powerful new capabilities that complement and extend Joule, including collaborative AI agents imbued with custom skills to complete complex cross-disciplinary tasks”. Joule is the supplier’s cloud portfolio generative AI assistant.

SAP also highlighted fourth-quarter customer sign-ups for its flagship Rise with SAP cloud migration programme. These included BASF, BP International, EY, Ford Motor Company and Hannover Medical School.

It stated that, among others, North Yorkshire Council and Warrington Borough Council chose Grow with SAP, the supplier’s mid-market programme aimed at increasing sales of the cloud version of its S/4 Hana enterprise resource planning (ERP) system – in the supplier’s words: “An offering helping customers adopt cloud ERP with speed, predictability and continuous innovation.”