Something notable happened on June 26, 2026. The Nasdaq fell for a fourth consecutive session. The Magnificent Seven continued their slide — Microsoft is now down more than 30% from its all-time high, Meta more than 30%, Alphabet more than 20%. Hardware names tied to the AI infrastructure buildout — chip stocks, memory companies — gave back some of their recent gains as investors started asking whether the cost of building AI is becoming a problem as much as an opportunity.
And yet two software stocks surged. Salesforce jumped 5.5%5.5%. ServiceNow jumped 10%10%. While the market rotated out of the companies selling the AI picks and shovels, it rotated into the companies actually deploying AI in the enterprise — turning it into revenue, not just capital expenditure.
That distinction matters for investors trying to figure out where the AI trade goes from here.
Salesforce (CRM): The Agentforce Catalyst
Salesforce is trading at $158.41 on June 26, 2026, with a market cap of approximately $130B and a trailing P/E of just 11.4x. That is the cheapest Salesforce has traded in years on an earnings basis — trailing EPS of $13.85 against a stock that sat as high as $276.80 twelve months ago. The 52-week low is $146.32, meaning the stock is barely above its floor.
The financial results do not support that kind of discount. In Q1 FY2027 (ended April 30, 2026), Salesforce reported revenue of $11.13B, up 13.3% year over year, with net income of $2.11B and diluted EPS of $2.42— a 16.9% jump from the $2.07 earned in Q4 FY2026. Gross margin held at 77% with a net margin of 19%.
The growth engine behind those numbers is Agentforce — Salesforce's autonomous AI agent platform, which allows enterprise customers to deploy AI agents directly into their customer service, sales, and operations workflows without requiring significant developer resources. Management reported on the May 28 earnings call that Agentforce is closing deals at the fastest pace of any product in Salesforce history, with more than 5,000 paid customer agreements signed since the product launched in late 2024.
The bull case is straightforward: Salesforce is the default CRM for the Fortune 500, and Agentforce gives it a software upgrade cycle that could run for years. If every Salesforce enterprise customer eventually upgrades to Agentforce-enabled workflows, the revenue per seat expands dramatically without requiring Salesforce to win new customers from scratch.
66.7% of analysts carry a bullish rating. The average price target is $239.78 — a 51% premium to the current price — with Needham's Scott Berg and Wedbush's Dan Ives both carrying the high target of $400. At 11x earnings, the risk/reward here is unusual for a company of this quality.
ServiceNow (NOW): The Enterprise AI Workflow Play
ServiceNow is trading at $98.45, up 10% on June 26, 2026, with a market cap of approximately $102B. The 52-week range runs from $81.24 to $211.48 — the stock has been cut in half from its highs, and today's surge is the first meaningful move off that floor.
The recent financials are solid. In Q1 2026 (ended March 31, 2026), ServiceNow posted revenue of $3.77B, up 5.7% sequentially from $3.57B in Q4 2025, with net income of $469M and diluted EPS of $0.45, up 18.4% from $0.38 the prior quarter. Gross margin held at 75.1%.
The catalyst driving the June 26 jump is ServiceNow's positioning as the enterprise AI workflow backbone. While Salesforce owns the customer-facing layer and chip companies provide the infrastructure layer, ServiceNow owns the internal enterprise layer — the platform that connects IT, HR, finance, and operations workflows inside large organizations. When companies deploy AI agents, they need a system to orchestrate those agents across departments. ServiceNow is increasingly that system.
The company recently announced Now Assist, its generative AI product embedded throughout the platform, is being adopted faster than any prior product launch in the company's history. Customers are not just buying the base platform — they are buying AI-powered workflow upgrades on top of it, which drives expansion revenue from the existing install base.
87.5% of analysts hold a bullish rating on ServiceNow, the strongest consensus in this article. The average price target is $144.50 — a 47% premium to the current price — with Bernstein's Peter Weed carrying the high target of $236. The stock's near-halving from its peak has created an entry point that most of the analyst community considers compelling.
Found this helpful? Share it with others.