ServiceNow at Goldman Sachs Conference: AI and Growth Insights

On Wednesday, 10 September 2025, ServiceNow (NYSE:NOW) showcased its strategic vision at the Goldman Sachs Communacopia + Technology Conference. CEO Bill McDermott highlighted the company’s focus on AI-driven business transformation and its competitive edge in the CRM market. While optimistic about growth and innovation, McDermott also acknowledged challenges, particularly in integrating legacy systems.

Key Takeaways

• ServiceNow is leveraging AI to automate workflows and enhance enterprise productivity.
• The company has secured a significant federal deal, becoming the standard AI platform for U.S. government business transformation.
• ServiceNow’s CRM segment is experiencing rapid growth, supported by AI capabilities.
• The company employs a hybrid pricing model, including a 30% premium for AI features.
• McDermott remains optimistic about global expansion and innovation despite market challenges.

Financial Results

• ServiceNow has implemented a 30% price uplift for AI capabilities, contributing to 50% quarter-over-quarter growth.
• The CRM business is outpacing other segments, generating $1.5 billion in revenue and growing.
• The IT environment is expanding at 8.7% this year, while software growth is in the double digits.

Operational Updates

• The Zurich release introduced 1,200 new agentic AI capabilities, enhancing internal productivity.
• ServiceNow’s selection as the federal government’s standard AI platform marks a significant milestone.
• Vibe coding, allowing natural language and voice programming, is a notable innovation.
• CRM capabilities are expanding, particularly in order management and pricing.

Future Outlook

• ServiceNow plans to evolve with the AI tech stack, expanding beyond IT Service Management into employee experience and CRM.
• The company targets a large addressable market in CRM, focusing on order management automation.
• Global government expansion is anticipated, with a potential "copycat effect" driving efficiency.

Q&A Highlights

• ServiceNow assists companies with workflow automation, a challenge for many.
• CEOs are both excited and apprehensive about agentic AI, recognizing its potential impact.
• The company’s hybrid pricing model includes seat-based pricing and an AI premium.
• Efforts to integrate with and replace legacy COBOL systems in the U.S. government are underway.
• ServiceNow helps companies streamline operations by reducing ERP systems.

ServiceNow’s strategic insights and growth prospects were clearly outlined during the conference. For further details, refer to the full transcript below.

Full transcript - Goldman Sachs Communacopia + Technology Conference:

David, Host, Goldman Sachs: Good morning, everybody. I’m Bill McDermott. Welcome back to your fourth Goldman Sachs MENA Copia conference. Thank you for being with us.

Bill McDermott, CEO, ServiceNow: Thank you for having me.

David, Host, Goldman Sachs: Appreciate it. Always, always good to talk with you. Let’s just start straight in. We’ll jump in. Outline for us a little bit about your long-term goals for ServiceNow. Talk about where the company is, and as you look forward, kind of where do you want ServiceNow to be five years from now?

Bill McDermott, CEO, ServiceNow: Happily. I came into ServiceNow, believe it or not, six years ago, David. I don’t know where that time went.

David, Host, Goldman Sachs: Goes very quickly, doesn’t it?

Bill McDermott, CEO, ServiceNow: It really is quick, right? I came in with a dream to make ServiceNow the defining enterprise software company of the 21st century. That remains the objective. How we believe we’re going to do that is we have the AI platform for business transformation. Today, we made a major release called Zurich. 1,200 net new agentic AI capabilities built into the platform. We can talk about that a little bit. The main thing is this: we have to go to the basics here. 85% of the companies out there did not get a positive ROI from digital transformation, despite the fact they put billions of investment in.

David, Host, Goldman Sachs: 85%.

Bill McDermott, CEO, ServiceNow: 85%. You say, why? Because of integration. According to MIT, only 5% of the companies are deriving an ROI that’s positive from agentic AI today. You say, why is that? It’s back to integration. Where the models that we use in our living room on Sunday are brought into the office environment, they are improving your personal productivity, but they are not improving enterprise productivity. What ServiceNow is doing about that is we are the AI platform for business transformation. We integrate with any cloud, any language model, and any data source. The argument is very simple. Workflow automation is the big idea of this generation because it integrates with all of the data sources. It goes across all of those systems of record. We act as the AI Control Tower for all the agents that will operate in these enterprises. This is the winning formula, David.

David, Host, Goldman Sachs: Since you went there, I’m interested because every CEO I talk to is talking about workflow automation.

Bill McDermott, CEO, ServiceNow: Yeah.

David, Host, Goldman Sachs: It’s very, very hard to execute on. You know, how difficult is this going to be for most companies to ultimately create that integration and make these fundamental workflow changes that massively improve or significantly improve productivity?

Bill McDermott, CEO, ServiceNow: We’re going to help them do it. Here’s how we believe we have a unique competitive advantage. I’ll just talk about the differentiation. We’ve been at workflow automation for 20 years. We have 65 billion workflows in flight today, with a trillion transactions. If you think about contextual AI, these workflows that we automate, they learn and they continuously get better. In our own company today, 90% of the IT cases, the HR cases, and the sales cases that arise in our company are being managed by agentic agents. That is changing our company. Our CFO has made statements around how much cost we took out. What’s even better is the productivity we’re putting in. We’re proving that you can actually have a growth company, you can actually increase headcount, but radically improve the productivity of people.

Last week, we took a major cloud off the table with our federal deal with the U.S. General Services Administration, where now our own federal government has chosen us as the standard AI platform for business transformation, specifically in our core. Our core alone will save the federal government multiples of billions of dollars. Here’s one of the big learnings that people might be interested in. Six years ago, I was the one saying nobody had to lose for us to win. That is actually still true. There’s nothing forcing you as a CEO to take out any other platforms. Same MIT study, 95% of the technical leaders and the CEOs today are saying, I want to rein in the cost on things that don’t matter. I want a lot less platforms than I have today. I want to team up with the platforms that matter.

We are one of those platforms. If you think about the hyperscalers, integrate with all of them. If you think about the language models that are out there today, we integrate with all of them. If you think about those complex systems of record, we integrate with all of them. Three things that are big picture items today on your stage, David. Number one, we made a major move in vibe coding. When you think about the idea of a developer today, they don’t like setup work. They don’t actually really like the keyboard. They like natural language and voice a lot better. Now, they can simply use that natural language and that voice to code. Just think about Goldman Sachs, for example. We want to have a new onboarding process for all new colleagues that we hire in 2026.

Immediately, you can immediately vibe code the connection between HR, operations, and all the facilities that then have to manage those individuals, whether they’re working from home or in the office. It happens autonomously. If you think about Vault and the idea of managing security, security is obviously a big deal. Let’s just think about it in financial terms. Your credit card company, whether you’re doing that digitally or with cards, doesn’t really matter. You, as a consumer, have some kind of an intrusion. The agentic AI is picking this up. They’re actually then validating, is that person qualified to make that charge? The decision is made by the agent, no. They cancel that card, mail you a new one. A human could have always been involved in the process with ServiceNow. It doesn’t have to be. All of this is happening now completely autonomously.

You and I both know the complexity of dealing with multiple countries across Europe. Let’s talk about global data protection and the EU rules versus the U.S. rules. All of this now is being done autonomously. We can see the machines doing transactions. We can also see the regulatory governance and auditing rules of different nations in the workflow of a corporation that’s managing across a global theater. This is truly amazing.

David, Host, Goldman Sachs: Yeah.

Bill McDermott, CEO, ServiceNow: The game is changing. We’re changing the game, and we’re growing faster than all the other ones with a margin profile and an ambition that is unstoppable.

David, Host, Goldman Sachs: Yeah. The world’s been pretty volatile. There’s a lot going on. You guys continue to be very resilient as you execute on what you’ve just outlined. How do you navigate the turbulence?

Bill McDermott, CEO, ServiceNow: How do we navigate?

David, Host, Goldman Sachs: How do you navigate the turbulence of the world?

Bill McDermott, CEO, ServiceNow: The turbulence of the world is the only thing I can predict. I just wouldn’t know what to do if the world wasn’t a turbulent place anymore. You and I have been at this for a while. I think that’s part of the secret, to stay cool, calm, and collected, no matter what the environment is dealing with. I can say, with great CEOs like yourself, David, we know how to handle these kinds of things. We also know how to inspire people to actually get used to these environments because they’re probably the only constant that’s left. In the context of our customers, if you look at a retailer today that’s fighting through the headwinds of tariffs, as an example, to autonomously rework, reorient, and redeploy a supply chain in milliseconds on a ServiceNow platform, it’s a pretty cool thing.

If you think about the old software model, the logic is in the application. It’s basically, you know, this is what the application is programmed to do. With ServiceNow, it’s an agile platform, so any change that gets made can be reoriented in the flow of work in a millisecond, especially with agentic AI. It’s designed for this moment. I think that’s one of the real big things that people haven’t completely comprehended, but they’re getting the hang of it.

David, Host, Goldman Sachs: When you talk to CEOs, are you noticing changes in their appetite to buy?

Bill McDermott, CEO, ServiceNow: Totally. The main thing is this: the CEO is the easiest person in the company to talk to because they just want to win. They actually don’t have any barriers to entry on a good idea. What I find is there’s two really important things to remember in the enterprise today. One is the CEO. That is the person that is running the show. The second person is the technical recommender. That technical recommender is generally working across a team of executives. We’re no longer in a world where the CIO or the CTO or the Chief Digital Officer is making the call. The CEO has a vision for where they want the company to go. They’re very strong in their positions, which is exciting. They’re very involved in agentic AI. They’re very involved in the AI revolution. They’re excited by it.

They’re also petrified by it because they know if they don’t catch this wave, they could lose it all. What I find is the CEO wants to be involved. The digital people that are in the report to the CEO want a proof of concept. They want a proven model. If you can prove it, and especially if you can put the engineers next to their engineers and work hand in glove on solving a problem or capturing an opportunity, these companies are ready to buy. We have no problem with pipelines. By the way, another thing to keep in mind is the IT environment, according to Gartner, is growing at 8.7% this year. Software is growing in the double digits. A software company that’s not growing in the double digits is losing market share.

I can say that firsthand, given the strength of our CRM business and how quickly that’s growing.

David, Host, Goldman Sachs: When you listen to the debate in the software world about AI disrupting per-user pricing models.

Bill McDermott, CEO, ServiceNow: Yeah.

David, Host, Goldman Sachs: How do you think about that?

Bill McDermott, CEO, ServiceNow: It’s a really important question. Let me be crystal clear. We provide a hybrid pricing model. Part of it is seat-based. What we have found is zero dilution in seats. None. We have also provided an AI premium on our platform to our pricing method, which is a 30% uplift on our pricing because we include a certain tranche of tokens around AI agents. We give you the agents because we want you using the platform. We want you deriving the value. We’re very generous with the number of tokens that you get. Here’s the big idea. As these tokens become consumed, and they will be faster and faster as agentic AI and the revolution in the enterprise soars, the reload on those tokens is a net new hockey stick for companies like ServiceNow.

Not only are you going to get the benefit of a predictable model, which is what our customers want, by the way, we’re a big-time enterprise player. They’re also very comfortable with the 30% uplift, as evidenced by us growing 50% quarter over quarter. They’re very fair around the reload on the tokens because they know if they’re reloading tokens, it’s only because they’re deriving extreme value from the platform. It’s a win, win, win. The shareholders are going to win, win, win, too.

David, Host, Goldman Sachs: That’s terrific. You’ve talked about this integration point. You’re talking about a vision for how ServiceNow adds a lot of value in this chain. Think out further, as AI tech stack continues to evolve. How do you envision ServiceNow’s role evolving when you think out a little bit further?

Bill McDermott, CEO, ServiceNow: Yeah, I think the early innings of this are just beginning. I think that our evolution is in full flight. You know, remember, this company started to be very well known for IT Service Management, asset management, operations management, security operations, things that great companies like Goldman Sachs will use ServiceNow for. We expanded into the employee experience. This is a big thing because how you innovate your workforce in these trying times is something that requires the agility of ServiceNow. I can give countless examples. There is the whole Customer Relationship Management value chain. Just think about this being a very large addressable market in the enterprise. ServiceNow is the only company in the enterprise that can meet the customer wherever they’re at in any channel and utilize complete-oriented AI that is agentic in the order management process. We can drive configuration, pricing, and quoting, all using agentic AI.

You think about just a complicated company that might be making supercomputers that we might be aware of. There could be 2.5 million different parts moving in a supercomputer. Sometimes it takes eight days to do that. We could do it in eight seconds. There is your order management process with agentic AI, configure, price, and quote. It’s a pure play solution, which is our logic AI move. We got nine orders in the last week of June, you might remember. We reported that in the last earnings. The progress there continues to soar. If you think about fulfillment of an order, we fulfill. If you think about servicing the client, we service. Now you can order, fulfill, and service on one platform in any channel on an end-to-end basis. We think this is going to be the biggest business in ServiceNow.

It’s really big already, you know, around $1.5 billion and growing faster than all the other ones. If you think about this whole idea of the creator, you know, we introduced a very, very healthy dose of innovation today. The creators didn’t necessarily think ServiceNow first.

David, Host, Goldman Sachs: Yeah.

Bill McDermott, CEO, ServiceNow: When they were developing their software schemes, today they do. With our announcement today, it’ll be even more. Think about a no-code environment. Think about vibe coding. Think about being able to do it in an auditable way with full governance for the enterprise, full risk controls and security for the enterprise, which is important to CEOs. Think about a knowledge graph where any code change that you make can be visibly seen in a knowledge graph across all functions of the company at once. Why is that important? You avoid making big mistakes. You get the sign-off from the bosses on what they really want you to do and what they don’t want you to do. You also get to look at difficult machine-to-machine integrations in this knowledge graph, not just human integrations. All of this is still in the earliest days, David. What else could we do?

You’re dealing with a company that’s growing fast, that has a beautiful cash position, that is an aggressive growth company, it’s doing it all organically. We’ll have many, many options to do big stuff.

David, Host, Goldman Sachs: When I look, I mean, you are one of the very few companies that are successfully early in the cycle monetizing AI. Why are you succeeding? What do you think is going on in your company that’s allowing you to be more effective more quickly in this new world?

Bill McDermott, CEO, ServiceNow: We had the vision early on. A lot of people are pretenders. Nobody knows that better than the people in this room. They’re faking it. You can’t fake this to make it. It has to be real. We’ve been building this innovation now for six years. We have built an AI platform. ServiceNow is an AI platform. The AI is in the platform. Don’t forget, when we did the pro version of ServiceNow many years ago, customers were paying a healthy uplift for that pro version, which had AI use cases built into it. We did the pro plus version, which gave you agentic AI on top of the AI use cases that were built into the platform. Now you have a tokenized world that’s developing. Our company, from engineering to pre-sales to sales to FDEs to service professionals, have been conditioned over a number of years.

Here’s what I really think, on top of all that, maybe we got a little lucky. Maybe workflow automation, because of AI, has actually kicked into a new gear where companies and enlightened CEOs are finally saying, hey, man, I don’t have enough years to dig out of the mess that took 60 years to build. How do I get something in here quickly that can make me an AI company to drive the innovation I’m talking about here today? Where you now are thinking about a control tower for all the agents, no matter what function you’re trying to use agentic AI to improve, you’re basically taking control of a dispersed data landscape between the hyperscalers, your own data lakes, and your own databases from those systems of record. You’re kind of building it from the bottom up and the top down.

You’re meeting us in the middle on this AI platform to transform businesses. I think it’s a combination of culture, of absolute brutal innovation and focus on the customer, and absolutely having the right formula for the right time in the history of the technology evolution. That, to me, is a really nice combination.

David, Host, Goldman Sachs: Yeah. It’s touchable. You touched on customer relationship management. Talk a little bit more about the opportunities in that market and how you’re focused on that.

Bill McDermott, CEO, ServiceNow: Yeah, sure. I mean, look, the SFA, you know, rent a platform to make my sales force put information into an SFA system. That game has been there, and it’s been played. That’s commoditized at a brutal level of distraction, if you ask me. The salespeople never wanted to keystroke data into a platform in the first place. What we’re doing is we’re taking our platform, and it doesn’t matter what system of record you use, because you actually don’t need a system of record at all if you don’t want one. If you want one, go for it. We’re actually basically saying, where do we meet the customer? They travel in all kinds of channels. They’re in social media. The marketing department knows how to generate leads. The brand has a purpose in the world. We have to get all that pipeline data.

We have to understand the customer at excruciating levels of detail. We also have to make our selling force productive. For example, our sales force today has their own AI teammate. What used to take them, on average, 30 hours to set up a great call with a company like yours and go through all the outside and nuances, the data and how you’re running and what we can do to help you is now done in a few minutes by the agent. That’s where the real productivity is. Our people don’t have to key in anything.

David, Host, Goldman Sachs: Yeah.

Bill McDermott, CEO, ServiceNow: We already have it.

David, Host, Goldman Sachs: Yeah.

Bill McDermott, CEO, ServiceNow: We already have the data.

David, Host, Goldman Sachs: Yeah.

Bill McDermott, CEO, ServiceNow: I’m going to meet you in whatever channel you want to shop in. That’s the order management process. I’m going to sell to you whatever you want me to sell to you. I’m going to give you the right product in the right configuration at the right price in the right place at the right time. I’m going to use the same platform now with all this in it to service you. I’ll give you an example. There is a manufacturer in Germany that wants to crack a hardware business in the United States. I’m working directly with the CEO. He says, I don’t have enough money to basically open retail. I don’t want to split all my profits with wholesalers. I want to go direct. My business is a very thin margin business. How do you help me change the game? I said, fantastic. Go direct.

Let’s change the service model. With agentic AI, we can arbitrage your labor profile. With 25% of the headcount of your competitors, you don’t have to lay anybody off. You have a lot less headcount already. We can make it look like your headcount is equivalent to theirs. We’ll arbitrage the labor. Agentic AI will do all the scheduling. We’ll remediate all the problems electronically. Before the human, if they have to show up at all, has to fix something, we already know what it is, the part’s in the right place, the right time, and you’re ready to service. Most of it’s going to be done remotely anyway. What did this individual learn? He learned that he can charge 50% more for same-day service and even more if he can guarantee within three hours. Now he’s making his big margin on the services side.

That’s what I mean, configure, price, quote, fulfill, service, one common platform. It’s that depth and range of understanding.

David, Host, Goldman Sachs: Yeah.

Bill McDermott, CEO, ServiceNow: Now all the workflow to get that person productive, if they have to make something happen in front of the customer, is absolutely flawless because that’s an automated workflow. That’s what it does.

David, Host, Goldman Sachs: Sure.

Bill McDermott, CEO, ServiceNow: I think we really have a super hand here, and we intend to play it wisely.

David, Host, Goldman Sachs: Super interesting. Shift gears. You’re one of the largest businesses with the federal government and enterprise software.

Bill McDermott, CEO, ServiceNow: Yeah.

David, Host, Goldman Sachs: What role do you believe ServiceNow will play, given the current administration’s focus on improving efficiency across agencies?

Bill McDermott, CEO, ServiceNow: Yes, David, thank you. Everybody wants to do better for the American citizen. The administration wants to do better. The agencies want to do better. The vendors that serve the government should all want to do better, which is why we struck a deal with the U.S. General Services Administration, who, as you know, is the buying center, if you will, that supports all the federal agencies, including military and civilian and so on. It was a fantastic deal for the government, but also a fantastic deal for us. As you saw in Q1, a lot of investors were like, ooh, what does this mean for ServiceNow? They said for Q2, ooh, what does this mean for ServiceNow? This is all in the earnings script. It was clear that ServiceNow continued to do well.

I think by achieving this latest milestone, it basically says what the government wanted it to say. This is a winning platform. We fully back the platform. The agencies, you’re free to do business with ServiceNow. What’s exciting about our space in the federal government, as you know, we’re one of the biggest. We’re also one of the most liked by all the agencies. They’re so excited to do business with us. I see the prospect of our business in the United States federal going way, way, way up. I also see one thing is great about the United States, many things, but one thing that’s really great is other governments follow what we do. I remember being in Japan when Zurich finally hit, our first hit. One of the top decision makers in government said to me, Bill, Bill, tell me all about Zurich. How are they doing it?

You’re going to have a copycat effect, I think, in governments around the world on how to drive this efficiency, how to architect platforms that matter in the strategic profile of running a government like a best-run business. We’re going to be in all of that.

David, Host, Goldman Sachs: From your lips to God’s ears that we can actually make progress on that. There is a lot of low-hanging fruit.

Bill McDermott, CEO, ServiceNow: Totally. I think, you know, I’ll give you an example. You still have COBOL systems in the U.S. government. Part of what I’m saying to you is the amazing complexity that has been built up more than six decades now has created a situation where departments can’t talk to each other because the machines can’t talk to each other. The people want to talk to each other. We’ve learned our hard lessons with integration. You’ve seen it in the history of events. This is the moment where we get to break through. What is different now? To your point, David, what is different now? They want to clean up the mess.

David, Host, Goldman Sachs: Yeah.

Bill McDermott, CEO, ServiceNow: They want the redundant platforms that are costing them too much to go. More than 80% of all the funding is maintaining legacy systems. If you’re spending most of your dough on maintaining the past, how could you possibly expect to innovate the future? We’re in the center of that conversation.

David, Host, Goldman Sachs: Yeah, it’s no different for lots of corporate America, too.

Bill McDermott, CEO, ServiceNow: David, I had a conversation yesterday with a CEO, terrific person, by the way, manufacturing company, took his company from 120 ERPs to 60. Do you realize the level of complexity you’re dealing with with 60 ERPs? This individual, maybe if he was eight years old, might have a chance of getting rid of it all. He’s not. They’re not putting kindergartners in the CEO jobs lately. How does he get there much faster and still deliver for his employees, his customers, and his shareholders? Answer? ServiceNow. Question was, Bill, how quickly can you get the team in here to do this for me? It’s really exciting times. I have never seen a bigger opportunity in my career. We’re fired up.

David, Host, Goldman Sachs: Bill, appreciate it. Thank you for being here.

Bill McDermott, CEO, ServiceNow: Thank you so much, David.

David, Host, Goldman Sachs: Appreciate you all.

Bill McDermott, CEO, ServiceNow: Thank you, sir.

David, Host, Goldman Sachs: Thank you, my friend.

Bill McDermott, CEO, ServiceNow: Thank you.

This article was generated with the support of AI and reviewed by an editor. For more information see our T&C.