ServiceNow says half its new revenue skips seat licenses

Salesforce and ServiceNow face structural pressure from AI that lets customers grow output without hiring, a $5 billion fund manager told Bloomberg Tech Monday. Todd Ahlsten, chief investment officer at Parnassus, argued the shift threatens any company still counting seats as its main growth number.

If a customer can automate the work instead of hiring, the old motion of adding headcount then adding licenses stalls.

ServiceNow CEO Bill McDermott told the Wall Street Journal that roughly half of the company's net new business revenue now comes from non-seat pricing. This suggests ServiceNow priced around the shift rather than getting caught by it.

Numbers from Salesforce complicate the picture. Its ten heaviest Agentforce users grew total spend 1.5 times year over year, and Sales and Service showed seat growth on the May call.

The pattern shows up industry-wide. Bain analyzed more than 30 SaaS vendors shipping generative AI features. About 65% went hybrid, adding usage or feature charges on top of existing seat pricing instead of replacing it.

Ahlsten's structural-pressure argument doesn't hold once vendors run both revenue lines at the same time. ServiceNow's non-seat share already sits near half of new business while seat growth held too. Vendors are stacking a second charge onto seats there, not losing them. The number worth watching is whether that non-seat share climbs past half, showing the hybrid model taking over instead of just sitting alongside seats.