Databricks, the data analytics software vendor that’s among the most richly valued private U.S. tech companies, told investors on Wednesday that annualized revenue will reach $2.4 billion by the midpoint of this year.

Annualized sales through July, or the first six months of fiscal 2025, will increase 60% from a year earlier, Databricks CFO Dave Conte said at an investor briefing concurrent with the company’s Data and AI Summit in San Francisco on Wednesday.

Databricks’ growth contrasts with parts of the software industry that have continued to struggle since soaring inflation and rising interest rates in 2022 put an end to the extended bull market. In recent weeks Okta, Salesforce, UiPath and other software companies have blamed disappointing results or guidance on the economy or other macro issues.

“Obviously there’s some volatility going on in enterprise software, but I’ve been really eager to get up and share how we’re performing financially,” Conte said. “It’s pretty exciting.”

Databricks is one of a handful of prominent venture-backed software makers that have long been on the path to an IPO. Others include Canva, Figma and Stripe. However, the IPO market has been quiet for over two years, even with some activity in 2024. In April, security software company Rubrik debuted on the New York Stock Exchange.

While Conte didn’t provide an update on Databricks’ plans to go public, he did say that business is strengthening. In March, the company told media outlets outlets that it generated $1.6 billion in revenue for the year ending Jan. 31, up more than 50% year over year. The 11-year-old startup had an annualized run rate of $1.5 billion and 50% growth for the quarter that ended July 31, 2023.

When it issued those figures in September, Databricks said it had raised $500 million in funding, valuing the company at $43 billion. Top competitor Snowflake, which debuted on the NYSE in 2020, was valued at $43.6 billion at the end of Wednesday’s trading session.

In the January quarter, Databricks saw 221 transactions that exceeded $1 million, Conte said. Existing clients are spending more, and the company is adding Fortune 500 clients, he said. Net revenue retention in the 2024 fiscal year, which ended in January, was higher than 140%. That figure indicates growth from existing customers.

Meanwhile, Databricks is investing in growth. Research and development spending as a percentage of revenue was 33% in each of the past three fiscal years, compared with 19% for its peer group and 23% for a group of 89 companies that have gone public since 2018, Conte said. Databricks’ subscription gross margin for the 2024 fiscal year was above 80%.

Databricks CEO Ali Ghodsi told reporters in a briefing on Wednesday that some growth is coming from the data warehouse product the company launched in 2020. That business topped $400 million in annualized revenue.

“I think by any B2B standard, it’s one of the fastest-growing probably out there,” Ghodsi said.

Databricks and Snowflake have been trying to reduce costs of cleaning up and running queries for clients by using a standard format called Apache Iceberg. Last week Databricks said it was paying over $1 billion to buy Tabular, a startup whose founders created Iceberg. Snowflake was also bidding for Tabular, CNBC reported.

WATCH: Everybody is interested in building their own AI models today, says Databricks CEO

Salesforce shares plummeted as much as 17% in extended trading on Wednesday after the cloud software vendor reported weaker-than-expected revenue and issued guidance that trailed Wall Street’s expectations.

Here’s how the company did, compared to the LSEG consensus:

• Earnings per share: $2.44 adjusted vs. $2.38 expected
• Revenue: $9.13 billion vs. $9.17 billion expected

Salesforce called for adjusted earnings per share in the current quarter of $2.34 to $2.36 on $9.2 billion to $9.25 billion in revenue. Analysts surveyed by LSEG had expected $2.40 in adjusted earnings per share on $9.37 billion in revenue.

Revenue in the fiscal first quarter, which ended April 30, increased 11% from $8.25 billion a year earlier, Salesforce said in a statement. It is the first time since 2006 that Salesforce fell short on revenue, according to LSEG data.

Salesforce saw budget scrutiny and longer deal cycles than usual during the quarter, president and operating chief Brian Millham told analysts on a conference call. Management implemented go-to-market changes that cut into bookings, Millham said.

All five of Salesforce’s product areas contributed to the growth. But revenue from the Professional Services and Other category, at $548 million, was down 9% and under the StreetAccount consensus of $572.9 million.

Net income jumped to $1.53 billion, or $1.56 per share, from $199 million, or 20 cents per share a year ago.

Salesforce lifted its earnings forecast for the 2025 fiscal year. The company now expects adjusted earnings of $9.86 to $9.94 per share, compared to $9.68 to $9.76 three months ago. Its revenue guidance remains at $37.7 billion to $38 billion. Analysts polled by LSEG were looking for $9.76 in adjusted earnings per share and $38.08 billion in revenue.

Amy Weaver, Salesforce’s finance chief, said she expects deal compression and slowing projects in the professional services business through the current fiscal year.

During the quarter, Salesforce started selling its Einstein Copilot assistant sales and customer service representatives. The company also said all paid Slack customers were gaining access to artificial intelligence features such as conversation summaries and daily recaps. The Wall Street Journal reported that Salesforce was in talks to buy data-integration company Informatica, but weeks later, the newspaper said talks had collapsed.

Weaver said Salesforce acquisitions would need “a clear timeline to value accretion.”

Before the after-hours move, Salesforce shares were up 3.5% so far this year, trailing the S&P 500 index, which is up around 11% during the same period. A drop of this magnitude on Thursday would mark Salesforce’s worst day on the market since the 2008 financial crisis.

— CNBC’s Robert Hum contributed to this report.

WATCH: Salesforce bets even bigger on artificial intelligence

Rubrik, a data-management software company backed by Microsoft, priced its IPO at $32 a share, according to a person familiar with the matter. That’s above its expected range.

The 10-year-old company sold 23.5 million shares ahead of its New York Stock Exchange debut on Thursday, the person said, and will trade under the ticker symbol “RBRK.” Rubrik raised $752 million through the initial public offering, valuing the company at $5.6 billion.

Last week the company said in a filing that it was expecting to price the offering at $28 to $31 per share.

Rubrik is hitting the public market during a historically slow period for venture-backed tech IPOs, particularly when it comes to companies that sell to businesses. The IPO market has been largely shuttered since late 2021, as concerns about a worsening economy and rising interest rates pushed investors out of risky assets.

Startups have stayed private for longer, recalibrating their finances and waiting for better conditions. Even with interest rates stabilizing and the broader tech market bouncing back over the past recent months, private tech companies have been slow to exit.

Instacart and software vendor Klaviyo went public in September, the first venture-backed tech deals in the U.S. since 2021. Reddit went public last month, a day after the Nasdaq debut of Astera Labs, which sells data center connectivity chips.

Early on, Rubrik sold perpetual licenses and set up maintenance contracts for hardware that could take care of data storage functions such as backup and compression. In recent years, the company has shifted toward subscriptions for cloud-based cybersecurity software. Businesses can use the software to secure data in cloud applications and in public clouds and prevent data loss in the event of ransomware attacks.

Rubrik now gets 91% of its revenue from subscriptions, up from 59% two years ago. Revenue increased less than 5% in the fiscal year that ended on Jan. 31, but annual recurring revenue from subscriptions jumped 47%.

Almost 100 customers were contributing over $1 million in subscription ARR at the end of the fiscal year, the company said. Clients include Barclays, Carhartt and Home Depot.

“Our key top-line metric is subscription ARR,” Rubrik finance chief Kiran Choudary said in a videotaped presentation for the company’s IPO roadshow.

However, Rubrik’s losses are widening. The company reported a $354 million net loss in the latest fiscal year, compared with around $278 million during the prior year.

Microsoft invested in Rubrik in 2021 at a reported valuation of $4 billion. Venture firm Lightspeed, where CEO Bipul Sinha used to be a partner, will have over 25% of voting power following the IPO. Sinha will have 8% control.

Apple on Wednesday said it had fixed an outage for its App Store on iOS and MacOS devices.

The iPhone maker picked up 19% of revenue from its Services category, including some from the App Store, according to its latest quarterly report. For most applications, developers keep all revenue they generate through the App Store, but Apple receives a commission when people buy individual apps and make in-app purchases.

“Users are experiencing a problem with this service. We are investigating and will update the status as more information becomes available,” Apple said in an update to its system status page. The downtime update carried a time stamp of 6:31 p.m. ET. By 7:35 p.m. ET it had been resolved.

Some people posted screenshots on social media showing error messages when they tried to open the App Store on iPhones.

It wasn’t the first time the App Store became unavailable. Apple said the service was having issues in 2022.

Apple TV+, Apple Music, Apple Podcasts and other company services were also having technical issues on Wednesday, according to the page.

It’s been a rough few months for Apple, whose shares have declined 12% so far this year, while the S&P 500 index has gained 9%. Last month, the U.S. Justice Department sued Apple, claiming it used the popularity of the iPhone to deter competition.

Microsoft ended Friday’s U.S. trading session as the most valuable publicly traded company, surpassing Apple after briefly topping the iPhone maker during intraday trading Thursday.

Shares of Microsoft climbed more than 3% for the week, bringing the company’s market cap to $2.89 trillion, while Apple’s stock dropped by over 3%, lowering its valuation to $2.87 trillion.

Redburn Atlantic Equities analyst James Cordwell downgraded Apple to neutral from buy on Wednesday, citing “little room for upside over the next few years” in iPhone growth and an “anticipated underwhelming March quarter.”

Apple said Thursday that former Vice President Al Gore will retire from the company’s board next month after serving as a director since 2003.

Microsoft, meanwhile, got a vote of confidence Thursday after discussing its artificial intelligence capabilities to developers at an event in San Francisco. Piper Sandler analysts told clients in a note that they were “encouraged by the momentum around the most mature AI products” and mentioned that GitHub website traffic has accelerated year over year for three months in a row. The analysts have the equivalent of a buy rating on Microsoft shares.

Apple had been the most valuable public company for over a year, following brief periods when that distinction was held by Saudi Aramco and Microsoft.

WATCH: The AI dark horse

Oracle shares dropped more than 9% in extended trading Monday after the software company reported fiscal second-quarter revenue and quarterly revenue guidance that fell short of Wall Street expectations.

Here’s how the company did, compared with consensus estimates from LSEG, formerly known as Refinitiv:

• Earnings per share: $1.34 per share, adjusted, vs. $1.32 per share, expected
• Revenue: $12.94 billion, vs. $13.05 billion expected

Revenue grew 5% year over year in the quarter, which ended Nov. 30, according to a statement. Net income increased 44% to $2.5 billion, or 89 cents per share, from $1.74 billion, or 63 cents a share, a year ago.

With respect to guidance, Oracle called for adjusted net income for the fiscal third quarter of $1.35 to $1.39 per share and 6% to 8% revenue growth. Analysts polled by LSEG had predicted $1.37 in adjusted earnings per share and $13.34 billion in revenue, which implies 7.6% revenue growth.

Oracle’s revenue from cloud services and license support totaled $9.64 billion, up 12% and below the StreetAccount consensus of $9.71 billion.

Revenue from cloud and on-premises licenses fell 18% to $1.18 billion, slightly lower than the $1.21 billion StreetAccount consensus.

Services revenue, at $1.37 billion, also missed consensus, which was $1.40 billion.

Oracle said cloud infrastructure revenue reached $1.6 billion during the period, up 52%. Clients included Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence startup xAI, Halliburton and Samsung.

The Musk company wanted considerably more AI chips than Oracle could supply, Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison said on a conference call with analysts. Nvidia’s graphics processing units have been in short supply across the board, and the chipmaker has been working to address the shortage.

“We did not bring up as much capacity as we could have used this past quarter, Oracle CEO Safra Catz said on the call. The company had to choose between building something small and recognizing revenue in the quarter, or going ahead with a larger buildout and waiting for capacity to become available, she said.

During the quarter, Oracle said it had picked up cloud business from larger rival Microsoft and announced that its database software will be available on Microsoft’s Azure public cloud. The company will turn on 20 data centers connected with Azure in the next few months, Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison said in the statement.

“I expect the OCI growth rate to be over 50% for a few years,” Ellison said on the conference call. OCI is the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, the company’s answer to Microsoft Azure and the market-leading Amazon Web Services.

Also in the quarter, Oracle’s NetSuite division bought Australian company Next Technik, which makes field service software, for undisclosed terms.

Oracle shares are up about 41% so far this year, outperforming the S&P 500 index, which has gained 20% during the same period.

WATCH: Edward Jones says buy Oracle now

Don’t miss these stories from CNBC PRO:

GitLab stock jumped as much as 18% in extended trading on Monday after the developer-tools software maker announced fiscal third-quarter results and quarterly guidance that impressed Wall Street.

Here’s how the company did, compared with consensus of estimates among analysts polled by LSEG, formerly known as Refinitiv:

• Earnings: 9 cents per share, adjusted, vs. loss of 1 cent per share expected.
• Revenue: $149.7 million, vs. $141.5 million expected.

This marks the first time GitLab has posted an adjusted operating profit.

“We continue to grow responsibly and delivered over 2,200 basis points of non-GAAP operating margin expansion,” the company’s finance chief, Brian Robins, was quoted as saying in a statement.

GitLab’s revenue grew 32% year over year in the quarter, which ended on Oct. 31, according to the statement. Net loss attributed to the company came to $285.2 million, or $1.84 per share, compared with a net loss of $48.5 million, or 33 cents per share, in the year-ago quarter. GitLab made a one-time income tax adjustment during the quarter that skewed results.

The company, which went public in 2021 and runs remotely, now has 874 customers contributing over $100,000 million in annual recurring revenue, up 37% from the same quarter a year ago.

Some organizations have been moving from Microsoft-owned GitHub, Sid Sijbrandij, GitLab’s co-founder and CEO, said on a conference call with analysts. But a portion of GitLab’s small and medium-size customers are still being cautious about economic conditions, Robins said.

A planning tool that non-technical workers will be able to use won’t impact results for the coming fiscal year, but it will make a difference in subsequent years, Sijbrandij said. He said GitLab is talking with Amazon Web Services about an integration into the Amazon Q work assistant, which AWS announced last week.

For the fourth quarter of its 2024 fiscal year, GitLab called for adjusted earnings of 8 to 9 cents per share on $157.0 million to $158.0 million in revenue. Analysts polled by LSEG were looking for a net loss of 1 cent per share and $150.2 million in revenue.

Excluding the after-hours move, GitLab stock is up 16% so far this year, while the S&P 500 stock index has gained 19% over the same period.

WATCH: We’re very happy with our ability to hire and who we were able to hire, says GitLab CEO

Shares of cloud monitoring software firm Datadog soared 28% on Tuesday, their best day ever, after the company reported stronger-than-expected third-quarter earnings and full-year guidance.

The company reported quarterly revenue of $547.5 million, up 25% year over year, topping estimates. That growth rate was consistent with results in the second quarter. Analysts surveyed by LSEG, formerly known as Refinitiv, had expected revenue of $524.1 million. Adjusted earnings per share came out to 45 cents, better than the 34 cents analysts expected.

Datadog also bumped up its revenue and profit view for the full year. The company now expects fourth-quarter revenue between $564 million and $568 million, alongside full-year revenue of around $2.1 billion. The figures exceeded consensus of $543.3 million and $2.06 billion, respectively, according to a survey of analysts by LSEG.

Co-founder and CEO Olivier Pomel told analysts on a conference call that “AI-native customers” contributed 2.5% of Datadog’s annualized revenue during the quarter. Pomel declined to confirm if his company was working with OpenAI, Anthropic or Cohere. All three sell access to large language models that can compose text based on a few words of human input.

Datadog’s surge buoyed other cloud-computing names, including MongoDB and Snowflake.

The latest guidance is the cheeriest Datadog has been all year. Its stock fell sharply in August after lowering guidance as companies reduced cloud spending.

Datadog builds cloud monitoring and security products that work with Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure. The company was founded in 2010 and debuted on the Nasdaq in 2019.

The cloud infrastructure providers indicated in late October that some organizations’ cost-reduction efforts have begun to wane. Similar to many cloud names, Datadog was not immune to corporate belt-tightening. Pomel validated that observation, saying optimization activity among Datadog clients could be easing up. “Overall, we continue to see impact from optimization in our business, but we believe that the intensity and breadth of optimization we’ve experienced in recent quarters is moderating,” he said Tuesday.

The fourth quarter is off to a good start, although usage does tend to fall around the holidays, Pomel said.

“Into the print there was a lot of anxiety about whether Datadog would follow AWS to improving QoQ growth and stable YoY, or demonstrate a worried disconnect and continue to decelerate on a YoY basis,” Bernstein Research analysts led by Peter Weed wrote in a Tuesday note. “Datadog emphatically dispelled these worries.” The analysts have the equivalent of a buy rating on the stock.

Don’t miss these stories from CNBC PRO: