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FY2025 Q4
Improving
Datadog, Inc. earnings call
Buzzberg read
Core business ex-AI accelerated to 23% growth in Q4
Datadog's Q4 2025 earnings call revealed a strong quarter, with revenue of $953M (+29% YoY), beating guidance. The call highlighted an acceleration in the core business (excluding the largest AI-native customer), which grew 23% YoY (up from 20% in Q3), offsetting a deceleration in the largest AI customer. Management provided bullish FY26 guidance, expecting the core business to grow at least 20% and total revenue to grow 18-20%, signaling durable demand beyond the AI-native cohort. Record Q4 bookings of $1.63B, up 37% YoY, with a notable eight-figure new logo land with a major AI financial model company.
Buzzberg read Core business ex-AI accelerated to 23% growth in Q4 Datadog's Q4 2025 earnings call revealed a strong quarter, with revenue of $953M (+29% YoY), beating guidance. The call highlighted an acceleration in the core business (excluding the largest AI-native customer), which grew 23% YoY (up from 20% in Q3), offsetting a deceleration in the largest AI customer. Management provided bullish FY26 guidance, expecting the core business to grow at least 20% and total revenue to grow 18-20%, signaling durable demand beyond the AI-native cohort. Record Q4 bookings of $1.63B, up 37% YoY, with a notable eight-figure new logo land with a major AI financial model company. Read full analysisCollapse analysis
Datadog's Q4 2025 earnings call revealed a strong quarter, with revenue of $953M (+29% YoY), beating guidance. The call highlighted an acceleration in the core business (excluding the largest AI-native customer), which grew 23% YoY (up from 20% in Q3), offsetting a deceleration in the largest AI customer. Management provided bullish FY26 guidance, expecting the core business to grow at least 20% and total revenue to grow 18-20%, signaling durable demand beyond the AI-native cohort. Record Q4 bookings of $1.63B, up 37% YoY, with a notable eight-figure new logo land with a major AI financial model company.
- Company signed 18 deals over $10M in TCV, including two over $100M, showing strength in high-value contracts.
- Management's bullish tone is driven by the re-acceleration of the core (non-AI) business, which is expected to grow at least 20% in FY2026.
- Strong product adoption continues, with 18% of customers using 8+ products and significant traction in newer areas like LLM observability and Bits.ai agents.
Revenue$0.9532BReported
EPS$0.59Reported
Gross margin80.39%Reported
Operating margin0.84%Reported
6 grounded callouts
What matters now
The highest-signal changes from the call.
Product
Three core pillars each surpassed $1B ARR
AI
AI-native cohort shows strong growth and scale
Show 3 more callouts
Demand
Record Q4 bookings up 37% with large deals
Guidance
2026 guidance implies 18-20% growth, core at least 20%
Product
APM/DEM accelerating to mid-30s percent growth
Reported period
Actuals
| Metric | Reported | Change |
|---|---|---|
| Revenue | $0.9532B | Reported |
| EPS | $0.59 | Reported |
| Gross margin | 80.39% | Reported |
| Operating margin | 0.84% | Reported |
| Free cash flow | $0.3182B | Reported |
| Capex | $0.0089B | Reported |
Forward-looking
Forward guidance
| Metric | Period | Range | Midpoint | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| EPS | FY2026 | $2.08–$2.16 | $2.12 | Guided |
| EPS | FY2026 Q1 | $0.49–$0.51 | $0.50 | Guided |
| Operating margin | FY2026 | 21% | 21% | Guided |
| Operating margin | FY2026 Q1 | 21% | 21% | Guided |
| Revenue | FY2026 | $4.06B–$4.1B | $4.08B | Guided |
| Revenue | FY2026 Q1 | $0.951B–$0.961B | $0.956B | Guided |
AI, capex & demand read
Management read
Upbeat and Confident
Management highlighted record bookings, strong customer wins, acceleration in the core business, and expressed optimism about 2026 with AI as a growth driver.
Management AI read
Management emphasized AI as both an accelerant and a strategic focus: they are integrating AI into the Datadog platform (e.g., Bits.ai agents, MCP server) and building products to observe and secure customers' AI stacks (e.g., LLM observability). They see AI increasing complexity and volume, driving demand for observability, and are seeing high growth among AI-native customers, including record de
Investment and capacity
Management did not provide specific capex guidance for their own spend but noted that hyperscaler capex (e.g., $500B+ combined) signals a large increase in system complexity and reach, which they view as beneficial to their business. They did mention that their own capital expenditures and capitalized software are expected to be 4-5% of revenue in fiscal 2026.
all 5 named companies below
Companiesreturns since call
Customers
DATABRICKS
Customers
Olivier Pommel
Management discusses high growth within the AI-native customer group, which may include Databricks, indicating their platform is being adopted by leading AI companies.
Evidence
“we continue to see very high growth within this AI-native customer group”
STRIPE
Customers
Olivier Pommel
Management highlights a significant expansion with a leading fintech company, indicating a large customer win and strengthening its position in the financial sector.
Evidence
“an eight-figure annualized expansion with a leading e-commerce and digital payments platform.”
XAI.PVT
Customers
Olivier Pommel
Management discusses high growth within the AI-native customer group, which may include xAI, indicating their platform is being adopted by leading AI companies.
Evidence
“continue to see very high growth within this AI-native customer group”
Competitors
ANTHROPIC
Competitors
Olivier Pommel
Management references Anthropic's frontier models as a driver of complexity and volume in the market, framing them as accelerants for observability demand rather than direct threats.
Evidence
“some of the advancements when it comes to agentic frameworks, agentic deployments, the stuff that we've seen from Anthropic and new frontier models from OpenAI”
OPENAI
Competitors
Olivier Pommel
Management references OpenAI's frontier models as a driver of complexity and volume in the market, framing them as accelerants for observability demand rather than direct threats.
Evidence
“the stuff that we've seen from Anthropic and new frontier models from OpenAI”
External signals
Supply-chain alpha · 5returns since call
The core business (excluding the largest AI-native customer) is accelerating: revenue growth increased from 20% in Q3 to 23% in Q4, and the company expects this segment to grow at least 20% in FY2026.
Evidence
“Revenue growth accelerated with our broad base of customers, excluding the AI natives, to 23% year-over-year, up from 20% in Q3. We have seen this trend of accelerated revenue growth continue in January.”
The latest eight-figure new logo land with a major AI financial model company was a consolidation of more than five tools, showing that AI-native customers are consolidating on Datadog for its platform, not adopting it as a point tool.
Evidence
“This is a consolidation of more than five open source, commercial, hyperscaler, and in-house observability tools into the unified Datadog platform.”
The growth in the AI-native customer cohort is diversifying. The company now has about 650 AI-native customers, and 19 are spending over $1M annually. This is moving away from a 'one big customer' concentration risk story.
The largest AI customer is decelerating, and management is explicitly guiding the core business to grow faster than the overall company, highlighting that the overall growth rate is being dragged down by this one customer's consumption model.
The 'run without limits' feature for Digital Experience Monitoring (DEM) is a strategic move to capture more volume and address potential customer concerns about cost, potentially creating a price-per-value differentiator.
Methodology & coverage
Management-only analysis. All 5 validated company mentions are shown. Reported actuals and forward guidance are kept separate. Public evidence is limited to eight short attributed quotes. AI-generated analysis can be incomplete or wrong; verify important claims against the original source.