Software & Services

Palantir Technologies Inc. has secured a formal program of record designation for its Maven Smart System from the U.S. Department of War, with department-wide implementation set to take effect by the end of September. The designation expands the system's application across the Space Force, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps and the Army. The development comes as investors await Palantir's third-quarter earnings report scheduled for November 2, which will show whether commercial growth sustains its pace. In the second quarter, revenues from the U.S. Commercial and U.S. Government segments jumped 149% and 90% year-over-year respectively, while international Commercial and Government revenues climbed 26% and 42%, supporting 93% overall topline growth and 225% year-over-year growth in bottom line figures. U.S. government revenue reached $809 million, nearly matching commercial revenues, keeping results closely tied to federal budget cycles. The company carries a $460.88 billion market capitalization, trades at a trailing P/E of 163.92x and a forward P/E of 85.47x, and holds only $211.4 million in total debt, a debt-to-equity ratio of 2.14%. Hedge fund ownership declined from 96 funds in Q1 2026 to 86 funds in the following quarter, while short interest sits at 2.83%.

Cadence Design Systems introduced a new RTL Generation Agent within its ChipStack AI Super Agent in late September 2026, automating front-end digital design and verification from natural language. The announcement of the RTL Generation Agent came on 22 September 2026, extending ChipStack from verification into spec-to-RTL creation and updates, with early evaluations lined up with customers including Honda. Separately, Cadence tools helped Global Unichip Corp. deliver custom AI accelerators and hyperscale silicon on TSMC's advanced process technologies. Cadence's narrative projects $8.4 billion in revenue and $2.0 billion in earnings by 2029, requiring 12.9% yearly revenue growth and about a $0.6 billion earnings increase from $1.4 billion today, with a $405.47 fair value implying 15% upside to its current price. Some of the lowest ranked analysts were already assuming revenue of about US$8.1 billion and earnings near US$1.7 billion by 2029.

Airship AI Holdings has announced $29 million of firm-fixed-price awards from an agency within the Department of Homeland Security, a sum larger than its approximately $18.2 million of trailing revenue. The awards carry a six-month performance period and cover software integration, edge and server-side AI products, and hardware. BigBear.ai, by contrast, ended June with $409.8 million in cash and investments and approximately $16.6 million of debt, alongside a $269.6 million backlog. BigBear's June-quarter revenue grew 13% to $36.7 million with gross margin of 32.8%, but its adjusted EBITDA loss widened to $11.6 million from $8.5 million. At October 2 prices, BigBear traded at about 9.7 times trailing revenue versus roughly 4.0 times for Airship, while Airship reported $12.4 million in cash and used only about $235,000 in operating cash during the June quarter.

Schneider Electric is nearing an agreement to acquire U.S. engineering software company PTC for more than $20 billion, Bloomberg News reported, citing a person familiar with the discussions. A transaction could be announced as early as Monday morning, the person said, and the potential deal was reported earlier Sunday by the Financial Times. Neither Schneider Electric nor PTC has commented on the potential deal, which if completed would be the largest acquisition in Schneider Electric's history, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. PTC develops software used by manufacturers for product design, product lifecycle management and connected industrial operations, and adding those capabilities could deepen Schneider's push toward integrating software with the equipment and automation systems used by industrial customers. The potential acquisition would follow another recent Schneider deal: the company last month agreed to acquire smart-device maker Shelly Group for €1.2 billion, or about $1.35 billion.

Schneider Electric is close to a deal to buy U.S. industrial software maker PTC for about $20 billion, the Financial Times reported on Sunday, citing people familiar with the matter. The deal could be announced as soon as Monday, though talks are ongoing and could still fall apart. Boston-based PTC has a market value of about $15.6 billion, according to LSEG data, and raised its annual revenue forecast in July, citing strong demand for its industrial software and AI tools. The potential acquisition would be Schneider's latest move to expand its software and digital operations. The French company is also pursuing the acquisition of Bulgarian smart-home equipment maker Shelly Group for €70 per share, valuing it at about €1.27 billion, an offer representing a roughly 4% premium to the share price before the announcement and conditional on securing at least 95% of the company's shares and receiving regulatory approvals.

Adobe announced in late September 2026 a partnership making it the National Hockey League's Official Creative, Marketing and AI Partner, alongside a multi-year AI-powered customer experience collaboration with Jet2 to personalise holiday planning and travel content. The two alliances place Adobe's CX Enterprise, Firefly and GenStudio tools at the centre of large-scale customer engagement programs spanning sport and travel, with the Jet2 deal serving as a concrete proof point for CX Enterprise Coworker and agentic AI in a high-volume consumer setting. Adobe's investment narrative projects $33.4 billion in revenue and $9.5 billion in earnings by 2029, requiring 8.7% yearly revenue growth and roughly a $2.2 billion earnings increase from $7.3 billion today, and yields a $275.06 fair value representing 16% upside to the current price. More cautious analysts assume only about US$32.6 billion of revenue and US$9.3 billion of earnings by 2029, citing AI pricing pressure and ARR growth risk. The deals do not on their own remove near-term pressure around slowing net new ARR or the risk that AI pricing competition and the upcoming CEO transition unsettle earnings and sentiment.

Accenture reported fourth-quarter results on October 1 that beat its own revenue guidance, with revenue of $18.7 billion, up 7% in local currency, and bookings of $22.2 billion outrunning revenue. Every geography and both consulting and managed services grew at that same 7% pace, and managed services set a fourth-quarter record at $12.8 billion. The company ended fiscal 2026 with nearly 110,000 AI and data professionals, past its 80,000 target, while more than 400 clients began advanced AI projects during the year and bookings from its eight emerging AI and data partners more than tripled. Free cash flow reached $11.6 billion, about 1.4 times net income, and Accenture returned $11.5 billion to shareholders through $7.5 billion of buybacks and $4 billion of dividends, with at least $9.5 billion planned for fiscal 2027 and a quarterly dividend of $1.71 per share, up 5%, already declared. Fiscal 2027 guidance calls for 3% to 6% revenue growth in local currency, with 2% to 2.5% of that from acquisitions, and earnings per share guided to climb 3% to 6%, while the shares carry a forward P/E of 12.41 as of October 2.

Strategy founder and chairman Michael Saylor published data on the company's Bitcoin strategy with the concise comment: "More orange than ever." The post, which appeared on the company formerly known as MicroStrategy, signals a potential massive new Bitcoin purchase by the firm. Saylor's terse remark accompanied the release of the company's Bitcoin strategy data, though no specific purchase amount or dollar figure was disclosed in the source material. The comment echoes Saylor's long-running practice of teasing Strategy's Bitcoin acquisitions ahead of official announcements.

Nvidia's board authorized an additional $150B for its existing share-repurchase program, bringing the remaining authorization to $235B, which the company said was the largest increase to a share-repurchase authorization in history. Micron Technology reported fiscal fourth-quarter results and guidance that topped Wall Street's expectations by a wide margin, earning an adjusted $33.42 per share as revenue soared 379.1% year-over-year to $54.23B, versus analyst expectations of $31.72 per share on $51.49B in revenue. Accenture shares rose after its Q4 beat expectations and it forecast upbeat fiscal 2027 revenue growth, reporting GAAP earnings of $3.29 per share, revenue up 6.3% year over year to $18.7B, and new bookings of $22.2B. MongoDB shares fell after CEO Chirantan Desai stepped down effective immediately to become the newly created Chief Enterprise Platform Officer at Meta, with the board appointing Dev Ittycheria as interim president and CEO. Summit Therapeutics shares surged after AstraZeneca announced a $2B equity investment in the U.S. biotech and a clinical collaboration to develop new cancer treatments, purchasing convertible preferred shares at a conversion price equivalent to $18.36 per common share, a 10% premium to Summit's five-day volume-weighted average price. For the week, the Dow fell 1.26%, the S&P 500 lost 0.27%, and the Nasdaq Composite climbed 0.45%.

Pegasystems announced Launchpad.io's AI Assistant, a conversational development tool that lets enterprises design, build, and evolve applications using natural language while preserving governance, reliability, and scalability. The assistant turns plain-language business requirements directly into application logic, workflows, and data models, which could widen participation in enterprise software development across non-technical teams. The launch follows the general availability of Pega Infinity 26 in July 2026, which introduced broader AI assistants, agentic workflows, and no token pricing across the core platform, with Launchpad.io extending those ideas into more accessible, conversational app creation. Pegasystems' narrative projects $2.3 billion in revenue and $334.9 million in earnings by 2029, requiring 10.1% yearly revenue growth and an earnings increase of about $10.9 million from $324.0 million today, while some of the most optimistic analysts already expected about US$2.4 billion in revenue and roughly US$397.9 million in earnings. The company's forecasts yield a $40.00 fair value, an 18% upside to its current price.

Oracle and We Energies announced a nuclear power subscription deal on October 2, 2026, under which Oracle will take 10-20% of the output from the Point Beach Nuclear Plant, or 125-250 megawatts, for the $15 billion Lighthouse Campus AI data center in Port Washington, Wisconsin. The campus, co-developed by Oracle, OpenAI, and Vantage Data Centers as part of the broader Stargate initiative, is designed to house close to 1 gigawatt of AI capacity within a 1.3 gigawatt total electrical footprint, with completion targeted for 2028. Oracle has committed to fully funding the energy costs for its portion, and the deal is the primary driver of a proposed $176 million electric rate hike for We Energies customers in 2027, accounting for roughly 20% of that increase, while the utility projects the arrangement will save customers approximately $300 million in fuel costs between 2027 and 2033. The subscription, a first-of-its-kind model in Wisconsin, requires approval from the Wisconsin Public Service Commission, which is weighing whether to require tech companies to cover 100% of new power plant costs. The deal is part of an industry-wide pivot in which Big Tech has contracted over 10 gigawatts of new nuclear capacity in the United States over the past year, including Microsoft's 20-year power purchase agreement for the 835-megawatt restart of Three Mile Island, Amazon's acquisition of a nuclear-adjacent Pennsylvania campus for over $650 million and its $500 million investment in X-energy small modular reactors, and Google's order of 500 megawatts from Kairos Power. Data center power demand reached 29.6 gigawatts by late 2025, equivalent to the peak demand of New York state, and the International Energy Agency projects it will rise by 130% by 2030, even as U.S. nuclear output stayed largely flat between 2020 and 2025 and no small modular reactors are under construction in the country.

Salesforce authorized a $50 billion share repurchase program in February 2026 and executed half of it within weeks through the largest accelerated share repurchase in corporate history. The buyback equals roughly a quarter of the company's market value, which sits under $200 billion, and comes as Salesforce generated $17.73 billion of levered free cash flow over the past twelve months on revenue of $43.94 billion, with an operating margin of 21.38% and a net margin of 21.99%. Revenue grew 10.80% in the most recent quarter while earnings grew 86.90%, yet the stock closed at $234.69 on October 2, down 4.51% over twelve months against a roughly 14% gain for the S&P 500, and trades at 13.99 times next year's estimates versus about 19 times for the index. The company carries $42.38 billion of debt against $11.4 billion of cash, and its share count has already fallen from 997 million to 895.5 million. The article questions whether redirecting capital to buybacks signals the end of Salesforce's acquisition-driven growth era, particularly as generative AI raises doubts about future seat-based demand.

The updated analyst model for Science Applications International now points to a fair value of US$133.70, up from US$121.50, a change of about 10%. The revision follows the latest Q2 report and updated guidance, with several firms including TD Cowen, Jefferies, UBS, Truist and Stifel raising their price targets. Jefferies and Truist both highlighted surprise 5% organic revenue growth in fiscal Q2, and Stifel pointed to a clean beat and raise with margins surprising to the upside. Goldman Sachs raised its target to US$103 but kept a Sell rating, citing guidance implying revenue down and margins lower in the second half of the fiscal year, while Truist and Jefferies kept Hold ratings and flagged concerns over recompete contracts and slower projected organic growth versus peers. In the updated model, the revenue growth assumption shifted from 30.83% to 69.38%, the profit margin assumption from 4.96% to 5.62%, the future P/E assumption from 14.38x to 13.46x, and the discount rate from 8.30% to 8.26%.

Accenture plc reported fourth-quarter results on October 1 that beat its own guidance, sending the shares up 15.78% in a single session. The company recorded 141 client bookings worth $100 million or more in the quarter, which it describes as a record, and reported bookings of $84.5 billion against $74 billion of revenue. Accenture expects revenue growth of 3% to 6% in local currency during fiscal 2027, against the 5% it just delivered, with full-year operating margin at 15.4% on a GAAP basis. That guidance puts fiscal 2027 earnings at $14.39 to $14.81 a share, a $14.60 midpoint that is 14.5 times forward earnings, against roughly 19 times for the S&P 500. Accenture closed at $212.30 on October 1, up 15.78% on the results and still about 16% below where it traded a year ago, after falling 13.11% over the past year while the S&P 500 rose about 14%.

Pony.ai and its Croatian partner Verne have launched fully driverless robotaxi trials in Zagreb, the company's first such deployment in Europe. The service runs on public roads in Croatia's capital and is integrated with the Uber app for ride hailing. The Zagreb launch extends Pony.ai's autonomous ride service beyond its existing markets and gives the company a live European proof point for its joint deployment model, in which partners fund fleets while Pony.ai concentrates on Level 4 software and operations. Pony.ai, a US based software group focused on autonomous mobility in China and overseas, has a market cap of $2.8b, placing it in the mid sized bracket of global automation players. Investors can watch upcoming disclosures on paid ride volumes, fleet count and contribution margins from joint deployments like Zagreb to see whether unit economics in new cities start to resemble improving metrics already reported in Guangzhou and Shenzhen.

Quantinuum secured a finalized US$100 million CHIPS R&D award from the U.S. Department of Commerce to support trapped ion quantum computer manufacturing in the United States. The company also announced new collaborations with Quanta Computer and Oracle tied to its trapped ion quantum hardware. As part of the Oracle tie-up, Quantinuum will place its Helios quantum computer inside Oracle data centers to support quantum cloud computing access. Quantinuum, a quantum computing hardware and software specialist in the IT industry, has a market cap of about US$12.7b. The company said the CHIPS R&D award and Oracle data center placement support its push to integrate quantum systems with AI and high performance computing through partners such as Oracle and HPE, though heavy reported losses and the risk of delays around its Sol and Apollo systems remain open issues.

Wedbush maintained its Outperform rating and $70 price target on Cognizant ahead of the company's third quarter fiscal 2026 earnings results, scheduled for October 29. The firm said Cognizant continues to see strong demand across multiple segments, led by Financial Services, which remains its strongest vertical, with clients treating AI-driven modernization projects in fraud, underwriting, compliance and core banking as non-discretionary investments. A consensus estimate expects Cognizant to report adjusted earnings per share of $1.46 on revenue of $5.65B. Wedbush analyst Steven Wahrhaftig said Cognizant reiterated that Project LEAP, its internal restructuring program launched this year to shift from traditional IT services toward AI automation, remains on track with no delays. With $84 million incurred in the second quarter, the remaining portion of the $230 to $320 million in expected program costs should be spread evenly across the third and fourth quarters, with substantially all costs incurred in 2026, and the full-year savings benefit arriving in fiscal 2027, which Wedbush expects to drive an additional roughly 20 basis points of margin expansion. Cognizant's AI engagements remain in the early stages, with long-term revenue streams developing in fiscal year 2027.

Microsoft generated $182.94 billion of fiscal 2026 operating cash flow and paid $115.95 billion for property and equipment, leaving $66.99 billion of simple free cash flow that covered its $26.45 billion annual dividend about 2.5 times. After dividends, roughly $40.54 billion remained before repurchases and other claims, and $22.27 billion of buybacks used part of that balance. In the fiscal fourth quarter, management reported $41 billion of capital expenditure including finance leases, compared with $35.8 billion of cash equipment spending, with the separately reported $5.6 billion finance-lease component creating future obligations rather than immediate cash outlays. Holding operating cash flow at $182.94 billion, an additional $20 billion of cash equipment spending would cut simple free cash flow to $46.99 billion and still leave roughly 1.8 times dividend coverage, while an additional $40 billion would leave $26.99 billion, close to the dividend bill before buybacks. At September 30's approximate $3.81 trillion market capitalization, the payout was less than 1% of equity value, and fiscal 2026 simple free cash flow implies approximately 57 times free cash flow. Insider Monkey's hedge fund database showed 273 Microsoft holders in Q2 2026, compared with 282 in Q1, with Fisher Asset Management increasing its share position 3% to 26,611,728.

UBS said it sees the artificial intelligence infrastructure market staying hot, keeping CoreWeave in focus on Friday. In a note to clients, UBS analyst Karl Keirstead wrote that the per-hour price of hosted Nvidia GPUs is rising, that the environment is inflationary, and that revenue-per-gigawatt figures are moving higher, now a key pillar of the hyperscaler and neo-cloud bull case. Keirstead noted that CoreWeave disclosed this week it raised per-hour GPU pricing across all SKUs by 25% in July 2026 and has since raised them by another 10% in just the last two to three months. He also flagged the risk that local community and state and local government pushback could throttle the pace of AI data center additions, though he said checks suggested the industry will manage through the hurdle. Keirstead added that the availability and cost of capital could slow the AI buildout, with some projects expected to fade, but said better-positioned players including CoreWeave will not have an issue.

Compass merged with Paragon Realtors this week, folding the Dallas-based independent boutique brokerage into the real estate conglomerate. Paragon, founded 26 years ago by Mike Miller, has closed over $260 million in real estate volume over the past year, and its 85 agents will join Compass, with 35 agents in Sherman, Texas, operating as the Paragon Group under Compass as broker of record and 40-45 agents working out of Compass's East Dallas office. The deal follows Compass's acquisitions of at least two other Dallas-headquartered independent brokerages in the past year, Rogers Healy and Associates and Bray Real Estate Group, which together with Paragon have brought 400 new agents under its umbrella in the metroplex. Compass opened in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex in 2018 and now has about 600 real estate teams and over 1,650 agents there, according to Brian Pacholski, senior managing director of Compass DFW. Miller called the acquisition hybrid, since the Sherman office will still be operated by Paragon with the same staff and leadership, now powered by Compass, and said he chose Compass over Corcoran after beginning his search for partnership options in February.

Netskope shares have climbed about 24.5% since its last earnings report, outpacing the S&P 500, after the company posted second-quarter fiscal 2027 revenue of $220.5 million, up 29% year over year and above guidance. The company reported a non-GAAP loss of 3 cents per share, an improvement from a loss of 6 cents a year earlier, while annual recurring revenue reached $899 million, up 27%, and remaining performance obligations hit $1.35 billion, up 36%. Netskope raised its full-year fiscal 2027 revenue guidance to a range of $888 million to $892 million, roughly 26% growth, up from a prior range of $879 million to $883 million, and guided third-quarter revenue to $227 million to $229 million, about 24% growth. Management pointed to AI Security as the fastest pipeline build in company history, with roughly one-third of that pipeline in or entering the proof-of-concept phase, and said about 50% of sales representatives are still new or ramping, positioning the company for accelerated net new ARR in the second half. The company ended the quarter with approximately $1.1 billion in cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities, and carries a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy).

Oracle announced a commitment to subscribe to a portion of the existing Point Beach Nuclear Plant's electricity generation, an action expected to save Wisconsin utility customers approximately $300 million in fuel costs. The company said the move will help shield more than 1 million Wisconsin utility customers from the plant's rising costs, reduce pressure on household electricity bills, and sustain reliable, carbon-free power for the state's grid. Mahesh Thiagarajan, executive vice president of Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, said Oracle is absorbing approximately $300 million in rising energy costs to protect Wisconsin ratepayers. The planned commitment builds on Oracle's broader Wisconsin investment through Project Lighthouse, its data center development in Port Washington, which is expected to generate more than $11 billion for the local economy, create more than 4,000 skilled construction jobs over three years, support 1,000 ongoing operations positions, and include full funding of the project's energy costs. Oracle's planned subscription to a portion of the Point Beach purchase power arrangement remains subject to approval by the Public Service Commission of Wisconsin.

Accenture reported fiscal fourth-quarter 2026 earnings per share of $3.29 and revenues of $18.68 billion, beating the Zacks Consensus Estimates of $3.19 and $18.02 billion. Chief executive officer and Chair Julie Sweet said fourth-quarter revenues grew 7% in local currency across every geographic market and both consulting and managed services. Chief financial officer Angie Park guided fiscal 2027 revenues to grow 3% to 6% in local currency, including a 2% to 2.5% inorganic contribution, with operating margin forecast at 15.9% to 16.1%, up 10 to 30 basis points from adjusted fiscal 2026. Sweet said nearly 100 additional clients began their first advanced AI work with Accenture in the quarter, taking the fiscal 2026 total above 400, and the company ended the year with nearly 110,000 AI and data professionals. Accenture deployed $4.9 billion across 17 acquisitions in fiscal 2026, and Park said about $3 billion tied to Cyber OT acquisitions shifted into the first quarter of fiscal 2027 because of regulatory timing, with roughly $5 billion of additional acquisition spending expected during fiscal 2027. Management also said it expects at least $9.5 billion of capital returns in fiscal 2027.

Cycurion, Inc. said it has regained compliance with Nasdaq Listing Rule 5550(a)(1), the minimum $1.00 per share bid price requirement, according to a letter dated October 1, 2026 from the Hearings Office of The Nasdaq Stock Market LLC. The letter confirms the condition set in the Nasdaq Hearings Panel's September 9, 2026 decision, which had granted the company's request for continued listing subject to demonstrating bid-price compliance on or before September 11, 2026. Nasdaq's compliance worksheet states that on August 28, 2026 Cycurion effected a 1-for-8 reverse stock split and that its bid price has since closed above $1.00 for 10 consecutive trading days. The common stock continues to trade on the Nasdaq Capital Market under the symbol CYCU, and the company will be subject to a Discretionary Panel Monitor for one year from October 1, 2026 through October 1, 2027, during which any failure to maintain compliance with a continued listing requirement would trigger a delist determination letter with no opportunity to submit a plan of compliance or receive additional staff time. Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Kevin Kelly said Nasdaq's letter confirms the company met the bid-price condition in the Panel's decision and that meeting Nasdaq's listing standards remains a priority.

BigBear.ai Holdings reported second-quarter 2026 revenue of $36.7 million, up 13% year over year, while gross margin rose 781 basis points to 32.8% on a higher contribution from generative AI platforms and products. The margin gain has not yet carried through to adjusted EBITDA, which was negative $11.6 million versus negative $8.5 million a year earlier, as increased investment in sales, go-to-market capabilities and research and development offset the gross-margin benefit. The company ended the quarter with $410 million in cash and investments to fund that continued spending. BigBear.ai competes with Palantir Technologies and C3.ai in mission-focused and government AI applications, and the balance between revenue growth, gross-margin expansion and operating expenses will determine whether the improving margin profile translates into stronger adjusted EBITDA.

CoreWeave announced availability of the NVIDIA Vera Rubin NVL72, with Cognition as its first production customer, alongside new support for the NVIDIA Vera CPU. Cognition, which uses CoreWeave for training, reinforcement learning and inference, reported that the Vera Rubin NVL72 delivered up to 4.8x higher total token throughput for SWE-2 inference workloads versus a GB200 NVL72 baseline and 3.8x higher output-token throughput for reinforcement-learning workloads. CoreWeave said a Vera rack can contain 128 CPUs and 11,264 cores, theoretically supporting more than 11,000 concurrent isolated environments, and that testing showed more than three times faster agent sandbox startup times compared with an x86 CPU. The company will offer Vera on bare metal using the same operating model and economics as the rest of its infrastructure, aiming to monetize CPU-intensive infrastructure alongside accelerator hours. CoreWeave remains heavily dependent on NVIDIA's technology roadmap and faces competition from hyperscalers and specialized GPU clouds including Microsoft Azure and Nebius Group N.V., which closed four deals in the quarter averaging more than $1 billion each and plans roughly £1.7 billion in U.K. AI compute expansion expected to deliver 65 MW when fully operational in 2027.

Zscaler shares have returned +11.8% over the past month, outpacing the Zacks S&P 500 composite's +0.6% change, while the Zacks Security industry gained 14.6% over the same period. The cloud-based information security provider is expected to post earnings of $1.16 per share for the current quarter, a year-over-year change of +20.8%, and the Zacks Consensus Estimate has changed +678.7% over the last 30 days. For the current fiscal year, the consensus earnings estimate of $4.91 indicates a year-over-year change of +16.6%, and for the next fiscal year the consensus estimate of $5.54 indicates a change of +12.9%. Consensus sales estimates stand at $937.61 million for the current quarter, $3.93 billion for the current fiscal year and $4.55 billion for the next fiscal year, indicating year-over-year changes of +19%, +17.2% and +15.8%, respectively. Zscaler reported revenues of $898.18 million in the last reported quarter, a year-over-year change of +24.9%, with EPS of $1.19 versus $0.89 a year ago, beating the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $877.14 million by +2.4% on revenue and by +9.17% on EPS. Zscaler is rated Zacks Rank #3 (Hold) and is graded F on the Zacks Value Style Score, indicating it trades at a premium to its peers.

NielsenIQ announced new AI and automation capabilities for NIQ Spaceman, its retail space planning and merchandising platform used by more than 600 retailers across 65+ countries. The enhancements let retailers create store-specific planograms up to 50 times faster, identify execution and compliance gaps, and scale merchandising decisions across their store networks through expanded cloud-based access. NIQ Optiq brings conversational AI into Spaceman, allowing merchandising teams to create and optimize planograms through natural-language requests, while automation supports localized store-specific planograms at scale and AI-powered compliance measurement reduces manual audits. Natalie Williams, SVP of Product at NIQ, said the enhancements embed agentic AI directly into merchandising workflows so teams can spend less time building and updating planograms and more time acting on opportunities. NIQ, which trades on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker NIQ, said the investments reflect its broader commitment to embedding trusted AI across retail workflows and delivering cloud-enabled solutions that move retailers from planning to execution.