Bentley Systems, BILL, and Autodesk Stocks Trade Down, What You Need To Know

This is less a company-specific earnings reaction than a repricing of the entire enterprise software duration trade. The market is now treating AI as a potential deflationary force on software monetization: lower seat counts, weaker renewal leverage, and a slower path to monetizing copilots than bulls assumed. That matters most for names where growth is already decelerating, because even modest multiple compression can overwhelm otherwise solid fundamentals.

The second-order effect is that “AI-resilient” software is being reclassified as “AI-exposed until proven otherwise.” ServiceNow’s miss damages the premium assigned to workflow platforms that had been viewed as beneficiaries of automation rather than victims of it, and that raises the bar for peers with similar narratives. Expect analysts to cut forward subscription growth and margin assumptions across the group over the next 1–3 weeks, especially where 2025 estimates embed AI-driven up-sell that has not yet shown up in backlog conversion.

The setup also creates a near-term air pocket in vertical and design software, where buyers tend to de-risk on headline contagion even when end-market demand is stable. That suggests the selloff may be broader than fundamental deterioration, but not necessarily short-lived: it can persist for several quarters until companies prove AI is expanding TAM rather than just changing packaging. The key catalyst to reverse the trend will be evidence that AI is accretive to net retention and operating margin, not just a marketing layer on top of existing licenses.

The contrarian view is that the market may be overpricing seat-compression risk in businesses with mission-critical workflows and high switching costs. In those models, AI can actually increase customer dependence by embedding the vendor deeper into operations, while monetization can shift from seats to usage or outcome-based pricing. If that happens, today’s drawdown could mark the beginning of a rotation from multiple expansion names to cash-flow compounding names with real implementation leverage.