C3.ai - Earnings Call - Q1 2026

Executive Summary

• C3 AI reported a sharp sequential and year-over-year contraction: revenue $70.3M, GAAP gross margin 38% and GAAP net loss per share $(0.86); management called performance “completely unacceptable” and attributed it to sales reorganization disruption and reduced involvement from Tom Siebel due to health issues.
• Results materially missed Wall Street consensus: revenue versus $93.9M* and non-GAAP EPS $(0.37) versus $(0.21)*; management withdrew full-year FY26 guidance and guided Q2 FY26 revenue to $72–$80M and non-GAAP operating loss $(49.5)–$(57.5).
• Strategic changes: appointment of new CEO Stephen Ehikian (effective Sept 1), combining sales and services under a new Chief Commercial Officer, and launch of the Strategic Integrator Program (OEM) to broaden go-to-market leverage via partners.
• Operational highlights amid weak financials: 46 agreements closed, 28 initial production deployments (IPDs), 40 partner-led agreements, and a 54% YoY increase in the joint qualified pipeline with partners (including 24 joint wins with Microsoft).

Values retrieved from S&P Global.*

What Went Well and What Went Wrong

What Went Well

• New CEO and leadership reset: “I am extremely pleased to announce the appointment of Stephen Ehikian as Chief Executive Officer… ideally suited to drive growth” and consolidation of sales and services under a Chief Commercial Officer to deliver value faster.
• Partner momentum and pipeline expansion: 40 agreements closed through the partner network; joint 12‑month qualified pipeline up 54% YoY; 24 agreements closed jointly with Microsoft.
• Strategic Integrator Program (OEM) launched to let integrators license the C3 Agentic AI Platform; management sees it as a “large and rapidly growing line of business”.

What Went Wrong

• Severe miss and margin compression: revenue fell to $70.3M (vs $108.7M in Q4), GAAP gross margin dropped to 38% (from 62% in Q4); non-GAAP margin declined to 52% (from 69%).
• Sales execution disruption and leadership transition: Siebel cited “poor sales execution and poor resource coordination,” plus his health issues reducing sales involvement; reorg mid-quarter created confusion.
• Mix shift headwinds: CFO flagged higher mix of IPD-related costs, lower demonstration license revenue ($17.9M, down $15.9M sequentially), lower PES, and reduced economies of scale driving margin declines.

Transcript

Speaker 5

Good afternoon, and welcome to C3 AI's earnings call for the first quarter of fiscal year twenty twenty-six, which ended on July thirty-first, twenty twenty-five. My name is Amit Berry, and I lead Investor Relations at C3 AI. With me on the call today are Tom Siebel, Executive Chairman, Steven Ehikian, Chief Executive Officer, and Hitesh Lath, Chief Financial Officer. After the market closed today, we issued a press release with details regarding our first quarter results, as well as a supplemental to our results, both of which can be accessed through the investor relations section of our website at ir.c3.ai. This call is being webcast, and a replay will be available on our IR website following the conclusion of the call. During today's call, we will make statements related to our business that may be considered forward-looking under federal securities laws.

These statements reflect our views only as of today and should not be considered representative of our views as of any subsequent date. We disclaim any obligation to update any forward-looking statements or outlook. These statements are subject to a variety of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from expectations. For a further discussion of the material risks and other important factors that could affect our actual results, please refer to our most recent annual report on Form 10-K filed with the SEC, as it may be supplemented by other filings and reports we make with SEC from time to time, including our quarterly report on Form 10-Q that will be filed for the fiscal quarter ended July thirty-first, twenty twenty-five. All financial results will be discussed on a non-GAAP basis unless otherwise noted.

A reconciliation of GAAP to non-GAAP financial measures to the extent reasonably available is included in our press release. Finally, at times in our prepared remarks, in response to your questions, we may discuss metrics that are incremental to our usual presentation to give greater insight into the dynamics of our business and our quarterly results. Please be advised that we may or may not continue to provide this additional detail in the future. And with that, let me turn the call over to Hitesh.

Speaker 6

Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining our call today. I will share our financial results and provide additional color on our business. All figures are Non-GAAP unless otherwise noted. Total revenue for the quarter was $70.3 million, a decrease of 19% year over year. Subscription revenue for the quarter was $60.3 million, representing 86% of total revenue. Revenue from sale of software licenses that are demonstration versions of C3 AI applications was $17.9 million during the quarter, which was sequentially lower by $15.9 million. We sell these licenses at the request of our distribution partners to enable them to demonstrate our software effectively to their customers and at the request of our large strategic customers to enable them to accelerate C3 AI application adoption across their companies.

Professional services revenue was $10 million, of which $8.7 million was revenue from prioritized engineering services or PES. Professional services represent 14% of total revenue during the quarter. Our subscription and PES revenue combined was $69 million and accounted for 98% of total revenue. I'll now walk you through some of our strategic customer wins this quarter. Nucor has expanded its commitment with C3 AI in a multi-year partnership to build an enterprise-wide AI program across their facilities. We are supporting and optimizing day-to-day planning, inventory, and scheduling decisions, and now expanding to additional plants and use cases. Chemica, a global leader in chemicals, launched its first enterprise-scale AI program with C3 AI. After initial success improving yield in its salt business, Chemica is now scaling to 100 assets and multiple use cases, the start of a company-wide AI transformation.

HII, America's largest military shipbuilder, is expanding its partnership with C3 AI to accelerate throughput at Ingalls and Newport News. Initial deployments cut complex shipbuilding timelines, and we are now scaling these AI capabilities across HII shipyards to strengthen U.S. Navy fleet readiness. The U.S. Army Rapid Capabilities and Critical Technologies Office is deploying a contested logistics application built on the C3 Agentic AI platform to support frontline vehicles in high-risk environments. This system applies Agentic and Generative AI to enhance sustainment, readiness, and decision speed in contested environments. I'll now move on to rest of the financial results. Non-GAAP gross profit for the quarter was $36.3 million, and non-GAAP gross margin was 52%. Non-GAAP gross margin for professional services remained high at over 80%. Non-GAAP operating loss for the quarter was $57.8 million.

Non-GAAP net loss for the quarter was $49.8 million, and non-GAAP net loss per share was $0.37. Our net cash used in operating activities was $33.5 million. Free cash flow for the quarter was -$34.3 million. We continue to be well capitalized and closed the quarter with $711.9 million in cash, cash equivalents, and marketable securities. During the first quarter, we signed 28 initial production deployments or IPDs. At the end of the quarter, we had cumulatively signed 374 IPDs, of which 266 are still active. This means they are either in their original three- to six-month term or extended for some duration, or converted to ongoing subscription or consumption contract, or are currently being negotiated for conversion to ongoing subscription or consumption contract.

Non-GAAP gross margin declined this quarter to 52%, primarily due to a higher mix of IPD-related costs, a lower mix of demonstration license revenue and PES revenue, and lower economies of scale. As compared to fiscal 2025, we expect to continue to see moderated gross margins in the near term due to higher mix of IPDs, which carry a greater cost of revenue during the initial production deployment phase of the customer life cycle, due to our investments in expanding our support capacity and lower economies of scale. Now I'll move on to our guidance for the next quarter. Our revenue guidance for Q2 of fiscal year 2026 is $72 million-$80 million. Our guidance for non-GAAP loss from operations for Q2 of fiscal year 2026 is $49.5 million-$57.5 million.

Given the appointment of our new Chief Executive Officer and the recent restructuring of the sales and services organizations, we are withdrawing our previous guidance. We plan on providing guidance for the third quarter of fiscal 2026 and full year fiscal 2026 when we announce our financial results for the second quarter of fiscal 2026. With that, I'd like to turn the call over to Tom.

Speaker 0

Thank you, Hitesh, and good afternoon, everyone. As Hitesh reported, the financial results of the first quarter were completely unacceptable, and completely unacceptable in virtually every respect. I've given this a lot of thought as to, you know, what the root cause of this is. Okay, is there a market? The market is huge. Is there some new competitor that changed the competitive dynamics of the space? There is not. Is there some secular change in the market that we haven't seen before? There is not. The fact of the matter is, this is boiled down to poor sales execution and poor resource coordination. It's clear that the new leadership that we brought into the organization in the, kinda, globally, in sales and service, in the service organization, in EMEA, in federal, in North America, kinda mid-quarter, and it caused confusion in the sales process.

As I have previously announced, I ran into some unanticipated health issues, and as a result of these health issues, I was unable to participate as actively as I used to in the sales processes and the coordination of resources necessary to make these sales processes successful and come to closure. In hindsight, it's clear that my active involvement in that sales process had a greater impact than any of us knew. The good news is that we have completely restructured our sales and service organizations globally. We have brought in new, highly experienced leadership across the board, okay, to drive growth and to drive customer satisfaction.

Even better, consistent with our announcement last July, we have completed the search, and we have appointed a new Chief Executive Officer in the person of Steven Ehikian, who is highly experienced and well-equipped to drive the details of this business, to coordinate resources, and to accelerate growth. In the sales and service organizations, we have combined these organizations under a new leader, in the person of a Chief Commercial Officer, to bring a more seamless experience focused on delivering value for each and every one of our customers. In addition to a Chief Commercial Officer, we've brought in a new general manager of EMEA. We brought in a new group vice president for North American operations, and we've brought significant leadership into the federal business operations.

By combining the sales and service organizations into a cohesive whole, we are assuring a focus on delivering rapid economic benefit to each one of our customer engagements to ensure their continued success. As we entered Q2, we have installed new leadership across the board. We have reorganized our sales and service organizations with a tightly integrated, detailed execution plan going forward, where everybody knows where they sit, what their job responsibilities are, and we've assured that everybody has the resources to do their job. We have a product that is unmatched in technical sophistication and functionality. We have over 131 turnkey enterprise AI applications in the market. I believe we have the highest levels of customer satisfaction as measured by net promoter scores in the application software industry. We have a huge and rapidly growing addressable market opportunity.

We have the leadership in place, and we are positioned to grow, we are in position to gain market share, and we are in a position to assure the success of each and every one of our customer engagements. An important development in Q1 was the introduction of our Strategic Integrator Program. This is a software OEM program whereby we are licensing the C3 Agentic AI Platform to others, enabling them to design, develop, provision, and operate the industry and domain-specific applications for their markets.... We're finding that the Strategic Integrator Program is being well received by OEMs, systems integrators, service providers into the defense intelligence and civilian government communities, and we expect this to be a large and rapidly growing line of business for C3 AI going forward.

The use of the agentic AI platform enables them to use all of the assets that they've developed in the last couple of decades, be these machine learning models. And so it's an entirely open architecture that allows them to use any of the capabilities they have, any new capabilities that the market may bring going forward. So it's an entirely open, model-driven architecture, enabling complete flexibility going forward and avoiding vendor lock-in. It's difficult to overestimate the scale of the generative AI and agentic AI opportunity that is before us. As of the end of the first quarter, we're involved in approximately 60 large-scale customer engagements in state and local government, in manufacturing, in federal government, in defense, intelligence, manufacturing, what have you.

Many of you are familiar with the MIT report that shows that order of 95% of these LLM projects run into a dead end and are unsuccessful. Our experience is that the majority of our LLM deployments are successful across industries and across use cases. The reason for this success is the combination of these generative pre-trained transformers with the C3 Agentic AI platform solves all the hobgoblins that are associated with generative AI. These hobgoblins include data exfiltration, cybersecurity risk, hallucination, the inability to enforce data access controls, the inability to take advantage of multimodal integration. All of these problems are solved by C3 Generative AI, resulting in a very, very high success rate associated with our projects. Q1 2025 was our nineteenth quarter operating as a public company. This is the first quarter in which we have missed our revenue guidance.

Know that we take that very seriously, and we will take that seriously going forward. Candidly, there is no excuse for the economic results that we delivered in the first quarter. That being said, going forward, our objective remains the same. We're here to establish and maintain a market leadership position globally in enterprise AI applications. Not in infrastructure, not in semiconductors, not in machine learning models, not in professional services implementations, okay? We're here to establish a market leadership position in enterprise AI software, both with the C3 Agentic AI platform and with the enterprise AI application footprint that we have in place and will be expanding. We have tried, tested, and proven products. We have incredibly sophisticated architecture in the Agentic AI platform. We're establishing clear leadership in Agentic AI, a concept for which you know that we hold the patents.

We have tried, tested, and proven executive leadership in place. We have highly satisfied customers. We have a large and expansive addressable market opportunity before us, that some estimate approaches to $2 trillion a year. Okay, and we are geared up to grow our product footprint, grow our market share, increase our market penetration, and operate a rapidly growing, cash positive, profitable business. Going forward, I will continue to remain actively engaged in the business, now in the role as executive chairman. In that role, I will particularly focus on strategic partner relationships, strategic customer relationships, and keep an eye on direction and product strategy going forward. I'm most enthusiastic to announce the appointment of Steven Ehikian as the new Chief Executive Officer of C3 AI.

Steven brings a superlative educational background, a wealth of industry experience, having started and built and grown two successful AI companies that he sold to Salesforce. Steven is also an experienced and accomplished public sector leader, having served as President Trump's appointee as the Acting Administrator of the General Services Administration, where Steven was responsible for reforming the General Services Administration, reforming the acquisition activities of all the divisions of the federal government, and driving President Trump's AI strategy across the federal government. On behalf of the board of directors of C3 AI...

The executive leadership of C3 AI and the, I don't know, eleven or twelve hundred employees of C3 AI, whatever that number may be, I can tell you we're all enthusiastic about working closely with Steven in his new leadership role to ensure that he is successful in bringing more creativity to the process, more energy to the process, more drive to the process, as we accelerate growth, accelerate market penetration, and accelerate market leadership in enterprise AI. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much for your time, and now I'll turn this back to Hitesh to field your questions.

Speaker 6

Thank you, Tom. Operator, could you please open the line for questions?

Speaker 3

Thank you. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, press star one one again. One moment while we compile the Q&A roster. And our first question will come from the line of Rati Sultan with UBS. Your line is open.

Speaker 2

Awesome. Thank you. First for Tom, you know, your involvement in the sales process has obviously been very critical here. I mean, is there any way to more concretely understand how involved you're planning on being in the sales process going forward, and what you're doing to ensure a smooth handoff to Steven and the new sales leadership?

Speaker 0

I am here to do everything I can to ensure that Steven is successful, okay? And so, now we have a new, you know, an entire new layer of senior leadership in the company who are tried, tested, and proven at selling enterprise AI globally. And I suspect with Steven's leadership, they're gonna be enormously successful. That being said, okay, I will continue to be involved as necessary, okay, in monitoring that process, in assisting that process, to ensure that this transition goes very smoothly, and we dramatically ramp up the sales and service capacity globally.

Speaker 2

Awesome. And then, second for Hitesh. Obviously, a lot of moving parts in the quarter. What are you seeing that's giving you confidence in the Q2 guide? And then, you know, as you think about Q3 and Q4, like, what is the right starting point to think about that sort of back half outlook? Any sort of building blocks would be helpful as we calibrate numbers.

Speaker 6

Yeah, sure, Rati. Our Q2 guidance is based on the sales activity we've seen in the month of August, as well as, our review of sales pipeline for the rest of the quarter with the new sales leadership. As it relates to period beyond Q2, while we're not providing any guidance at this point, we note that most analysts who have updated their revenue forecast for the year are forecasting fiscal 2026 revenue ranging from $290 million-$300 million. And at this point, I would not argue against any number within that range. As it relates to,

Speaker 2

Awesome

Speaker 6

path to profitability. We acknowledge our performance in Q1 has put us behind, but we remain committed to achieving non-GAAP profitability and free cash flow. We are still bullish about the business, as Tom said, and we will get to profitability and free cash flow with the right scale, and that is a matter of time.

Speaker 2

Awesome. Thank you.

Speaker 3

Thank you. One moment for our next question, and that will come from the line of Patrick Walravens with Citizens. Your line is open.

Hey, guys. Thank you so much for taking my question. This is Nick on for Pat. Tom, one quick one for you. You guys closed forty partner-led deals this quarter. How do you see the mix of partner-led versus direct sales evolving?

Speaker 0

That's a great question. I think something like, Amit, correct me, is it 80% or 90%?

Speaker 6

90 this quarter.

Speaker 0

Yeah, 90% of the business we closed this quarter was with partners, particularly Azure and AWS and GCP and McKinsey QuantumBlack. You can expect that our investment in those partnerships going forward is gonna be big time. I think there are, you know, well, certainly, without quoting a number, there are certainly tens of thousands of salespeople at Azure alone, and we are amping up our go-to-market activities with Microsoft, with AWS, with GCP in a big way globally. We'd hope we're going from, say, hundreds of engagements that we're involved in today, where we're trying selling, and we would hope that will go to, soon to thousands. That is a major, major advantage that we have, this partner ecosystem, and we fully intend to exploit that advantage.

Great. Thank you. And then as a follow-up, if I heard Steven was in the room, if I could ask him a quick one, that would be fantastic. You know, Steven, great to meet you. Looking forward to working with you. How did you choose C3, and why was it a compelling opportunity?

Speaker 7

Yeah, well, first, the market opportunity here for enterprise AI is enormous. Every company, every government, is exploring how to transition away from testing and experimenting with AI, to actually rolling out across their core, operations and workflows. What's exciting for me is C3 has the technology platform and applications that customers need today. Their technology is being deployed across some of the most valuable customers in the world, in some most challenging environments, so for me, on top of all that, the ability to learn from Tom Siebel, who invented, this entire enterprise AI market, as well as with the extraordinary team here, was, honestly, an easy decision to say yes to.

... Awesome. Thank you very much. Looking forward to working with you.

Speaker 0

Likewise. Thank you.

Speaker 3

One moment for our next question. That will come from the line of Matt Calitri with Needham & Company. Your line is open.

Speaker 4

Hi, guys. This is Matt Calitri, out for Mike Cikos over at Needham. Thanks for taking our questions. Tom, how would you weight the underperformance this quarter between sales disruption and your impact on the sales process?

Speaker 0

I think it was a combination of both, but I would put it, you know, probably 70% sales disruption and 30%, my not being as involved in the details as I have previously been, and you know, I think that, you know, so those are the facts, and you know, the quarter is... the quarter was dreadful, okay, and now we need to pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and get on with business, which is exactly what we're gonna do.

Speaker 4

Understood. And then looking at the execution missteps, how would you categorize them as far as assigning pilots or converting them into contracts? What exactly were you seeing there?

Speaker 0

It's all of the above, Matt. I mean, there were a lot of new people involved. There was new leadership involved. I think, you know, when you do that, you know, sometimes channels get crossed a little bit, and things get confused. And, you know, we were, you know, driving the car down the road and replacing the engine, the transmission, and the wheels at the same time. And, you know, the guy who used to drive the car wasn't there. So, it was a bad quarter. It happens. I mean, come on, I was at Oracle in nineteen eighty-nine when Oracle had its first miss. I think that the stock went from twenty-seven to three, as I recall, and it was the end of the world.

Since then, as you know, Oracle has missed 34 quarters, and it's still not the end of the world. NVIDIA has missed 10, Amazon has missed 23, Salesforce has missed a few, certainly 6 months ago and 12 months ago, and today nobody remembers any of that. Six months from now, nobody will remember this because we're gonna be rocking.

Speaker 4

Understood. Thanks so much.

Speaker 3

Thank you. That is all the time we have for Q&A today. I would now like to turn the call back over to Mr. Siebel for any closing remarks.

Speaker 0

Ladies, gentlemen, thank you for your time this afternoon. We really appreciate your attention. You know, keep your eye on the screen. There's gonna be a lot of things happening at C3 AI, and it's exciting. We're encouraged, and we are going for it, people, so stay tuned, and thank you, thank you, thank you.

Speaker 3

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's program. Thank you all for participating. You may now disconnect.