The Stocks Leading Agentic AI: ServiceNow, Salesforce and UiPath

As demand for agentic AI rapidly rises, these three companies are leading the charge — but securing a return on investment remains a future challenge for the sector.

Aug 28, 2025

Key Takeaways

Agentic AI is forecast to account for 60% of SaaS market by the end of the decade.
Salesforce, Service Now and UiPath are all investing in AI agents and platforms, but have seen falling stock prices this year.
Despite gathering momentum, it’s predicted 40% of agentic AI ventures could fail by end of 2027 and spending may slow.

The artificial intelligence (AI) conversation over the past few years has been centered on bots, but AI agents are fast becoming a talking point.

These agents can undertake tasks such as dealing with customer requests, onboarding clients, retrieving data and coding. At the end of 2024, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman described them as “the next giant breakthrough”.^[1]

According to Goldman Sachs, demand for autonomous agents could help the software-as-a-service (SaaS) market to expand by 20% to 45% by 2030.^[2] More specifically, agents could account for 60% of the total addressable market by the end of this decade, hitting an inflection point in 2027, as the graph below shows.

Total Addressable Market for SaaS and Agents, 2205-30 ($bn)

Let’s look at three stocks that are benefiting from agentic AI and the rise of autonomous agents: Salesforce [CRM], Service Now [NOW] and UiPath [PATH].

CRM Stock

Back at the 2024 edition of its AI event in September, Salesforce unveiled Agentforce, an AI agent product for customer support, HR and sales teams.^[3]

In its Q4 2025 earnings, reported in February, Salesforce said it had inked more than 5,000 deals for Agentforce, 3,000 of which were paying customers.^[4] These numbers had risen to more than 8,000 and 4,000 respectively when Q1 2026 earnings were reported in May, generating approximately $100m in annual recurring revenue.^[5]

Demand is accelerating rapidly. Indeed, “It is much faster than any product in our history, and we are not even fully deployed on all geographies, currencies or languages,” said CEO Marc Benioff on the Q1 2026 earnings call.^[6]

Salesforce is due to report Q2 earnings on September 3.

NOW Stock

ServiceNow is positioning itself as the go-to AI operating system for enterprises as the traditional tech stack collapses, declared CEO Bill McDermott in his keynote speech at the software provider’s Knowledge event in Las Vegas in May.^[7]

The company delivered a strong set of results for Q2 2025 last month. Subscription revenue grew 22.5% year-over-year to $3.11bn, comfortably beating the $3.03bn analysts had forecast.^[8] Full-year revenue guidance was raised across the board on the back of growing AI adoption — it expects subscription revenue for 2025 to come in between $12.77bn and $12.79bn.^[9]

“Every business process in every industry is being refactored for agentic AI. ServiceNow has never been more differentiated as a full stack agentic operating system for the enterprise,” said McDermott in the earnings release.

PATH Stock

Robotic process automation company UiPath pivoted to an agentic AI strategy last October. This was followed earlier this year by the launch of Maestro, a platform that allows companies to build and orchestrate teams of AI agents. CEO Daniel Dines has hailed Maestro as “one of the most important and successful product introductions in our history”.^[10]

Tailwinds from AI helped propel UiPath to an earnings beat in Q1 2026. Earnings per share were $0.11 versus the $0.10 analysts had been expecting. Revenue was up 6% to $356.62m versus the consensus of $332.83m.^[11]

“The momentum following [Maestro’s] launch has been exciting and was matched by strong Q1 financial performance,” said Dines on the earnings call in May.

UiPath is due to report Q2 2026 earnings on September 4.

Agentic AI Stocks See Euphoria Fizzle Out

Despite the optimism around agentic AI and signs that it is fueling growth, all three stocks have been in a downward trend in 2025.

CRM vs NOW vs PATH Past 12 Months Performance

CRM stock has fallen 26.86% since January 1 through August 26 and is down 9.43% in the past month. NOW stock is down 18.43% year-to-date and down 10.74% in the past month. PATH stock has fallen 14.87% and 11.16% in the respective periods.

Here is how the fundamentals of the three stocks currently compare.

CRM vs NOW vs PATH Fundamentals Comparison

NOW stock could be considered the most expensive of the three when you factor in that the current average P/E ratio for software stocks is 38.71.^[12]

CRM stock could be considered fairly valued, because, while its P/E ratio and forward P/E ratio are high, demand for its Agentforce platform should help growth to accelerate.

PATH stock could be considered fairly valued given its lower P/S and forward P/S ratios, but UiPath is yet to break even.

Agentic AI: The Investment Case

Bull Case for Agentic AI

Demand for AI-powered software that deploys agents that do not require human intervention is unlikely to let up any time soon.

Just last month, Salesforce and ServiceNow announced they had invested $750m each in Genesys, which is bringing automation to customer contact centers.

“We believe this reflects growing momentum around agentic AI and the importance of connected, autonomous customer experiences,” said Genesys CEO and Chairman Tony Bates in a press release.[13]

More deals of this size could follow in the future as more SaaS companies wake up to the economic benefits of agentic AI. Morgan Stanley has forecast AI will turbocharge the S&P 500’s earnings growth potential, thanks largely to agents performing human tasks.^[14]

Research released in August argues that the $920bn in cost savings AI could bring to the index’s constituents could result in a $13trn–16trn increase in their combined market value.

Bear Case for Agentic AI

While agents may help companies to cut costs and boost their top and bottom lines, there is still the question of whether SaaS stocks investing in agentic AI are worthy of their current valuations. There is also the risk that spending on agentic AI could slow in some quarters.

Gartner has warned that 40% of agentic AIs are likely to fail by the end of 2027. This will be because “most agentic AI propositions lack significant value or ROI”, as well as the fact that companies deploy software to try to address “individual task organization” as opposed to “enterprise productivity”.^[15]

When AI projects fail, companies may be more likely to experience “AI fatigue” and therefore become less inclined to invest in the technology in the future.^[16]

Conclusion

While there are some fears that the AI bubble may be bursting, demand for autonomous agents is not expected to wane in the medium- or long-term.

Platforms and products offered by the likes of Salesforce, ServiceNow and UiPath may well continue to be adopted as enterprises seek productivity gains from agentic AI.

This is for informational purposes only. OPTO Markets does not recommend any specific securities or investment strategies. Investing involves risk and investments may lose value, including the loss of principal. Past performance does not guarantee future results.

^[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/ChatGPT/comments/1ggixzy/ama_with_openais_sam_altman_kevin_weil_srinivas/luqgr7l/

^[2] https://www.goldmansachs.com/insights/articles/ai-agents-to-boost-productivity-and-size-of-software-market

^[3]