{"id":394152,"date":"2026-04-23T18:40:09","date_gmt":"2026-04-23T18:40:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/394152\/"},"modified":"2026-04-23T18:40:09","modified_gmt":"2026-04-23T18:40:09","slug":"software-stocks-plunge-on-servicenow-ibm-results-ai-fears-escalate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/394152\/","title":{"rendered":"Software stocks plunge on ServiceNow, IBM results, AI fears escalate"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Signage outside the ServiceNow headquarters in Santa Clara, California, US, on Thursday, Sept. 4, 2025.<\/p>\n<p>David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images<\/p>\n<p>Software stocks plummeted on Thursday as disappointing results from <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/quotes\/NOW\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">ServiceNow<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/quotes\/IBM\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">IBM<\/a> added to fears that artificial intelligence tools and services will disrupt their businesses.<\/p>\n<p>Shares of ServiceNow sank 17% Thursday, on pace for its worst day ever. The company narrowly beat Wall Street&#8217;s estimates Wednesday, but said that <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/2026\/04\/22\/servicenow-now-earnings-q1-2026.html\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">conflict in the Middle East<\/a> created a &#8220;headwind&#8221; for quarterly subscription revenue. IBM <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/2026\/04\/22\/ibm-q1-earnings-report-2026.html\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">beat<\/a> on earnings and revenue but maintained guidance. The stock dropped 9%.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/quotes\/CRM\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Salesforce<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/quotes\/HUBS\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Hubspot<\/a> each fell about 9%. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/quotes\/ADBE\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Adobe<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/quotes\/INTU\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Intuit<\/a> were down roughly 7%, and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/quotes\/ORCL\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Oracle<\/a> fell about 5%. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/quotes\/WDAY\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Workday<\/a> slid 10% Thursday, and is down over 45% this year. The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/quotes\/IGV\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">iShares Expanded Tech-Software ETF (IGV)<\/a>, which generally tracks the sector, fell about 5% Thursday and is down about 18% this year.<\/p>\n<p>The sector has been beaten down on concerns that AI tools from companies like Anthropic and OpenAI will displace the longstanding cloud subscription model.<\/p>\n<p>Tech&#8217;s biggest companies mostly report next week, with <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/quotes\/GOOGL\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Alphabet<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/quotes\/AMZN\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Amazon<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/quotes\/META\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Meta<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/quotes\/MSFT\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Microsoft<\/a> scheduled to release results on Wednesday, followed by <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/quotes\/AAPL\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Apple<\/a> a day later. <\/p>\n<p>Those companies have held up much better than the pureplay software vendors, mostly due to their central position in the AI boom. Microsoft, the one with the most software exposure, has been hit the worst, down 14% this year.<\/p>\n<p>WATCH: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/video\/2026\/04\/23\/intel-earnings-on-deck-as-servicenow-ibm-tumble-what-you-need-to-know.html\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">ServiceNow, IBM tumble on Q1 earnings<\/a><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"InlineVideo-videoThumbnail\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/108296263-1776957170320-1776957039-45459456029-hd.jpg\" alt=\"Intel earnings on deck as ServiceNow, IBM tumble: What you need to know\"\/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.google.com\/preferences\/source?q=https:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\">Choose CNBC as your preferred source on Google and never miss a moment from the most trusted name in business news.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Signage outside the ServiceNow headquarters in Santa Clara, California, US, on Thursday, Sept. 4, 2025. David Paul Morris&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":394153,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[10697,365,2709,5740,5892,363,364,2339,4562,553,161427,203617,4566,139539,164363,146570,220,5745,5741,111,139,69,5746,2712,117434,8183,154641,145,168233,27640],"class_list":{"0":"post-394152","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-adobe-inc","9":"tag-ai","10":"tag-alphabet-class-a","11":"tag-amazon-com-inc","12":"tag-apple-inc","13":"tag-artificial-intelligence","14":"tag-artificialintelligence","15":"tag-breaking-news-markets","16":"tag-breaking-news-technology","17":"tag-business-news","18":"tag-first-trust-cloud-computing-etf","19":"tag-hubspot-inc","20":"tag-international-business-machines-corp","21":"tag-intuit-inc","22":"tag-ishares-expanded-tech-software-sector-etf","23":"tag-ishares-north-american-tech-software-etf","24":"tag-markets","25":"tag-meta-platforms-inc","26":"tag-microsoft-corp","27":"tag-new-zealand","28":"tag-newzealand","29":"tag-nz","30":"tag-oracle-corp","31":"tag-salesforce-inc","32":"tag-servicenow-inc","33":"tag-software","34":"tag-software-industry","35":"tag-technology","36":"tag-wisdomtree-cloud-computing-fund","37":"tag-workday-inc"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/394152","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=394152"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/394152\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/394153"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=394152"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=394152"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=394152"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}