ServiceNow, Inc.
Enterprise Cloud SoftwareFounded 2003- Updated July 2025
Reviewed by Swet Parvadiya
Last reviewed: July 2025
CorpDigest
ServiceNow, Inc.
Company History
Founded 2003 in Santa Clara, California
Last reviewed: 2025-07-15 · By Swet Parvadiya
ServiceNow generated $13.278 billion in revenue for fiscal year 2025 while employing 29,187 colleagues and maintaining a $116 billion market capitalization, yet the company's defining characteristic is not its scale but its transformation from an IT ticketing tool into an AI platform for business transformation that processes 75 billion workflows annually across 8,700 enterprise customers. The company's revenue is 97% subscription-based with 82% gross margins and 98% renewal rates, creating a financial profile that combines the predictability of a utility with the growth rate of a high-growth technology company. Chairman and CEO Bill McDermott, who joined in late 2019 after leading SAP for 17 years, has repositioned the company around artificial intelligence and enterprise-wide workflow orchestration, while President and CFO Gina Mastantuono has overseen the financial transformation that took the company from $3 billion to over $13 billion in revenue and onto the Fortune 500 list. With $10.92 billion in current remaining performance obligations, $6.28 billion in cash and marketable securities, and a debt-to-equity ratio of 20.7%, ServiceNow possesses the financial capacity to pursue ambitious AI investments while returning capital to shareholders through share repurchases. The stock's valuation at 71 times trailing earnings and 8.9 times sales reflects investor optimism about AI monetization and workflow expansion, though the 62% drawdown from the 52-week high indicates significant skepticism about near-term execution. The company's strategic pivot toward consumption-based pricing for AI solutions represents both an opportunity to capture incremental revenue and a risk to the subscription predictability that has underpinned its premium valuation.
Fred Luddy has served as ServiceNow's founder and a member of the board of directors since the company's inception in 2003. He served as the company's chief executive officer from 2003 until 2011, when he recruited Frank Slootman to lead the company through its IPO and scaling phase. Luddy has remained actively involved in the company's strategic direction and product vision, serving as a board member and maintaining a significant equity stake. He is known for his technical depth and his insistence on architectural purity, which shaped the Now Platform's multi-instance design and cloud-native infrastructure. Luddy's 2024 compensation as a board member was $40,000, reflecting his limited formal operational role, though his influence on company culture and technology strategy remains substantial. He has been credited with creating the foundational platform architecture that enabled ServiceNow to scale from a single ITSM product to a comprehensive digital workflow platform serving 8,700 enterprise customers.
David Loo served as a co-founder and early technical leader at ServiceNow, contributing to the initial platform development and architecture decisions that shaped the company's cloud-native approach. He remained with the company through its early growth phase and played a key role in establishing the engineering culture that prioritized scalability and reliability. Loo's contributions were foundational to the platform's ability to serve enterprise customers from a multi-tenant cloud infrastructure, a technical achievement that differentiated ServiceNow from on-premise competitors.
Don Goodliffe served as a co-founder and early member of the ServiceNow team, contributing to the development of the company's initial IT service management product and the establishment of early customer relationships. His work helped validate the product-market fit that would eventually attract venture capital financing and enable the company's scaling. Goodliffe's contributions to the founding team provided the technical and operational diversity that complemented Fred Luddy's vision.
Bow Ruggeri served as a co-founder and early technical contributor at ServiceNow, helping to build the initial platform infrastructure and establish the engineering practices that would scale to support thousands of enterprise customers. Ruggeri's technical contributions were part of the founding team's collective effort to create a cloud-based alternative to on-premise IT service management software.
Patrick Casey has served as ServiceNow's Chief Technology Officer and Executive Vice President of DevOps, maintaining a technical leadership role for over two decades since co-founding the company in 2003. Casey has overseen the evolution of the Now Platform from a simple ITSM tool to a comprehensive digital workflow platform, and his continued presence in the C-suite represents a rare example of founder technical leadership persistence in a company that has scaled to $13 billion in revenue. Casey's role in maintaining architectural continuity while enabling product expansion has been critical to the platform's reliability and scalability.
Fred Luddy founded Glidesoft, Inc. in San Diego, California, with the vision of creating a cloud-native IT service management platform. Luddy was the sole employee until mid-2005, writing the initial code and establishing the architectural foundation that would enable the company's future scaling.
Glidesoft raised $2.5 million in venture financing from JMI Equity, allowing the company to hire five additional employees and accelerate product development. This financing marked the transition from founder-only operation to a funded startup with growth ambitions.
Glidesoft, Inc. changed its name to Service-Now.com, reflecting the company's focus on providing IT services through a web-based platform. The rebranding positioned the company for enterprise market recognition and established the naming convention that would eventually become ServiceNow.
ServiceNow achieved its first cash-flow-positive year with $13 million in annual revenue and opened its first Silicon Valley office in San Jose. This milestone validated the cloud-native business model and provided the financial stability to fund expansion.
ServiceNow recruited Frank Slootman as chief executive officer, bringing enterprise software scaling expertise from his previous role leading Data Domain through its acquisition by EMC. Slootman's hiring signaled the company's transition from founder-led startup to professionally managed growth company.
ServiceNow completed its initial public offering on the New York Stock Exchange through a $210 million IPO led by Morgan Stanley, one month after the same bank took Facebook public. The IPO valued the company at approximately $2.2 billion and provided capital for global expansion.
Following the IPO, ServiceNow relocated its headquarters from San Diego to Santa Clara, California, to access the Silicon Valley talent pool and venture capital ecosystem. This move positioned the company at the center of the enterprise software industry.
John Donahoe, former CEO of eBay and Bain & Company, succeeded Frank Slootman as chief executive officer, bringing consumer-industry experience and a relationship-focused sales culture. Donahoe's tenure saw revenue grow from $1.9 billion to $3.8 billion and market capitalization more than triple.
ServiceNow announced that Bill McDermott, former CEO of SAP SE, would succeed John Donahoe as chief executive officer by year-end 2019. McDermott brought 17 years of enterprise software leadership experience and a track record of tripling SAP's market value to approximately $140 billion.
Bill McDermott appointed Gina Mastantuono as chief financial officer in January 2020, establishing the leadership partnership that would drive the company's financial transformation. Mastantuono would later be named President while continuing as CFO in 2025.
Nvidia announced a partnership with ServiceNow to integrate generative AI services into the company's help desk and workflow products, marking the beginning of ServiceNow's strategic pivot toward AI platform positioning.
ServiceNow crossed $10 billion in annual revenue for the first time, with fiscal year 2024 subscription revenues of $10.646 billion and total revenues of $10.984 billion. This milestone earned the company a spot on the Fortune 500 list and established it as one of the fastest-growing enterprise software companies at scale.
ServiceNow and Google Cloud broadened their partnership to launch ServiceNow on Google Cloud Marketplace and Google Distributed Cloud, integrating Workflow Data Fabric and cross-enterprise workflows with Google Cloud AI infrastructure.
ServiceNow executed its first-ever stock split, a 5-for-1 division approved by shareholders on December 5, 2025, with distribution after market close on December 17, 2025, and split-adjusted trading beginning December 18, 2025. The split reduced the nominal share price from approximately $854 to $171.
ServiceNow announced a multi-year CAD$110 million investment to establish a Canada Centre of Excellence, including Canada-hosted AI services, as part of the company's global infrastructure expansion strategy.
ServiceNow acquired G2K Group to enhance its AI-powered retail and venue management capabilities, adding computer vision and IoT integration technologies that complement the company's workflow automation platform. The acquisition supported ServiceNow's vertical industry expansion strategy.
ServiceNow acquired Moveworks, an AI-powered IT support automation company, to strengthen its generative AI capabilities and autonomous IT service management. The acquisition was the largest in ServiceNow's history and reflected the strategic priority of AI platform leadership.