ServiceNow

Fred Luddy founded ServiceNow in 2004 and served as chief executive officer until 2011. The company was incorporated in CaliforniaCaliforniaCalifornia is a U.S. state on the Pacific coast; its capital is Sacramento and its largest city is Los Angeles. California was admitted to the Union on September 9, 1850, as the 31st state. Its population at the 2020 Census (April 1, 2020) was 39,538,223, the largest of any state.Open the full entry under the name Glidesoft in June 2004 and was renamed Service-now.com in February 2006.⁠[1][2]

As recalled by Pat Casey, who later became chief technology officer, the Glide platform that Luddy demonstrated early on generated user interfaces from metadata and combined this with a relational data model to run enterprise applications in the browser. The team then used IT service management as a concrete commercial entry point, letting customers first use the platform to solve well-defined business problems before expanding to other workflows.⁠[3]

In May 2012, the company reincorporated in DelawareDelawareDelaware is a U.S. state in the Mid-Atlantic region on the East Coast, with its capital at Dover and Wilmington as its largest city. On December 7, 1787, it became the first state to ratify the U.S. Constitution, entering the Union as the 1st state, and it had a population of 989,948 in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020).Open the full entry as ServiceNow, Inc.; the registration for its initial public offering became effective on June 28, the offering took place the following day, and its stock trades on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol NOW. At the time of the listing, the company’s business centered on cloud-based IT service management, and it also allowed customers to develop applications such as human resources, facilities, and quality management on a common platform.⁠[2]

On November 18, 2019, ServiceNow announced that Bill McDermott had officially assumed the role of president and chief executive officer and joined the board of directors. He succeeded John Donahoe, who left for Nike; this date is the announcement that he formally took office, not the date on which the succession plan was earlier announced.⁠[4]

On September 20, 2023, ServiceNow announced Now Assist in its Vancouver platform release, bringing generative AI to IT service management, customer service management, HR service delivery, application development, and other use cases. Its capabilities include helping agents summarize interactions and generate the text needed for their work, while developer applications include generating code from natural language.⁠[5]

On December 15, 2025, ServiceNow announced that it had completed its acquisition of Moveworks. The company positioned the integration as connecting Moveworks’ employee AI assistant, enterprise search, and reasoning capabilities with ServiceNow’s workflow execution capabilities, so that employees can initiate tasks across enterprise systems through conversation.⁠[6]

ServiceNow completed its acquisition of Veza in March 2026, bringing identity permission analysis into its platform; it then completed its acquisition of Armis on April 20. The cash consideration for the latter was about $7.75 billion, funded with a combination of existing cash and debt.⁠[7]

The two transactions correspond to different security data: Veza tracks the permissions and access paths of people, machines, and AI agents, while Armis provides connected asset discovery and risk information covering IT, operational technology, the Internet of Things, medical devices, cloud environments, and more. The announcement also stated that Armis Centrix will continue to be offered as a standalone product, with plans for deeper integration to follow.⁠[7]

On May 5, 2026, ServiceNow launched ServiceNow Otto at its Knowledge 2026 event, bringing together Now Assist, Moveworks, and AI Experience. According to the company’s product description, after a user makes a request in natural language, the system identifies intent, assigns tasks, and invokes enterprise workflows; AI Control Tower is used to record interactions, enforce enterprise policies, and provide explanations of decisions.⁠[8]

Otto’s interaction modes include conversation, enterprise search, voice agents, and natural-language data queries. The announcement listed EmployeeWorks and AI Control Tower as the first experience entry points and stated that it would be rolled out to other products over the following year, so this launch does not mean that all products have been integrated at the same time.⁠[8]

On July 22, 2026, ServiceNow reported results for the second quarter ended June 30: total revenues were $3.987 billion, up 24% year over year, of which subscription revenues were $3.877 billion, up 24.5% year over year. The company also disclosed that annual contract value for its AI business exceeded $1 billion; this metric is contract-based and is not the same as revenue recognized in the quarter.⁠[9]