C3.ai, Inc.
- Open
- 10.30
- Day high
- 10.81
- Day low
- 10.26
- Prev close
- 10.34
- Volume
- 8.0M
- Mkt cap
- $1.7B
- P/E (TTM)
- —
- EPS (TTM)
- —
- P/B
- 2.6
- P/S
- 6.7
- Yield
- —
- Per share
- —
- ▼Insiders net selling -$17.3M over the last 3 months (0 open-market buys, 12 sales)
- 🏛Institutions accumulating (13F)
C3.ai, Inc. (AI) is a Technology company listed on NYSE. The stock is down 38% over the past year. Over the trailing 3 months, insiders filed 0 open-market buys and 12 sales (SEC Form 4). Drillr has 1 published research article covering AI.
C3.ai, Inc. (AI) financials & analyst ratings
Fundamentals (TTM)
Analyst consensus · 7 analysts
Source: exchange market data + company filings. Figures are trailing-twelve-month or as most recently reported. For informational purposes only — not investment advice.
AI earnings date, history & EPS estimates
| Report date | EPS est | EPS actual | Surprise | Revenue | Rev. surprise |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sep 2, 2026 | $-0.26 | $-0.20 | +23.2% | $52M | +1.3% |
| Jun 3, 2026 | $-0.38 | $-0.33 | +13.2% | $52M | -3.7% |
| Feb 27, 2026 | $-0.29 | $-0.96 | -231.6% | $53M | -30.7% |
| Dec 3, 2025 | $-0.33 | $-0.25 | +23.6% | $75M | -1.8% |
| Sep 3, 2025 | $-0.38 | $-0.37 | +2.6% | $70M | -8.3% |
| May 28, 2025 | $-0.20 | $-0.16 | +20.4% | $109M | +0.9% |
| Feb 26, 2025 | $-0.25 | $-0.12 | +52.0% | $99M | -8.2% |
| Dec 9, 2024 | $-0.16 | $-0.06 | +62.5% | $94M | +3.9% |
| Sep 4, 2024 | $-0.13 | $-0.05 | +62.6% | $87M | +0.5% |
| May 29, 2024 | $-0.30 | $-0.11 | +63.8% | $87M | +2.8% |
| Feb 28, 2024 | $-0.28 | $-0.13 | +53.6% | $78M | +3.4% |
| Dec 6, 2023 | $-0.19 | $-0.13 | +31.6% | $73M | -0.8% |
AI insider trading activity (SEC Form 4)
| Date | Insider | Type | Shares | Price |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Aug 27, 2026 | Dwyer John Charlesdirector | Grant | 132,077 | $9.79 |
| Aug 13, 2026 | SIEBEL THOMAS Mdirector, 10 percent owner, officer: CEO and Chairman of the Board | Option | 453,314 | $3.90 |
| Aug 13, 2026 | SIEBEL THOMAS Mdirector, 10 percent owner, officer: CEO and Chairman of the Board | Sell | 453,314 | $10.51 |
| Aug 6, 2026 | Lath Hiteshofficer: CHIEF FINANCIAL OFFICER | Sell | 20,000 | $10.00 |
| Aug 4, 2026 | SIEBEL THOMAS Mdirector, 10 percent owner, officer: CEO and Chairman of the Board | Option | 283,334 | — |
| Aug 4, 2026 | SIEBEL THOMAS Mdirector, 10 percent owner, officer: CEO and Chairman of the Board | Sell | 139,500 | $9.61 |
| Jul 16, 2026 | SIEBEL THOMAS Mdirector, 10 percent owner, officer: CEO and Chairman of the Board | Option | 264,100 | $2.04 |
| Jul 16, 2026 | SIEBEL THOMAS Mdirector, 10 percent owner, officer: CEO and Chairman of the Board | Sell | 133,490 | $9.32 |
| Jul 16, 2026 | SIEBEL THOMAS Mdirector, 10 percent owner, officer: CEO and Chairman of the Board | Sell | 64,975 | $9.31 |
| Jul 16, 2026 | SIEBEL THOMAS Mdirector, 10 percent owner, officer: CEO and Chairman of the Board | Option | 64,975 | $2.04 |
| Jul 16, 2026 | SIEBEL THOMAS Mdirector, 10 percent owner, officer: CEO and Chairman of the Board | Option | 133,490 | $3.90 |
| Jul 16, 2026 | SIEBEL THOMAS Mdirector, 10 percent owner, officer: CEO and Chairman of the Board | Sell | 264,100 | $9.07 |
| Jul 2, 2026 | Ehikian Stephen Bradleyofficer: Chief Executive Officer | Grant | 27,503 | — |
| Jul 2, 2026 | Ehikian Stephen Bradleyofficer: Chief Executive Officer | Sell | 50,542 | $9.45 |
| Jul 1, 2026 | Lath Hiteshofficer: CHIEF FINANCIAL OFFICER | Sell | 21,315 | $8.77 |
Source: AI SEC Form 4 filings, latest Aug 27, 2026. For informational purposes only — not investment advice.
See the full AI insider & 13F page →C3.ai, Inc. company profile
Overview
C3.ai, Inc. (NYSE:AI) is an enterprise artificial intelligence software company founded in 2009 and headquartered in Redwood City, California. Originally incorporated as C3 IoT, Inc., the company rebranded to C3.ai in June 2019 to reflect its broader focus on enterprise AI applications beyond Internet of Things solutions. The company went public in December 2020 and has established itself as a provider of AI-powered applications and platforms for large enterprises across multiple industries including oil and gas, utilities, manufacturing, financial services, defense, and government sectors.
Business
C3.ai operates in the enterprise artificial intelligence software market, providing both a comprehensive AI platform and pre-built AI applications designed for large organizations. The company's core offering centers around three main components that work together to deliver enterprise-grade AI solutions. The C3 AI Application Platform serves as the foundation, functioning as both a development environment and runtime system that enables customers to design, develop, and deploy enterprise AI applications. This platform handles the complex technical infrastructure required for AI implementations, including data integration, machine learning model management, and application deployment at enterprise scale. Built on this platform are C3 AI Applications - pre-configured, industry-specific software solutions that address common business challenges. These include C3 AI Inventory Optimization for supply chain management, C3 AI Predictive Maintenance for equipment monitoring, C3 AI Fraud Detection for financial services, C3 AI Customer Churn Management for relationship management, and C3 AI Energy Management for utilities. The company offers over 40 such applications across 14 industries. The company also provides C3 AI Ex Machina for data preparation and analysis, C3 AI CRM as an industry-specific customer relationship management solution, and C3 AI Data Vision for data visualization and relationship mapping. More recently, C3.ai has expanded into generative AI with solutions that can interact with enterprise data while maintaining security and providing traceable, hallucination-free responses. Revenue is primarily divided between subscription services (approximately 87% of total revenue) and professional services (approximately 13% of total revenue). The subscription revenue encompasses both platform licensing and application usage, while professional services include implementation, consulting, and training services to help customers deploy and optimize their AI solutions.
Revenue model
C3.ai generates revenue through two primary streams: subscription-based software licensing and professional services fees. The subscription model, which accounts for the vast majority of revenue, operates on both traditional licensing arrangements and an increasingly important consumption-based pricing structure that the company has been transitioning toward since 2023. Under the consumption-based model, customers pay based on their actual usage of C3.ai's applications and platform services, similar to how cloud computing resources are billed. This approach allows customers to start with smaller pilot projects and scale their usage as they see value, reducing the initial barrier to adoption. The company also offers traditional enterprise licensing agreements for larger deployments. Professional services revenue comes from implementation consulting, training programs, and ongoing support services that help customers successfully deploy and optimize their AI applications. These services are typically bundled with subscription agreements and provide higher-margin revenue while ensuring customer success. Several factors influence C3.ai's profitability margins. Positive margin drivers include the company's software-centric model with minimal marginal costs for additional users, the premium pricing commanded by specialized enterprise AI solutions, and the scalability of pre-built applications across multiple customers. The strategic partnerships with Microsoft Azure, AWS, and Google Cloud also provide leverage by expanding the sales reach without proportional increases in direct sales costs. Margin pressures come from significant ongoing investments in research and development to maintain technological leadership, substantial sales and marketing expenses required to educate enterprise customers about AI benefits, and the costs associated with professional services delivery. The transition to consumption-based pricing has also created near-term revenue headwinds as customers start with smaller pilot deployments before scaling to full production usage. Additionally, competition from internal IT departments attempting to build AI solutions in-house, as well as emerging competition from cloud providers and other AI vendors, can pressure pricing and require continued innovation investment.
Competitive moat
C3.ai's competitive moat is moderately strong but faces significant challenges in an rapidly evolving AI landscape. The company's primary defensive advantages stem from its comprehensive, pre-built enterprise AI applications that address specific industry problems with proven solutions. Unlike generic AI platforms that require extensive customization, C3.ai offers turnkey applications for complex use cases like predictive maintenance, supply chain optimization, and fraud detection that have been refined through multiple customer deployments. The company's deep industry expertise across sectors like oil and gas, utilities, and manufacturing creates switching costs and relationship advantages. C3.ai has built specialized knowledge about how AI can solve industry-specific problems, which is difficult for generalist competitors to replicate quickly. The platform's enterprise-grade security, compliance features, and ability to integrate with existing enterprise systems also create technical switching costs. However, C3.ai's moat faces substantial threats from multiple directions. Cloud computing giants like Microsoft, Amazon, and Google are rapidly expanding their AI capabilities and have vastly superior resources, existing customer relationships, and integrated cloud platforms. Microsoft's partnership with C3.ai, while currently beneficial, also demonstrates how dependent C3.ai is on these larger platforms for distribution and infrastructure. Internal IT development represents perhaps the biggest competitive threat, as many large enterprises prefer to build AI solutions in-house using their own data science teams and increasingly accessible AI tools. The company acknowledges this is their primary competition, though they argue that most internal efforts fail and become future sales prospects. Emerging AI technologies, particularly large language models and generative AI tools, are democratizing AI development and potentially reducing the need for specialized platforms like C3.ai's. The rapid pace of AI innovation means that technological advantages can erode quickly, requiring continuous substantial R&D investment to maintain relevance. The company's moat is therefore best characterized as moderate but under pressure, relying heavily on execution excellence, industry expertise, and strategic partnerships rather than truly defensible technological or market position advantages.
Risks & safety
C3.ai presents a mixed margin of safety profile with strong liquidity but concerning profitability metrics and high valuation levels. **Liquidity and Solvency:** - Strong cash position with $125 million in cash and short-term investments as of Q3 2025 - Excellent current ratio of 6.74, indicating very strong short-term liquidity - Minimal debt with debt-to-equity ratio of only 0.52% - However, negative free cash flow of -$22.4 million in Q3 2025 and -$90.4 million for full year 2024 - Current cash burn rate suggests approximately 2-3 years of runway at current spending levels **Profitability Concerns:** - Consistently negative EBITDA of -$84.5 million in Q3 2025 - Net losses of -$80.2 million in Q3 2025, showing persistent unprofitability - Negative return on equity of -9.3% - Company has never achieved annual profitability since going public **Valuation Metrics:** - Price-to-book ratio of 4.75, indicating premium valuation relative to book value - Graham net-net ratio of 5.10, suggesting stock trades well above conservative asset-based valuation - Enterprise value to EBITDA not meaningful due to negative EBITDA **Other Considerations:** - Revenue growth remains strong at 26% year-over-year in Q3 2025 - Transition to consumption-based pricing model creates near-term revenue uncertainty - Heavy dependence on continued R&D and sales investment to maintain competitive position
Recent development
Over the past several years, C3.ai has undergone significant strategic transformations to adapt to the evolving AI landscape and improve its market position. The most significant change has been the transition from traditional licensing to consumption-based pricing beginning in 2023. This shift allows customers to start with smaller pilot projects and pay based on actual usage, reducing barriers to adoption but initially creating revenue headwinds as customers begin with smaller deployments. The company has made a major strategic pivot toward generative AI applications, launching over 30 generative AI products and solutions. These applications address enterprise concerns about data security, hallucination problems, and intellectual property liability that have limited generative AI adoption in large organizations. C3.ai's generative AI solutions provide traceable, deterministic answers while maintaining enterprise security controls and supporting multiple large language models. Strategic partnerships have become increasingly central to C3.ai's go-to-market strategy. The company signed a significant 5.5-year strategic alliance with Microsoft in September 2024, making C3.ai solutions available through the Azure marketplace and potentially expanding the sales reach from approximately 100 to 10,000 sales professionals. Similar partnerships with AWS and Google Cloud have also been expanded, with 71% of agreements now delivered through partner channels. The company has invested heavily in platform performance improvements, with Version 8 of the C3 AI Platform delivering 20x faster data ingestion and machine learning model training capabilities. This four-year engineering effort involved major architectural improvements to handle enterprise-scale AI workloads more efficiently. Market focus has evolved from primarily industrial and energy sector applications to broader enterprise adoption across government, manufacturing, financial services, and other industries. The federal government sector has become particularly important, representing 50% of bookings in fiscal 2024, driven by national security applications and AI modernization initiatives.
AI company profile · for informational purposes only — not investment advice.
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