Introduction
ServiceNow began as a tool for automating IT service requests and has grown into one of the largest workflow-automation platforms used by large enterprises and governments. Founded in 2003 by Fred Luddy, a former chief technology officer at Peregrine Systems, the company built its reputation on being the single place employees go to request something from IT — a password reset, new hardware, access to a system — and having that request tracked and routed automatically.
Under chairman and CEO Bill McDermott, ServiceNow has spent the last several years extending that same workflow logic to AI, positioning the Now Platform not as a model provider but as the governance and orchestration layer that connects, tracks, and secures AI agents built by other vendors as they act across an enterprise’s systems.
What the company does
ServiceNow’s Now Platform lets organizations build and automate workflows across IT, HR, customer service, and other departments, traditionally through a shared system of record and a low-code development environment. On top of that platform, ServiceNow AI adds Now Assist, generative AI features embedded in specific workflows, and newer capabilities including AI Control Tower, which the company describes as giving enterprises visibility and control over every AI model and agent running across their systems, and Otto, a unified conversational interface built substantially on technology from its Moveworks acquisition.
Who it serves
ServiceNow sells to large enterprises and public-sector agencies, typically starting with IT service management before expanding into HR, customer service, security, and other departments within the same account. According to the company, nine of the ten largest companies in the world use technology from its recently acquired Armis unit for device visibility, reflecting how deeply embedded ServiceNow and its acquired businesses are inside the operations of the largest global organizations.
Company background
Fred Luddy founded the company in 2003 under the name Glidesoft, renaming it ServiceNow in 2006 as it focused on IT service management delivered from the cloud. ServiceNow went public on the New York Stock Exchange in 2012 under the ticker NOW and is headquartered in Santa Clara, California. Bill McDermott, formerly CEO of SAP, became ServiceNow’s chief executive in 2019 and has since led an aggressive expansion of the company’s platform and, more recently, an acquisition strategy explicitly built around AI governance: Moveworks for conversational AI, Veza for identity governance, and Armis for device and operational-technology visibility, along with smaller deals including Traceloop and Pyramid Analytics. McDermott has said the 2030 growth targets set at the company’s May 2026 Financial Analyst Day do not assume further large-scale acquisitions, characterizing recent deals as expansions of ServiceNow’s addressable market rather than revenue-buying.
Product and AI capabilities
ServiceNow’s central AI pitch, articulated at its Knowledge 2026 conference, is that enterprises need a governance layer that can “sense across the enterprise, decide the right action, act across any workflow or application, and secure every step,” in McDermott’s words, regardless of which underlying AI model or agent framework a business uses. AI Control Tower is built to give IT and security teams a single view of every AI model and agent running across a company’s systems. Otto, unveiled at the same event, provides a unified conversational front door built on Moveworks’ assistant technology, while EmployeeWorks packages that same technology for employee-facing HR and IT requests. The company has said it maintains model partnerships with OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and other AI labs, positioning itself as a neutral orchestration layer rather than a competing model provider. In its 2026 first-quarter earnings call, ServiceNow raised its full-year target for Now Assist and AI-related revenue from $1 billion to $1.5 billion.
Key developments
ServiceNow announced its agreement to acquire Moveworks for approximately $2.85 billion in March 2025 and completed the deal in December 2025, folding its conversational AI into a new product, EmployeeWorks, within weeks. In April 2026, the company closed its roughly $7.75 billion acquisition of cybersecurity company Armis, its largest deal to date, alongside smaller acquisitions of Traceloop and Pyramid Analytics. At its Knowledge 2026 event and Financial Analyst Day in early May 2026, ServiceNow unveiled AI Control Tower and Otto and set a target of more than $30 billion in subscription revenue by 2030, with ServiceNow AI expected to represent over 30% of annual contract value by that year.
Why it matters
ServiceNow’s acquisition spree is one of the clearest, most officially documented examples of a large workflow incumbent trying to own the governance layer of enterprise AI rather than compete directly with frontier AI labs on model quality. Its emphasis on tracking what both human employees and AI agents are allowed to access — extended through the Veza and Armis deals into identity and device-level visibility — reflects a growing enterprise concern that adopting AI agents without matching governance infrastructure creates new security and compliance exposure.
Sector context
Within Brel’s enterprise software coverage, ServiceNow’s governance-first positioning distinguishes it from platform vendors like Salesforce and Workday, which are embedding agents primarily into their own applications rather than trying to govern agents across a customer’s entire technology estate. ServiceNow’s acquisition of Moveworks also makes it a direct case study in how large platform vendors absorb specialized agentic AI startups, a pattern also visible in workplace-assistant tools such as Glean that remain independent for now.
Sources and references
This profile draws on ServiceNow’s official newsroom press releases announcing the Moveworks acquisition and its Knowledge 2026 product launches, supplemented by independent reporting on its acquisition strategy and financial targets.
- ServiceNow Newsroom — “ServiceNow turns enterprise AI chaos into control” (2026)
- ServiceNow — “ServiceNow to acquire Moveworks” press release (2025)
- diginomica — Knowledge 2026 coverage (2026)