What Happened?

A number of stocks jumped in the afternoon session after investors continued to rotate into oversold enterprise software names amid profit taking in chip stocks. 

While the Nasdaq retreated and semiconductor leaders like Micron (-4%) sold off, major SaaS incumbents caught a strong bid. ServiceNow (NYSE: NOW) surged 4.3%, and Salesforce (NYSE: CRM) climbed 2.4%. The divergence occurred against a backdrop of rising oil prices and geopolitical tensions in the Middle East that weighed on the broader indices. It seems the AI trade is rotating from the infrastructure layer to the application layer. After months of paying premium multiples for the chips required to build artificial intelligence, investors appeared to be shifting capital into the software companies that are actually monetizing it. Earlier in 2026, software stocks suffered a severe valuation compression, dubbed the "SaaSpocalypse", driven by fears that AI agents would destroy traditional per-seat software licensing models. 

Recent data points, including ServiceNow raising its Now Assist AI contract target to $1.5 billion and Salesforce scaling its Agentforce platform, revealed that incumbents can sell AI as a premium add-on rather than watching it cannibalize their core business. Because enterprise SaaS providers own the proprietary data and daily workflows, they are positioned as the control layer for AI deployment. With semiconductor valuations stretched to historic premiums, capital continued to hunt for the margin of safety found in quality software stocks with depressed forward multiples. However, risks remain: if macroeconomic pressures force enterprise CIOs to consolidate vendors further, second-tier software names without clear AI monetization could still struggle.

The stock market overreacts to news, and big price drops can present good opportunities to buy high-quality stocks.

Among others, the following stocks were impacted:

• Sales Software company Salesforce (NYSE: CRM) jumped 4.3%. Is now the time to buy Salesforce? Access our full analysis report here, it’s free.
• Finance and Accounting Software company Workday (NASDAQ: WDAY) jumped 4.2%. Is now the time to buy Workday? Access our full analysis report here, it’s free.
• Cloud Monitoring company PagerDuty (NYSE: PD) jumped 4.3%. Is now the time to buy PagerDuty? Access our full analysis report here, it’s free.

Zooming In On PagerDuty (PD)

PagerDuty’s shares are very volatile and have had 28 moves greater than 5% over the last year. In that context, today’s move indicates the market considers this news meaningful but not something that would fundamentally change its perception of the business.

The previous big move we wrote about was 6 days ago when the stock gained 4.1% on the news that investors continued to rotate out of high-flying semiconductors into beaten-down software stocks. 

DigitalOcean's blowout preliminary results also supported the improved appetite as it showed proof that AI demand is converting into real, contracted revenue. The clearest signal is at the index level: the iShares software ETF (IGV) climbed roughly 7% over eight sessions even as the semiconductor SOXX fell ~8.5%. Microsoft rose ~3% on the week (after launching its $2.5B "Frontier" AI-services unit). ServiceNow and Salesforce each gained around +4%. 

DigitalOcean pre-announced that remaining performance obligations (RPO) would exceed $800M, more than 10x year-over-year and up over $550M in the quarter, driven by multiple new nine-figure AI inference contracts, with average contract life stretching from 1.6 to over three years. Revenue growth was guided to accelerate to ~29% (from a prior 24–25% guide), and margins to the high end. Coming after Q1's 221% jump in AI-customer ARR, it's hard evidence that AI spend is landing as durable, contracted backlog, not just usage that can evaporate.

PagerDuty is down 12.5% since the beginning of the year, and at $10.84 per share, it is trading 36.9% below its 52-week high of $17.17 from September 2025. Investors who bought $1,000 worth of PagerDuty’s shares 5 years ago would now be looking at only $265.49.S

ONE MORE THING: The $21 AI Application Stock Wall Street Forgot. While Wall Street obsesses over who’s building AI, one company is already using it to print money. And nobody’s paying attention.

AI chip stocks trade at ridiculous valuations. This company processes a trillion consumer signals monthly using AI and trades at a third of the price. The gap won’t last. The institutions will figure it out. You need to see this first. Read the FREE Report Before They Notice.