Eight months into 2025, the public SaaS and B2B markets are telling two very different stories. While the overall tech market has shown resilience, the performance gap between winners and losers has never been more pronounced.
The SaaStr.ai Index is Outperforming NASDAQ … But …
It’s not evenly distributed. The AI winners in B2B are pulling the index way ahead. But for many, growth is still decelerating.
The Spectacular Winners
Figma (FIG) continues to dominate the design collaboration space, with shares soaring +265.18% from IPO listing to $73.92. The company’s expansion beyond design into broader workflow management and AI-powered design tools has clearly resonated with investors and customers alike.
Palantir (PLTR) remains a Wall Street darling, up +106.65% to $154.15, even after recent declines. The company’s pivot to commercial markets and AI-driven analytics continues to pay dividends, with enterprise adoption accelerating faster than many predicted.
Cloudflare (NET) has proven the power of the developer-first approach, climbing +81.09% to $195.13. Their edge computing and security platform has become indispensable infrastructure for modern applications.
Zscaler (ZS) demonstrates that cybersecurity remains a top priority, with shares up +50.60% to $270.38. The shift to cloud-first security architectures continues to drive growth.
Rubrik (RBRK) rounds out the winners with a solid +35.56% gain to $88.81, showing that data protection and backup solutions are finding new life in the AI era.
The Struggling (In Terms of Market Cap)
On the flip side, some major players are facing significant headwinds.
C3.ai (AI) has been hit hardest, down -49.20% to just $17.32. Despite the AI boom, the company continues to struggle with customer acquisition and retention in an increasingly competitive landscape.
HubSpot (HUBS) has disappointed investors with a -31.93% decline to $469.00. The CRM + marketing automation giant faces pressure from newer and more specialized competitors and slower SMB spending, even as net new customers additions remains impressive.
Atlassian (TEAM) fell -30.13% to $169.17, as enterprises reassess the budget size and breadth of their collaboration tool stack and competition intensifies in the developer productivity space.
Salesforce (CRM) dropped -25.40% to $247.34, with concerns about growth deceleration and expensive acquisitions weighing on the stock despite its market-leading position.
Monday.com (MNDY) declined -24.63% to $178.22, as the work management platform faces some saturation in its core market and increased competition.
What This Tells Us
The winners share common themes that reveal where the market is placing its bets:
AI integration done right — and with real customer ROI: It’s not enough to slap “AI-powered” on your marketing materials. Figma’s AI design assistance and Palantir’s foundational AI analytics show how to meaningfully embed intelligence into core workflows. The winners are using AI to create new value, not just automate existing tasks.
Developer-first approaches win: Cloudflare’s success demonstrates the power of building for developers first, then expanding up-market. In 2025, developer adoption remains the strongest leading indicator of enterprise success. If developers love your product, procurement will follow.
The cybersecurity premium: Zscaler and Rubrik both tell the same story – cybersecurity spending remains recession-proof. Companies will cut marketing tools, collaboration platforms, and productivity software before they touch security budgets. Both companies occupy “can’t live without it” positions, but more importantly, they’re in the “can’t get hacked without it” category. The question isn’t just mission-critical infrastructure anymore – it’s existential protection. Every board conversation now starts with “What’s our security posture?” not “What’s our growth rate?”
The B2B stocks down the most tell an equally instructive story:
The AI paradox hits C3.ai hardest: C3.ai’s 49% plunge tells the most cautionary tale – CEO Tom Siebel himself called Q1 results “completely unacceptable” as revenue dropped 19% year-over-year while operating losses more than doubled. The company faces a CEO transition due to Siebel’s health issues, creating leadership uncertainty just when the AI market is most competitive. The brutal irony: being an “AI company” isn’t automatically valuable when every other company is building AI capabilities directly into their core products.
Growth deceleration syndrome: HubSpot’s 32% decline reflects investor concern about growth slowing to 14% in 2025 guidance, down from historical 20%+ rates, while the company struggles with declining organic search traffic and cautious SMB spending. Monday.com’s 25% drop came despite beating Q2 earnings, as investors focused on slowing growth guidance (26% vs. historical 30%+ rates) and compressed operating margins falling from 15% to 11-12%.
The enterprise disruption reality: Salesforce’s 25% decline shows that even CRM category creators face existential questions – revenue growth has slowed to just 7.6% while the company struggles with slow initial adoption of its AI product Agentforce. Atlassian’s 30% drop reflects challenges in cloud migration strategy, with many customers choosing data center solutions over cloud offerings, disrupting the company’s growth model.
The AI disruption double-edged sword: Companies face the paradox that AI both threatens their business models while requiring massive investment. Monday.com’s troubles illustrate this perfectly – Google’s AI Overviews have hurt SEO-driven traffic by 25%, threatening their self-serve acquisition model, while they simultaneously invest heavily in AI features that compress margins.
For B2B founders and investors, 2025 is proving several key themes:
Product-market fit isn’t binary anymore – it’s a spectrum, and you need to keep climbing it. The companies thriving are those that continuously deepen their value proposition rather than just expanding their feature set.
Category creation still matters, but category leadership matters more. Figma didn’t just build design software; they created the collaborative design category. Cloudflare isn’t just a CDN; they’re building the infrastructure for the edge-first internet.
Financial discipline is back in vogue. The market is rewarding sustainable growth metrics over growth-at-all-costs. Rule of 40 companies are commanding premium multiples while cash burners are getting punished.
The divergence also reveals a fundamental shift in how enterprises buy software. Procurement has gotten sophisticated. IT buyers are better at evaluating ROI, demanding proof of value, and switching costs have decreased across most categories. The days of selling on relationships and getting sticky through complexity are largely over.
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