If you want to know how B2B marketing and IT spend is really doing — not the narrative, not the vibes — look at the two companies that literally exist to sell into those budgets: Gartner and Forrester.
Both just reported their Q4 2025 / full year results. And the picture they paint is sobering.
The Numbers Tell the Story
Gartner (NYSE: IT) — Q4 2025
- Q4 revenue: $1.8B, up just 2.2% YoY
- Full year revenue: $6.5B, up 4% — but decelerating hard from 9.6% annualized over 5 years
- Consulting revenue: $134M, down from $153M in the prior year Q4. That’s a 12.8% decline.
- Global Contract Value (CV): grew just 0.8% to $5.2B. Strip out U.S. federal, and it’s 4%. But 0.8% overall is barely a pulse.
- Adjusted EPS: $3.94, down 27.8% YoY
- 2026 guidance: revenue of at least $6.455B — which is actually below 2025’s $6.5B. FX-neutral growth of just 2%.
- Stock: down ~71% from its Nov 2024 high of $552 to ~$155. Market cap dropped from $45B+ to roughly $12B.
The Conferences segment was actually the bright spot — up 13.9% in Q4 to $286M with 51% contribution margins. (People still want to meet in person. More on that in a moment.)
Forrester (NASDAQ: FORR) — Q4 2025
- Q4 revenue: $101.1M, down 6% YoY
- Full year revenue: $396.9M, down 8% from $432.5M in 2024
- Contract Value: down 6% to $292.4M
- Consulting: $21.8M in Q4, down 16%. Full year $88.2M, down 9%.
- Events: full year down 29% to $13.1M
- GAAP net loss: $33.9M in Q4 (includes $26.8M goodwill impairment)
- Full year GAAP net loss: $119.4M (including $110.7M in goodwill impairment charges)
- 2026 guidance: revenue of $345M-$360M — a further 9-13% decline. EPS guided to $0.72-$0.82.
- Stock: trading around $5.50-$6.50. Market cap: ~$105M. Down from ~$300M a year ago and an all-time high of $64/share.
- Restructuring: 8% workforce reduction in February 2026. Sunsetting strategy consulting entirely. Overhauling events from multi-day conferences to regional forums.
Forrester’s market cap of $105M for a company doing ~$400M in revenue tells you everything. The market is pricing this as a melting ice cube.
What This Actually Means for B2B
Here’s why this matters beyond the stock tickers. Gartner and Forrester aren’t just research firms. They’re proxies for enterprise B2B marketing and IT spend. Their customers are the VPs and CXOs at large enterprises who are deciding how much to allocate to technology, marketing services, and advisory.
When those buyers slow down, Gartner and Forrester feel it first. And they’re feeling it hard.
1. Enterprise Buying Cycles Have Extended — Again
Gartner CEO Gene Hall was blunt on the earnings call: external market forces have led to “increased scrutiny, elevated deal approval authority, and extended buying cycles.” He added that “executives have responded by slowing and deferring everything possible.”
This isn’t new — we’ve been hearing this since mid-2023. But it’s not getting better. Gartner’s own 2026 guidance assumes no improvement in the selling environment compared to 2025.
If you’re a B2B startup selling to enterprise, this is the headwind you’re fighting. Not that there’s no budget — there is — but every deal takes longer, involves more stakeholders, and gets more scrutiny. Plan accordingly.
2. Consulting Is Getting Crushed
This is the most underappreciated signal. Gartner consulting down 12.8%. Forrester consulting down 16% in Q4, down 9% for the full year. Forrester is exiting strategy consulting entirely — bookings dropped over 50% in 2025.
What does this mean? When companies cut consulting, it means they’re pulling back on strategic initiatives. They’re not doing the transformation projects. They’re not hiring outside help to rethink go-to-market. They’re in execution mode on what they already have, or they’re pausing.
For B2B founders: if your sale depends on the customer doing a “new initiative” or “transformation project,” your deal cycle just got a lot harder. The companies buying are the ones with urgent, specific, quantifiable pain.
3. AI Is Both the Threat and the Opportunity
Both companies are scrambling to figure out what AI means for their business. Gartner produced over 6,000 AI-related research documents and had 200,000+ client conversations about AI in 2025. Forrester launched “AI Access,” a self-service offering that generated $5M+ in bookings since September and shortened sales cycles by nearly 50%.
But here’s the tension: AI is also the reason their core business is under pressure. As Motley Fool noted about Gartner, “clients have easy access to artificial intelligence tools” — which makes the value proposition of paying six figures for a Gartner subscription harder to justify.
Forrester CEO George Colony made the counter-argument: “We have three capabilities that public LLMs cannot deliver. Proprietary data. Original ideas and analysis. And the ability of our clients to talk to the people who created the data.” He’s right, but the market isn’t buying it yet.
This mirrors what every B2B company is grappling with. AI creates new product opportunities, but it also compresses the value of existing offerings. You have to run both plays simultaneously.
4. Events Are Resilient (If You Do Them Right)
Gartner’s Conferences segment was the one bright spot — up 13.9% YoY with 51% margins. Same-conference revenue growth was ~8% FX-neutral. Meanwhile, Forrester’s events business collapsed 29%, and they’re completely overhauling the format.
The divergence matters. People still want to meet in person, but they’re being selective. Multi-day, travel-heavy, expensive conferences are getting cut from budgets. Smaller, more focused, higher-ROI events are holding up.
5. The U.S. Federal Pullback Is Real
Both companies called out U.S. federal government headwinds. Gartner’s CV growth excluding federal was 4% vs. 0.8% overall. Forrester’s strategy consulting collapse was partially driven by instability in federal contracts.
If you sell into government or government-adjacent channels, this is a structural shift, not a blip. Plan for it.
Gartner Falls From 7x ARR to 1.8x. Forrester to 0.25x ARR. You Need to Grab AI Spend in B2B.
Gartner is a $6.5B revenue company that the market now values at $12B — roughly 1.8x revenue. A year ago it was 7x+. Forrester is doing $400M in revenue and is worth $105M — about 0.25x revenue. These are historically low multiples for recurring-revenue businesses with high gross margins.
The market is telling you:
- Enterprise B2B spend growth is near zero in aggregate. Individual winners exist, but the tide isn’t lifting all boats.
- AI disruption risk is being priced in aggressively, even for companies that have been around for decades.
- Consulting and professional services are contracting. Companies are doing more with less (and with AI).
- The bar for new B2B purchases is the highest it’s been in years. ROI has to be obvious, quantifiable, and fast.
None of this means B2B is dead. $6.5B in Gartner revenue means enterprises are still spending billions on research and advisory alone. But the growth is gone from the incumbents, and it’s flowing toward AI-native solutions that deliver faster, cheaper, more personalized value.
If you’re building in B2B + AI right now, that’s the opportunity. The budgets exist. They’re just being reallocated — away from legacy advisory and consulting, toward tools and platforms that deliver measurable outcomes with less friction.
The Gartner and Forrester numbers don’t lie. B2B isn’t in crisis. But it is in a reset. And the founders who understand that will be the ones who capture the spend that’s shifting.
