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C3.ai's Agentic AI Push Scales Up: Can it Fuel a New Growth Cycle?
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Key Takeaways
A 2022 patent and over 100 use cases help differentiate AI in a crowded agentic AI market.
AI's Agentic AI business is generating a $60M annualized run rate across mission-critical sectors.
Strategic alliances with PwC, Microsoft and AWS are driving global adoption of Agentic AI.
C3.ai, Inc. (AI - Free Report) is sharpening its focus on the emerging Agentic AI segment, a business line that is quickly evolving into a meaningful contributor to revenue and long-term growth. In the fourth quarter of fiscal 2025, the company reported that its Agentic AI deployments are leading to an annualized run rate of $60 million, with applications spanning mission-critical environments in defense, manufacturing, government and energy.
C3.ai’s early patent on agentic AI, secured in late 2022, sets it apart in an increasingly crowded AI landscape. The company is delivering production-grade AI agents purpose-built for autonomous decision-making. These agents are operational across over 100 use cases, including predictive maintenance for the U.S. Air Force’s PANDA platform and global fuel monitoring for the Defense Logistics Agency’s Pluto system.
Crucially, the company is leveraging its trusted partner ecosystem to scale the reach of its Agentic AI solutions. A newly formed strategic alliance with PwC allows C3.ai to combine its agentic capabilities with PwC’s deep advisory expertise, targeting verticals such as financial services, manufacturing and utilities. The initiative complements its alliances with Microsoft, AWS, Google Cloud and McKinsey QuantumBlack, contributing to rapid adoption. The company has made a disciplined push to ensure its partners are fully enabled, with demo tools, training programs and co-sell strategies in place to drive execution globally.
C3.ai believes its Agentic AI business is materially undervalued. Management stated that if the unit were carved out as a standalone, it could command a valuation multiple above the company’s entire current market cap, backed by IP strength, customer traction and real-world impact. With enterprise use cases accelerating and customer references spanning Shell, Dow, Cargill and the U.S. Navy, the agentic AI portfolio is well-positioned to scale and drive growth in the coming periods.
How It Stacks Up to Competitors
Cadence Design Systems, Inc. (CDNS - Free Report) is pursuing agentic AI from a product development lens, embedding intelligent automation across the semiconductor design stack. Through its Cerebrus and Conformal AI ECO flows, the company enables AI-driven enhancements in areas like logic synthesis and low-power optimization. In the first quarter of 2025, Cadence reported that over 50% of all customer chip designs now integrate AI-enabled workflows, with partnerships expanding across foundries and hyperscalers. Cadence is collaborating with NVIDIA Corporation (NVDA - Free Report) to co-develop a full-stack agentic AI system for science and engineering, built on the Llama Nemotron Reasoning Model. While promising, Cadence’s agentic AI remains tightly coupled to EDA toolchains, with a narrower application scope compared to C3.ai’s enterprise-grade agents.
SoundHound AI, Inc. (SOUN - Free Report) is approaching the agentic AI opportunity through conversational AI and customer-facing voice agents. In the first quarter of 2025, the company launched Amelia 7.0, an enterprise-ready agentic platform capable of autonomous task execution across healthcare, hospitality and financial services. Its Agentic Plus framework enables fleets of voice-powered agents to transact, reason and respond without human intervention. SoundHound has already deployed the technology across 13,000 restaurant locations and secured OEM pilots for in-vehicle voice commerce. While SoundHound’s edge lies in multimodal, multilingual voice AI integration, its agentic use cases remain consumer-centric and are mostly confined to front-end service automation.
AI’s Price Performance, Valuation & Estimates
Shares of C3.ai have gained 39.7% in the past three months compared with the industry’s growth of 9.5%.
Image Source: Zacks Investment Research
From a valuation standpoint, AI trades at a forward price-to-sales ratio of 7.43X, significantly below the industry’s average of 18.24X.
Image Source: Zacks Investment Research
The Zacks Consensus Estimate for AI’s fiscal 2026 and 2027 earnings per share (EPS) implies a year-over-year uptick of 9.8% and 56.9%, respectively. The EPS estimates for fiscal 2026 and 2027 have increased in the past 30 days.
Image: Shutterstock
C3.ai's Agentic AI Push Scales Up: Can it Fuel a New Growth Cycle?
Key Takeaways
C3.ai, Inc. (AI - Free Report) is sharpening its focus on the emerging Agentic AI segment, a business line that is quickly evolving into a meaningful contributor to revenue and long-term growth. In the fourth quarter of fiscal 2025, the company reported that its Agentic AI deployments are leading to an annualized run rate of $60 million, with applications spanning mission-critical environments in defense, manufacturing, government and energy.
C3.ai’s early patent on agentic AI, secured in late 2022, sets it apart in an increasingly crowded AI landscape. The company is delivering production-grade AI agents purpose-built for autonomous decision-making. These agents are operational across over 100 use cases, including predictive maintenance for the U.S. Air Force’s PANDA platform and global fuel monitoring for the Defense Logistics Agency’s Pluto system.
Crucially, the company is leveraging its trusted partner ecosystem to scale the reach of its Agentic AI solutions. A newly formed strategic alliance with PwC allows C3.ai to combine its agentic capabilities with PwC’s deep advisory expertise, targeting verticals such as financial services, manufacturing and utilities. The initiative complements its alliances with Microsoft, AWS, Google Cloud and McKinsey QuantumBlack, contributing to rapid adoption. The company has made a disciplined push to ensure its partners are fully enabled, with demo tools, training programs and co-sell strategies in place to drive execution globally.
C3.ai believes its Agentic AI business is materially undervalued. Management stated that if the unit were carved out as a standalone, it could command a valuation multiple above the company’s entire current market cap, backed by IP strength, customer traction and real-world impact. With enterprise use cases accelerating and customer references spanning Shell, Dow, Cargill and the U.S. Navy, the agentic AI portfolio is well-positioned to scale and drive growth in the coming periods.
How It Stacks Up to Competitors
Cadence Design Systems, Inc. (CDNS - Free Report) is pursuing agentic AI from a product development lens, embedding intelligent automation across the semiconductor design stack. Through its Cerebrus and Conformal AI ECO flows, the company enables AI-driven enhancements in areas like logic synthesis and low-power optimization. In the first quarter of 2025, Cadence reported that over 50% of all customer chip designs now integrate AI-enabled workflows, with partnerships expanding across foundries and hyperscalers. Cadence is collaborating with NVIDIA Corporation (NVDA - Free Report) to co-develop a full-stack agentic AI system for science and engineering, built on the Llama Nemotron Reasoning Model. While promising, Cadence’s agentic AI remains tightly coupled to EDA toolchains, with a narrower application scope compared to C3.ai’s enterprise-grade agents.
SoundHound AI, Inc. (SOUN - Free Report) is approaching the agentic AI opportunity through conversational AI and customer-facing voice agents. In the first quarter of 2025, the company launched Amelia 7.0, an enterprise-ready agentic platform capable of autonomous task execution across healthcare, hospitality and financial services. Its Agentic Plus framework enables fleets of voice-powered agents to transact, reason and respond without human intervention. SoundHound has already deployed the technology across 13,000 restaurant locations and secured OEM pilots for in-vehicle voice commerce. While SoundHound’s edge lies in multimodal, multilingual voice AI integration, its agentic use cases remain consumer-centric and are mostly confined to front-end service automation.
AI’s Price Performance, Valuation & Estimates
Shares of C3.ai have gained 39.7% in the past three months compared with the industry’s growth of 9.5%.
Image Source: Zacks Investment Research
From a valuation standpoint, AI trades at a forward price-to-sales ratio of 7.43X, significantly below the industry’s average of 18.24X.
Image Source: Zacks Investment Research
The Zacks Consensus Estimate for AI’s fiscal 2026 and 2027 earnings per share (EPS) implies a year-over-year uptick of 9.8% and 56.9%, respectively. The EPS estimates for fiscal 2026 and 2027 have increased in the past 30 days.
Image Source: Zacks Investment Research
AI stock currently carries a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.