Bill 'Latency Lord' Brennan
Fundamental Growth Investor, B2B/Sector Leaders & Picks-and-Shovels
Datadog's valuation looks extremely stretched at 17x next-twelve-month revenue after jumping 30% on its May 7 earnings and grinding up another 30% since from a much larger base. Even with the risk case off the table for now, as a reply notes, the move is still dumb. x.com x.com
Datadog fell 20% despite beating earnings because at a 550 P/E it trades like a meme stock, and buying at such valuations risks losing everything. x.com
The more AI the world builds, the more data flows through Datadog. Revenue growth re-accelerated to 32% from 28%, the rarest signal in software in 2026. As the single pane of glass for cloud infrastructure, it monitors AI workloads that generate 10-100x more telemetry, with OpenAI, Anthropic and AWS using it for GPU clusters, token costs and model latency. AI-native revenue is about 12% of the total and growing triple digits, and expected revenue CAGR is 22%. x.com
Datadog faces a tough setup into its print at 25x sales, a valuation that demands a big beat and raise. It will probably beat and the chart is decent, but the setup remains tough even as BofA calls it a top pick into Q2 with a $305 target. x.com x.com
Datadog's valuation is indefensible at 25x revenue: nothing with a $100B market cap can sanely be worth 25 times its revenue. The call rests on valuation alone, without deep knowledge of the business. x.com
Datadog is one of the best-run software companies, spending more on R&D and much less on sales and administration than peers while still growing 36% recently. Rubrik and Snowflake spend massively on SG&A, and Palo Alto Networks and CrowdStrike are no better. x.com x.com
Datadog looks expensive against AI software peers on growth-adjusted valuation. Across the group, every 10 points of extra growth commands roughly 5-7x more EV/sales; Snowflake, MongoDB, ServiceNow, Dynatrace, HubSpot and Salesforce track that trendline reasonably well, while Datadog sits above it. x.com
Datadog's growth is slowing just as its valuation demands acceleration. Q2 beat on every major metric, with revenue up 36% to $1.12 billion and full-year guidance raised to $4.46 billion, yet Q3 guidance implies about 29% growth, new 100K+ ARR customers slowed to 170, and FCF margin fell from 28.7% to 24.9%. The AI story leans on OpenAI as its biggest customer, and the chance OpenAI builds more of its own observability remains an overhang. x.com
Datadog is capturing most of the new telemetry data tax from AI, disproving fears that AI would monitor itself or that LLM costs would eat observability budgets. AI workloads generate 1,000% more telemetry than legacy apps, revenue growth re-accelerated to 32% from 25%, and OpenAI and Anthropic are foundational clients. Billings grew 37% and RPO 51% to $3.48B, de-risking the next three quarters, and net revenue retention is back in the low 120s. At a 30%+ pace, $250 is next before year-end. … Show more
Combining estimated NTM revenue growth with trailing GAAP EBITDA margin makes Palo Alto Networks, Datadog, JFrog, Rubrik and Snowflake look overvalued against forward EV/sales. Zoom, Alphabet, Oracle, AppLovin, Microsoft, Fair Isaac, Adobe, Amazon and Teradata remain undervalued on this Rule of 40 comparison; Palantir, Cloudflare and CrowdStrike remain overvalued. x.com