On 13 August, MongoDB — which sells the document database Atlas as a managed cloud service — launched a hosted way for AI coding agents such as Claude Code, Codex and Devin to read and write live application data, alongside automated embeddings built on its Voyage AI acquisition. Brokers followed: Guggenheim went to $560 on expectations of 29% Atlas growth, with Citizens at $519, RBC at $515 and Stifel at $475. What has not happened yet is the earnings report. MongoDB reports its fiscal second quarter on 1 September.

MongoDB is grouped with four other companies under a data-management heading, and the grouping implies they share a demand cycle. They do not share a billing unit, and over the past month they did not share a direction. MongoDB gained 36.2% and Dropbox 11.3%; LiveRamp was flat, Teradata fell 8.8% and Varonis 10.9%. Equal-weighted the five are up 5.5%, all of it and more from one name.

The one business that is compounding

MongoDB's case is real. April-quarter revenue reached $687.6m, up 25.2% year on year, and gross profit grew faster still, up 26.9%. Atlas revenue rose 29.4% and is now about three-quarters of the total, against 72% a year earlier, while the older licence line grew 13%. Because Atlas is metered on workloads, that line is a direct read on how much customer software is actually running. The moat is switching cost: MongoDB's storage format and query language make a migration a data transformation and application rewrite, typically a six- to eighteen-month project, which is what holds off Oracle, Postgres and the hyperscalers' bundled databases.

The price is the harder question. Price-to-gross-profit stands at 18.9x, against 13.9x on 20 July, 15.2x in May, 17.2x in February and 11.5x a year ago — above every anchor of the past twelve months. Forward earnings are 72.0x consensus fiscal-2027 EPS of $6.12, and consensus has revenue growth slowing from 21.6% this year to 18.0% next. The multiple expanded while the forward growth curve flattened. Six sessions in early August — 3, 4, 7, 10, 11 and 13 — compound to 38%, more than the entire month's gain.

The three that are not

Teradata sells Vantage, an enterprise analytics platform still largely running in customers' own data centers. Its annual revenue has fallen from $1.833bn in 2023 to $1.663bn last year. In the June quarter total annual recurring revenue grew 1%, cloud recurring revenue 8% off a small base, and consulting fell 24%. The shares lost 23.7% on 5 August after management guided third-quarter revenue down 6% to 4%. Earnings are being carried by capital allocation — $40m of stock repurchased in the quarter, a $450m term loan retired — while management conceded that its new AI features drive utilization of capacity customers already bought rather than new recurring revenue. At 3.28x EV/EBITDA and a 28.4% trailing free-cash-flow yield it is optically cheap; the deterioration is doing the work.

Varonis, which maps and polices access to sensitive corporate data for chief information security officers, is the interesting middle case. It is converting from perpetual licences to subscription, which mechanically depresses reported revenue: recurring revenue excluding conversions grew 25% to $598.1m against reported revenue growth of 18.3%. The shares still fell 12.9% on 29 July because billings shrank 1.5% and gross margin narrowed 419 basis points to 75.3%. It trades at 9.16x price-to-gross-profit, above February's 6.0x but below 13.8x a year ago.

Dropbox grew revenue 0.9% last quarter; its earnings growth comes from an 18% reduction in share count, which is why its forward price/earnings of 11.1x sits below its trailing 18.7x. Its Claude and ChatGPT integrations reached over 150,000 users, but Dash revenue is not in guidance. LiveRamp is not a re-rating at all: Publicis agreed in May to buy it for $38.50 a share in cash, and it has traded within a fraction of that price ever since.

The backdrop matters: chip stocks shed more than $1trn in late July on fears AI infrastructure spending was peaking, and money rotated into software. Only one of these five has, so far, produced the consumption numbers to justify being on the receiving end.

The setup

Where it stands — MongoDB carries the entire data-layer advance at a multiple above every anchor of the past year, before reporting. Would confirm — Atlas revenue growth at or above 29% in the 1 September print, with full-year guidance raised. Would invalidate — Atlas growth below the mid-20s, or a guidance raise smaller than the 200 basis points brokers assume. Watch next — MongoDB fiscal second-quarter results after the close on 1 September 2026. Valuation — 18.9x trailing price-to-gross-profit and 16.6x forward, against 13.9x in July and 11.5x a year ago.