AvePoint sells the control layer between Microsoft 365 and the data inside it: backup, permissions, retention policy, and — since July — a standalone product that inventories and polices the artificial-intelligence agents an enterprise has switched on. On 6 August the company reported that annual recurring revenue (ARR) grew 27% to $465.1m, with record net new ARR of $29.9m, up 35%. That was the thirteenth straight quarter of double-digit growth in net new ARR. The shares fell 4.7% that day.

They have not recovered since. AvePoint closed 21 August at $13.08, within half a percent of where it began the month, while UiPath — the low-code robotic-process-automation (RPA) vendor whose robots execute rule-based workflows for banks, insurers and governments — rose 32% over the same stretch on no company disclosure at all.

The one with the numbers

AvePoint's case is that nobody turns on Microsoft's Copilot, or an agent, over ungoverned data. Management says its AgentPulse control packages roughly doubled quarter over quarter at deal sizes two to three times larger, that control products account for about 40% of pipeline, and that some customers already manage more than 5,000 agents, with counts doubling every quarter. Revenue grew 22% to $124.5m; software-as-a-service revenue reached 79% of the total. Full-year ARR guidance went up to $522.1-528.1m.

The competitive question is unavoidable: Microsoft shipped its own Agent 365 on 1 May at $15 per user standalone. AvePoint's answer is that it governs Google Workspace, Salesforce, Atlassian and Okta as well, and that it reaches customers through managed service providers — now 59% of ARR, up from 56%, and the source of 67% of incremental ARR. Customers above $100,000 of ARR numbered 911, up 26%, the best growth in three years. Gross margin slipped 94 basis points to 73.1% on mix, while GAAP operating margin widened 130 basis points to 8.2%.

The one with the story

UiPath's April-quarter revenue accelerated to 17.3% growth, but ARR grew only 12%, to $1.901bn, with dollar-based net retention of 109%. Management's own guidance puts July-quarter revenue at $395-400m — growth of 9.2% to 10.6% — and full-year ARR at $2.051-2.056bn, implying deceleration to about 10.8%. Gross margin fell 97 basis points to 81.1%.

On 20 August the company introduced Maestro Flow, an orchestration canvas that runs inside Claude Code, Cursor, GitHub Copilot and VS Code — a claim to sit above the coding agents rather than be replaced by them. It arrived after most of the share-price move, with no pricing and no revenue line. At $15.90 the stock sits roughly 19% above the $13.25 average analyst target, with sixteen of twenty ratings at hold.

Measured per dollar of trailing gross profit — the only lens that survives margins ranging from 70% to 83% across these businesses — UiPath now trades at 6.28x, against 4.19x three months ago and 4.45x in February. The multiple expanded about 50% while trailing gross profit grew 3.5%. AvePoint trades at 8.28x against roughly 12.3x a year ago, with trailing gross profit up 22% over that year. The business went one way; the price went the other.

The control fails

If this were an automation re-rating, the members without agent revenue would have lagged. They did not. SPS Commerce, which runs the electronic trading network connecting suppliers to retailers, grew revenue just 5.6% and expanded its price-to-gross-profit multiple 43% in three months, to 5.41x — nearly matching UiPath. Its gain is dated and specific: an 11.5% session on 31 July after second-quarter earnings of $1.27 a share beat $1.12, with adjusted EBITDA up 19% and trailing free cash flow up 40% to $198.7m.

CCC Intelligent Solutions, whose network links collision repairers to property-and-casualty insurers, rose 22% on takeover arithmetic: Bloomberg reported on 18 August that Copart is in talks to buy it, against private-equity bidders, with Morgan Stanley running the process. EverCommerce fell 15.9%, growing revenue 2.7% at 94% net revenue retention, with management blaming AI-driven search behavior for weaker organic customer acquisition — the clearest hard evidence of AI damage anywhere in the group.

The common cause is broader. Enterprise software has been re-rating since ServiceNow's 22 July results reopened the argument over whether AI kills seat-based software, amplified by forced unwinding from a collapsed leveraged fund, and layered on the best first half for US small caps since 1991. What lifted these five was their size and their sector, not their agents.

The setup

Where it stands — The group's best fundamental result, AvePoint's, produced no share-price gain; the biggest gain, UiPath's, rests on no new disclosure. Would confirm — UiPath's 3 September print showing ARR growth at or below the guided ~10.8% while the multiple stays above 6x. Would invalidate — UiPath disclosing a quantified agentic revenue line and lifting full-year ARR guidance above $2.056bn. Watch next — UiPath reports fiscal second-quarter results after the close on 3 September 2026. Valuation — AvePoint 8.28x trailing and 7.56x forward gross profit versus 12.3x a year ago; UiPath 6.28x and 5.91x versus 4.19x in May.