Every quarter we look at the SaaS multiples of publicly traded companies. One analysis we’ve started doing is to look at the 10 companies with the highest multiples, and trying to understand why their multiples are so high. Below are the top 10.
Looking at this list, it’d be easy to say “these companies are AI forward, so they’re getting the best multiples,” but in our view that’s too lazy. We see more to the high valuations here than just AI. Below we lay out the larger factors:
Infrastructure plays with excellent growth. These companies all function as embedded infrastructure rather than just discretionary tools, and have unusually strong growth at scale. Several of these companies are sustaining mid-20% to high-30% year-over-year growth, which is rare among large-cap software. Snowflake (~37% YoY), Figma (~38%), Samsara (~39%), Shopify (~30% on a ~$10B revenue base), Cloudflare (~28%), and CrowdStrike (~30%) all demonstrate that demand remains structurally strong. Once adopted, these platforms become deeply integrated into customer workflows, for instance Cloudflare sitting directly in global web traffic, Snowflake anchoring enterprise data stacks, Shopify powering commerce operations, and Datadog embedded in cloud monitoring. This creates high switching costs and durable pricing power.
Cash generation and operating leverage. We believe this is less important, but several names convert revenue to cash at 25–35%+ margins, including CrowdStrike (~32% cash flow margin), Datadog (~31%), Cloudflare (~27%), Figma (~29%), and Snowflake (~20%) even while still reporting GAAP losses. Doximity stands out with ~51% cash flow margins and ~41% EBITDA margins, reflecting its highly efficient niche network model. Most of these companies also hold net cash balance sheets; CrowdStrike (~$4.0B), Datadog (~$2.9B), Cloudflare (~$0.5B), Samsara (~$0.7B) enabling self-funded growth and minimizing dilution risk. Investors are willing to underwrite cyclicality in usage-based or transaction-driven models because the underlying economics are already proven.
Multiples have always been high. Many of these names have enjoyed high multiples for years, well before ChatGPT went live in 2022. In fact some of these companies have lower multiples today than they did a few years ago (Snowflake, MongoDB, DataDog, Samasara, Doximity).
Finally AI. AI serves as a valuation amplifier rather than the core justification, increasing confidence that growth and margins can persist. The market is rewarding platforms where AI directly increases usage, expansion, or relevance: Cloudflare’s AI-driven traffic and developer services, Snowflake’s Cortex functions enabling AI workloads in-place, MongoDB’s Atlas Vector Search supporting RAG and agents, Datadog’s AI agents reducing operational toil, and Shopify’s agentic commerce tools improving merchant efficiency. Importantly, these companies were already growing 25–40% with strong cash conversion before AI enthusiasm peaked.
Today’s highest software multiples are reserved for businesses that pair growth at scale, strong unit economics, and infrastructure-like stickiness, with AI strengthening the case.
Thank you for your readership. Visit us at blossomstreetventures.com for more data and blogs, and email the author at sammy@blossomstreetventures.com or connect on LinkedIn.