Workiva, Wix and Asure software stocks are rising, what you need to know
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What happened?
A number of stocks rose in the afternoon session after it appeared investors were moving into oversold enterprise software stocks amid profit-taking in chip stocks.
While the Nasdaq fell and leading semiconductor companies like Micron (-4%) sold off, large incumbent SaaS providers caught strong bidding. ServiceNow (NYSE:NOW) rose 4.3% and Salesforce (NYSE:CRM) rose 2.4%. The divergence came amid rising oil prices and geopolitical tensions in the Middle East, which weighed on broader indices. It appears that AI trading is moving from the infrastructure layer to the application layer. After months of paying premiums for the chips needed to build artificial intelligence, investors appeared to be shifting their capital into the software companies that are actually monetizing it.
As 2026 began, software stocks suffered a sharp valuation decline dubbed the “SaaSpocalypse,” driven by fears that AI agents would disrupt traditional per-seat software licensing models. Recent data points, including ServiceNow increasing its Now Assist AI contract target to $1.5 billion and Salesforce scaling its Agentforce platform, showed that incumbents can sell AI as a premium add-on rather than watch it cannibalize their core business. Because enterprise SaaS providers have the proprietary data and daily workflows, they are positioned as the control layer for AI deployment. As semiconductor valuations reached historic premiums, capital continued to seek the margin of safety found in quality software stocks with low forward multiples.
But risks remain: If macroeconomic pressures force enterprise CIOs to further consolidate vendors, second-tier software companies without clear AI monetization could still struggle.
The stock market overreacts to news, and large drops can provide good opportunities to buy high-quality stocks.
The following stocks were affected, among others:
Zooming in on Workiva (WK)
Workiva shares are highly volatile, with 21 moves of more than 5% in the last year. In this context, today’s move suggests that the market considers this news meaningful, but not something that would fundamentally change its perception of the company.
The story continues
The last big move we wrote about came six days ago, when the stock rose 2.5% on news that investors were continuing to move away from successful semiconductors and into beaten-down software stocks.
DigitalOcean’s stunning preliminary results also supported improved demand, as they demonstrated that AI demand is converting into real, contracted revenue. The clearest signal is at the index level: the iShares software ETF (IGV) climbed about 7% over eight sessions, while the semiconductor SOXX fell about 8.5%. Microsoft rose about 3% this week (following the launch of its $2.5 billion Frontier AI services unit). ServiceNow and Salesforce each gained around 4%.
DigitalOcean previously announced that remaining performance obligations (RPO) will exceed $800 million, more than 10x year-over-year and an increase of over $550 million in the quarter, driven by multiple new nine-figure AI inference contracts with an average contract term of 1.6 to over three years. Revenue growth was expected to accelerate to approximately 29% (from a previous benchmark of 24-25%) and margins were expected to be on the high side. Following the 221% increase in AI customer ARR in the first quarter, this is clear evidence that AI spending is landing as a permanent, contracted backlog, not just usage that can evaporate.
Workiva is down 34.3% year-to-date and is trading at $54.55 per share, 41.5% below its 52-week high of $93.31 set in November 2025. Investors who bought $1,000 worth of Workiva shares five years ago would now have just $439.81 on their hands.
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https://finance.yahoo.com/markets/stocks/articles/workiva-wix-asure-software-stocks-015839996.html
