Veeva Systems Q2 2027 Earnings Call Transcript

Key Takeaways

  • Positive Sentiment: Veeva reported a strong second quarter, with revenue of $928 million and non-GAAP operating income of $416 million, both ahead of guidance.
  • Positive Sentiment: Customer interest in Falcon’s AI-driven “agentic labor” is high, with five early adopters and initial go-lives expected this year; management said demand currently exceeds its ability to deliver the product.
  • Positive Sentiment: Commercial subscription revenue grew about 13% year over year, or double digits excluding Crossix, with broad-based strength across CRM, content, data, Crossix, and Ostro.
  • Positive Sentiment: Veeva highlighted strong CRM momentum, including two major top-20 biopharma wins and 12 of the top 20 customers committed to Vault CRM; management also sees potential to win back some customers encountering delays with Salesforce implementations.
  • Neutral Sentiment: R&D growth is transitioning from established products such as eTMF, CTMS, and QualityDocs toward earlier-stage offerings including EDC, eCOA, RTSM, Safety, and LIMS, which management views as significant long-term opportunities but says have different adoption timelines.
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Earnings Conference Call
Veeva Systems Q2 2027
00:00 / 00:00

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Operator

Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining us, and welcome to the Veeva Systems fiscal 2027 second quarter results conference call. After today's prepared remarks, we will host a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one to raise your hand. To withdraw your question, press star one again. I will now hand the conference over to Gunnar Hansen, Senior Director, Investor Relations. Gunnar, please go ahead.

Gunnar Hansen
Gunnar Hansen
Senior Director of Investor Relations at Veeva Systems

Good afternoon, and welcome to Veeva's fiscal 2027 second quarter earnings conference call for the quarter ended July 31st, 2026. As a reminder, we posted prepared remarks on Veeva's investor relations website just after 1:00 P.M. Pacific today. We hope you've had a chance to read them before the call. Today's call will be used primarily for Q&A. With me today for Q&A are Peter Gassner, our Chief Executive Officer, Paul Shawah, EVP, Strategy, and Brian Van Wagener, our Chief Financial Officer. During this call, we may make forward-looking statements regarding trends or strategies and the anticipated performance of the business, including guidance regarding future financial results. These forward-looking statements will be based on our current views and expectations and are subject to various risks and uncertainties. Our actual results may differ materially.

Gunnar Hansen
Gunnar Hansen
Senior Director of Investor Relations at Veeva Systems

Please refer to the risks listed in our earnings release and the risk factors included in our most recent filing on Form 10-Q. Forward-looking statements made during the call are being made as of today, August 26th, 2026, based on the facts available to us today. If this call is replayed or reviewed after today, the information presented during the call may not contain current or accurate information. Veeva disclaims any obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statement. We may discuss guidance on today's call, but we will not provide any further guidance or updates on our performance during the quarter unless we do so in a public forum.

Gunnar Hansen
Gunnar Hansen
Senior Director of Investor Relations at Veeva Systems

On the call, we may also discuss certain non-GAAP metrics that we believe aid in the understanding of our financial results. A reconciliation to comparable GAAP metrics can be found in today's earnings release and in the supplemental investor presentation, both of which are available on our website. With that, thank you for joining us, and I'll turn the call over to Peter.

Peter Gassner
Peter Gassner
CEO at Veeva Systems

Thank you, Gunnar, and welcome everyone to the call. Q2 was another strong quarter, delivering results ahead of our guidance. Total revenue in the quarter was $928 million, with non-GAAP operating income of $416 million. Execution was exceptional this quarter as we made strong progress in many key areas. It was our best CRM quarter ever. We also are accelerating rapidly in AI overall, and especially with Veeva Falcon. Our focused acquisition strategy is working, bringing great people and capabilities to Veeva. It's an exciting time. AI is enabling the next big chapter for Veeva and the industry. We'll now open up the call to your questions.

Operator

We will now begin the question and answer session. Please limit yourself to one question and one follow-up. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one to raise your hand. To withdraw your question, press star one again. We ask that you pick up your handset when asking a question to allow for optimum sound quality. If you are muted locally, please remember to unmute your device. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. Your first question comes from the line of Joe Vruwink with Baird. Joe, your line is now open.

Joe Vruwink
Joe Vruwink
Analyst at Baird

Great. Thank you for the time today. I think it's evident over the past few months that biopharma R&D spending is headed in a positive direction, and that also is showing up at Veeva. As pipelines move forward, what are you finding the mentality to be at customers around assessing and adopting something that's brand new with thinking about the Vault AI Agents or even Veeva Falcon? I'm interested in levels of early interest taking place amidst what seems like a busier environment, and whether that's a reflection of the value customers are seeing pretty quickly when they start looking at the new Veeva offerings.

Peter Gassner
Peter Gassner
CEO at Veeva Systems

I'll take that one. Yeah, there are a lot of things going on, right? The funding environment is relatively good. There's a lot of changes with AI and sciences moving ahead, so there's a lot of priorities for the customers. When that happens, they can't do all things at once, and they generally try to pick some things that they can do and that are high priority. Your question was related to Falcon. I think Falcon has a lot of interest right now because it's very clear that that's high priority. Quick cost savings and compliance and efficiency. That's high on everybody's priority. I think there's a lot of interest in Falcon. We're the rate limiter right now. We have to get that product ready, start working with the early adopters, but interest in Falcon is very high.

Joe Vruwink
Joe Vruwink
Analyst at Baird

That's great. Then maybe as you think about how customers can now engage with Veeva in an AI framework, you have the application agents, you have Falcon, you have a custom development framework that you've introduced. Are any of those modes of engagement maybe becoming larger or a bigger piece of the conversation? Do any of those modes matter more or less as you think about how your financial model evolves and what the impact might end up being to Veeva?

Peter Gassner
Peter Gassner
CEO at Veeva Systems

Yes, it is a major change for Veeva. Falcon is agentic labor. That's something different than we've done before. We've done cloud software, data consulting. Now we have this fourth thing, agentic labor. It is transforming the discussion. There's two different things you could do with Veeva. You can do some agentic labor, you can do core applications. That was never the case before. The important point is Veeva, it fits very well. It's a structural advantage for Veeva to both have the agentic labor across multiple areas in life sciences, and have the core applications across multiple of those areas in life sciences. That's why I feel like we're very well-positioned, and the conversations are very rich. Gosh, I just hope we got to get that product going as soon as we can.

Peter Gassner
Peter Gassner
CEO at Veeva Systems

If we had our early adopters live and successful right now, I don't want it be hyperbole, but Falcon would be flying off the shelf if that was the case. One thing to know is there's not an extensive Falcon implementation. There's not a data mapping from one system to the other. There's not a cut-over process. There's not ETL to do. This implementation, the full value is faster with Falcon, but the tech underneath it is newer, and we have to get our motion down there. If you can tell, I hope you can tell, I'm pretty excited about Falcon. I really think we're onto something.

Joe Vruwink
Joe Vruwink
Analyst at Baird

That's great. Thank you.

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Brian Peterson with Raymond James. Brian, your line is now open.

Brian Peterson
Brian Peterson
Analyst at Raymond James

Hey, gentlemen. Thanks for taking the question, and congrats on a strong quarter. The commercial segment was really strong this quarter. I know you called out record results. Could you maybe unpack what drove that acceleration in the subscription line item? Would love to get some more color there.

Brian Van Wagener
Brian Van Wagener
CFO at Veeva Systems

Yeah. Hey, Brian. This is Brian. I will take that one. Commercial subs, yeah, very strong quarter. I think the culmination of many quarters of execution, but you see them showing up in the results here. Up about 13% year-over-year. Even when we back out Crossix, it is double digits in the rest of commercial. It is quite a broad-based strength in the commercial offering across CRM, content, data, Crossix, Ostro most recently. We feel very good about the execution. Crossix continues to be a strong performer with a lot of headroom for growth. We are continuing to see growth in CRM, which I think a lot of the conversation had been, "Is that going to go down?" It is actually going up, and we are continuing to see a lot of room to continue growing in a healthy market in Crossix, as well as the other areas.

Brian Peterson
Brian Peterson
Analyst at Raymond James

Great. Appreciate the color. I just want to follow up on Aspen. I know you guys are excited about that as well. How should we be thinking about that market opportunity in some of the investments that you are taking to enable that revenue stream? Thanks, guys.

Peter Gassner
Peter Gassner
CEO at Veeva Systems

Aspen, I think it is very early. That is the thing to know. This is a startup inside of Veeva. It is moving very rapidly. It is on 90-day plans. We have a core market that we are going after, the horizontal CRM in a new way, in a new way that really enables AI and is built on modern technology. The thing to know that it is very agile now.

Peter Gassner
Peter Gassner
CEO at Veeva Systems

What we are focused on is getting the product right, working with our early adopter customers. I am 100% convinced that there is a market for what we are making in Aspen. Can we execute well enough? That is always the hard thing in a startup. Can you do it? Can you do it better than your competition? And what kind of luck do you have along the way? That plays into it. I have done the startup thing before, starting Veeva.

Peter Gassner
Peter Gassner
CEO at Veeva Systems

I have done the startup thing when we started Vault inside of Veeva. We are doing it again, and I have lots of friends that have done it, and it is just like that. Can you execute well? Really, really well? And what kind of luck do you have on the way? But sometimes you are wondering whether the market is there or not. You could say maybe we were wondering that when we were getting new markets going 18 months ago, et cetera. Right now, we have enough product, and we are working with some early customers. We are 100% clear that the market is there. 100% clear. It is just whether we can execute and we will see. Your question was about how to size the investment as well. The investment is very small on the Veeva scale.

Peter Gassner
Peter Gassner
CEO at Veeva Systems

It is not something that Brian, our CFO, notices, really, on the Veeva scale, because you have to keep that very small when you are working with early customers and you are iterating an early product. Actually, these days, you keep it smaller than normal because the pace of development is faster with AI. You actually need a smaller amount of developers, very skilled as well. It is not a financial drain on the company, it is not a focus drain, and it is certainly not any kind of revenue that is figured into our plans at this time.

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Ken Wong with Oppenheimer. Ken, your line is now open.

Ken Wong
Ken Wong
Analyst at Oppenheimer

All right. Fantastic. Thanks for taking my question. I wanted to circle back on Falcon, Peter. It was great to hear the customer interest, also great to hear it's not an extensive implementation process. What I didn't get a sense for was, as you're trying to introduce virtual labor to your customers, is that a different counterparty that you're selling to versus maybe the CMO or the CIO? Secondarily, how difficult do you expect it to be to maybe work through the inner politics of shifting the budgets from an IT wallet to maybe an HR labor wallet? Any help in helping us think through that?

Peter Gassner
Peter Gassner
CEO at Veeva Systems

Ken, great question. I'll be able to tell you this definitively in a couple of years when we're selling lots of Falcon, I'll be able to give you the readout. I'm going to gaze into the future and tell you what we know so far. First off, it's actually going to be an easier selling cycle because IT is really not involved in the agentic labor. That's not something they're involved in. Because it's not like that. If you're selling a solution to safety, this is about the budget of the safety team. It's really the head of the unit, the business unit, and the head of the operations of that business unit. That's super clear. The other question is, yes, it is a very related buyer.

Peter Gassner
Peter Gassner
CEO at Veeva Systems

We have not hit the case for Falcon where we're selling into a buyer that we are not selling into, because we're always selling into the business side with our business applications. Now, sometimes more or less. For example, in the areas where Falcon is playing, for example, safety, clinical regulatory, that's always been somewhat more of a business sell. IT involved, but somewhat more of a business sell. CRM is the most IT-heavy sell that we have in general. These areas where we're doing Falcon, they were ready, I would say, on the average, 60% of business sell, and those are people that we've been selling into for 10 years.

Ken Wong
Ken Wong
Analyst at Oppenheimer

Understood. Brian, just a follow-up on some of the investments. It sounds like with Aspen, it might be sort of small up front, but as we think about you guys ramping on Falcon, ramping on Aspen, ramping on some Vault agents, Vault AI, should we expect maybe an uptick in terms of sales investments, R&D investments? Anything we should be thinking about relative to how you guys are spending today?

Brian Van Wagener
Brian Van Wagener
CFO at Veeva Systems

As Peter talked about, Ken, we are very excited about Falcon and the path that it can be on. You have also seen us over time consistently think about both growth and profitability. It is not different entering a new market like Falcon. Maybe the dynamics of the market are very slightly different, but it is the same overall approach that we are taking there. We scale investment as we scale revenue. There is certainly nothing material that I would call out for this fiscal year. It is all factored into the guidance that we have updated for FY 2027. As we get another couple of quarters ahead and gaze into the future of next year, we will factor that into our guidance for next year.

Ken Wong
Ken Wong
Analyst at Oppenheimer

Okay, great. Thanks a lot, guys.

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Saket Kalia with Barclays. Saket, your line is now open.

Analyst at Barclays

Hey, good evening, everybody. This is Ryan [Cavilion] for Saket tonight. Thanks for taking the question. Peter, maybe my first for you. From the customers that are planning to transition to Salesforce away from Veeva CRM, what do you hear from those customers? What are they saying right now about the decision? Do you think, longer term, it could be possible for Veeva to win some of those back?

Peter Gassner
Peter Gassner
CEO at Veeva Systems

Yeah, Ryan, I do. There is a handful of large customers that did select Salesforce, many of them even two years ago. Those projects are having troubles, right? They are not going smooth and we have some project delays because it turns out the product is very deep, and you need that. I think we can win back some of those customers, maybe some of them completely, others of them in some certain regions, and not others. I think the bulk of that win-back would probably be in 2027 and 2028 because Veeva CRM, they have that backstop until the end of 2029. This is the time when it starts really to get real, right? Because during 2029, there is no more backstop of, Oh, we can keep using Veeva CRM, because they know they have to go to Vault CRM. We are very optimistic about that.

Peter Gassner
Peter Gassner
CEO at Veeva Systems

The best thing we can do there to help that is really focus on our existing customers that did decide to go with us for CRM and make them very successful and improve the product. For the customers that did not choose Veeva, we have a good relationship with them, and they have told us that, Hey, we said, Hey, we want to be your plan B, and they really embrace that, and that is the way they view that because these customers, they have businesses to run, right? They got to get their medicines to patients. It is great. They love having a backup option if their plan A does not work out.

Analyst at Barclays

Really interesting. I appreciate that. Brian, maybe my follow-up for you. Could you just talk a little bit about what you are seeing on the R&D subscription line, and maybe specifically where you see Veeva in the journey between some of the, let us call them old guard products versus some of the newer growth areas that you are investing in, just as we think about that revenue mix shift and how it is unfolding?

Brian Van Wagener
Brian Van Wagener
CFO at Veeva Systems

Yeah. It is a great question, Ryan, because we are right in the middle of that transition that you pointed to. I think very pleased with the progress and the execution that we are making. The old guard that you are referring to would be things like, I guess, eTMF, and CTMS, and QDocs, and QMS, and our regulatory suite, that have fueled a lot of the growth in R&D to date. A lot of the growth as you look out over the next few years to 2030 and beyond, is being driven by a different set of products, Veeva EDC, Veeva eCOA, Veeva RTSM, Safety, Veeva LIMS. These are big, very strategic products with a ton of headroom, but they are very early

Brian Van Wagener
Brian Van Wagener
CFO at Veeva Systems

We're excited about that. We're executing really well against that. There's a little bit of a changing of the guards that's happening there, and the S-curves don't stack up exactly. You see some of that factored into the guidance for the balance of the year. We're very confident and excited about the long-term trajectory of the PR&D business and obviously pleased to be raising the guide again here in Q2.

Analyst at Barclays

Very helpful. Thanks, guys.

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Alexei Gogolev with JPMorgan. Alexei, your line is now open.

Alexei Gogolev
Alexei Gogolev
Analyst at JPMorgan

Hello, everyone. I wanted to go back to the Falcon discussion. With five Falcon early adopters and first go-lives expected this year, what are the key regulatory gates you must clear? How do you expect the human in the loop requirement to evolve by workflow type?

Peter Gassner
Peter Gassner
CEO at Veeva Systems

I'm sorry, Alexei, there was a breakup, and it said, What are the key you have to clear? I didn't hear the word in the middle.

Alexei Gogolev
Alexei Gogolev
Analyst at JPMorgan

Peter, I was talking about the key regulatory gates you must clear, and how do you expect the human in the loop requirement to evolve by workflow type?

Peter Gassner
Peter Gassner
CEO at Veeva Systems

The key sort of regulatory hurdles, if I heard correctly? Yeah. Agentic labor is like human labor in a way. It's non-deterministic, so you have to prove that you have the right training and guardrails around humans, and that's the same thing we have to do around our agents. We provide for the human in the loop with Falcon as well, because you can see the outcome of what the agent did, and does, inside of the Vault application. From what we can see, it's working very well. This approach is completely similar to what customers are doing today on certain internal projects. The difference is they would like to be able to do it at scale in a very repeatable motion.

Peter Gassner
Peter Gassner
CEO at Veeva Systems

I would guess three years ago, we would probably have to be teaching the customers a lot about what is AI, what is agentic labor, how do you do this, how do you do that? We really don't have to do that so much anymore. The customers know how to deal with it. They just want a partner that can scale it across multiple areas.

Alexei Gogolev
Alexei Gogolev
Analyst at JPMorgan

Thank you, Peter. Also on the Data Cloud topic, you added 14 Data Cloud customers. Where is Data Cloud proving most differentiated, and how are you positioning connected data as a prerequisite for AI outcomes in commercial workflows?

Peter Gassner
Peter Gassner
CEO at Veeva Systems

We don't position Data Cloud as a prerequisite for AI. It's more of an accelerator. The cleaner your data is, the better your AI processes are going to work, especially in certain areas. What's working well for us in Data Cloud is Veeva OpenData, so clean reference data. Now that's a hard project to do because it involves changing a lot of things in downstream systems. We have some momentum there, and I think that's going to continue. We have strong momentum in Veeva Compass for certain therapeutic areas of complex therapies, where our Veeva Compass products can see different things in the flow of complex products in the U.S. that other offerings can't see. Then we have real market leadership with our Veeva Link product and Link Key People, and we're expanding there with the add-on products of Veeva Link.

Peter Gassner
Peter Gassner
CEO at Veeva Systems

Link Medical Insights, Link Key Accounts for the U.S., Link Workflow for congresses. Overall, data is not a thing that can accelerate very fast. It's not like selling fast fashion on Instagram, right? That can accelerate fast and then disappear. Data is not like that. It's a long, slow grind. We're certainly happy with our progress, and it's very synergistic with Veeva. If you look at why is Veeva being successful, we have a very synergistic product plan. We have software applications that work with our data, and consulting that knows about our software and data, and we have agents that work with our applications that are known by our consulting and that leverage our data. It's not a random set of products. We're building the industry cloud, and the more our customers realize it, the more benefits they get because things fit together.

Alexei Gogolev
Alexei Gogolev
Analyst at JPMorgan

Thank you, Peter.

Peter Gassner
Peter Gassner
CEO at Veeva Systems

[inaudible]

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of David Windley with Jefferies. David, your line is now open.

David Windley
David Windley
Analyst at Jefferies

Hi, good afternoon. Thanks for taking my question. I wanted to ask Peter on Falcon quickly, are your early adopters exclusively sponsors or OEMs, or are you also seeing some service providers approach you to adopt Falcon capabilities?

Peter Gassner
Peter Gassner
CEO at Veeva Systems

Our early adopters are with sponsors. Now, we have had some interest with service providers. I say that carefully, interest. They're interested, but we really haven't engaged heavily there yet because you have to be focused when you start working with your first customers. Service providers will have similar needs to sponsors, but not the same. We're focusing on the sponsors first, and I fully expect over time that this will be useful for outsourced service providers. We have to work on the sponsors first.

David Windley
David Windley
Analyst at Jefferies

Great. Pivoting for my follow-up. A lot of moving parts in China over the course of this year, maybe over the course of the last several years, regulatorily, drug development-wise, et cetera. How do you see the China market as an opportunity for Veeva right now?

Peter Gassner
Peter Gassner
CEO at Veeva Systems

Yeah, China's certainly moving fast. When we look at my tech career spanning over 30 years here, it's just astounding the transformation in China and what it means for the global economy and what can be accomplished, and the whole notion of a parallel tech stack in China. Yes, it's moved so fast and it continues. It's great to see that from my perspective. It brings variety. Our opportunities there, we have quite a few products that are made by our Veeva China team in China for China. We have our Veeva China CRM suite, and that's gaining market share. That's written on the China tech stack, et cetera. We have our data products made in China, specific for the China market. There's other things that we can do in China there, in China for China.

Peter Gassner
Peter Gassner
CEO at Veeva Systems

But one of the big benefits is those products fit with our global products. For example, Veeva China CRM fits with our global PromoMats products. There's a synergy there. China's good business for us, and we're proud to do that in China, and it's profitable for us there, and it's growing. It's also synergistic with our global business because our global customers, when they have their headquarters in the U.S. or Japan or Europe, they want a team, a global Veeva team, that can help them with China also. It's very synergistic. We really love our China business.

David Windley
David Windley
Analyst at Jefferies

Thank you.

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Rishi Jaluria with RBC. Rishi, your line is now open.

Rishi Jaluria
Rishi Jaluria
Analyst at RBC

Wonderful. Thanks so much for taking my questions. Nice to see continued strength in the business. I want to start with a question on Aspen and the pricing model. I think the publicly posted pricing model is really interesting and compelling as application software companies figure out the pivot to more consumption, et cetera, and you are talking about charging per human or per agent. Can you maybe walk us through how you see that pricing model starting, the puts and takes of that, and what lessons or learnings can be picked up from that as you see more Falcon adoption, more AI adoption within the broader Veeva suite, and trying to price accordingly for this new AI world. Then I have got a quick follow-up.

Peter Gassner
Peter Gassner
CEO at Veeva Systems

Yeah. Cloud software, we got to remember, it has not been around for 50 years. I was working on it in the early days of salesforce.com, and that was not even 25 years ago. For me, it was 23 years ago. Very early. The pricing model sort of arrived, and a technology model arrived, and the way we do things arrived. You see that all in the first-generation big cloud companies, big cloud application companies. There is a way you do things. Aspen is taking a different approach that may or may not prove effective. It is to say, well, it is a different approach, a different technical stack, a different approach there, and a different pricing approach. It is just much more simple. You get your productivity, $50 a user a month.

Peter Gassner
Peter Gassner
CEO at Veeva Systems

So it is not this crazy price, and you do not know what it is, and you have to haggle with your sales rep for discounts, and if you are a big company, it is this and that, and 14 different editions. No. It is more like modeled off of Amazon Web Services. There is a price, okay. It is a good product. You can buy it. You do not have to buy it. It is a good product. We will lean into that. Then there is, of course, usage overage. Okay, let us say you buy five users. It is $50 a month, and you put a terabyte of data in there for some reason. Well, okay. Well, that is not anything that anybody thought about. There will be overage charges that you will pay monthly on the overage. It is a mix.

Peter Gassner
Peter Gassner
CEO at Veeva Systems

I would say we are shooting for mostly predictable, because at the end of the day, large businesses would really want mostly predictable. You have to have this escape hatch to say, Yeah, I cannot use unlimited compute, because that does not make sense. Now we are also going to listen to our early customers, and we are a very customer-friendly company, and if there is a better way to do it, we will certainly do that. We are after, authentically, customer success. You got to remember, we are a public benefit corporation. We are after success for our customers, the industries we serve, and Veeva and our investors. The thing is, make it simple. Get rid of all this noise that have built up in the systems over time.

Rishi Jaluria
Rishi Jaluria
Analyst at RBC

All right. No, that's really helpful. Then maybe just thinking through, as Falcon and your AI products grow, can you talk a little bit about under the hood, what the AI stack looks like? And maybe more importantly, as these become a bigger portion of the business, drive greater usage, and obviously, as you pointed out, Peter, greater customer success, how should we be thinking about the impact on margins, both gross margins as well as free cash flow margins? Is there opportunity over time to leverage more multimodality and even some of the open-weight models as they improve to control some of that potential gross margin headwind? Thank you.

Peter Gassner
Peter Gassner
CEO at Veeva Systems

Yeah. Again, I don't really want to make predictions on Falcon because it's early, but in general, I don't think we're going to have a gross margin problem. I think the gross margins will be roughly similar to our software. Here's why. When we really go deep into Falcon and we have what we call Falcon copies, where we have the real customer data that we're testing the agents with and developing the agents with, we know what's going on. More and more and more of that work goes into the deterministic software. We use the non-deterministic models, the anthropic models, et cetera, when we need to. A lot of this value is going into the agent. Then I believe everybody knows that the cost of these models are going to go down, whether they're with better hardware or open weight models or et cetera.

Peter Gassner
Peter Gassner
CEO at Veeva Systems

The current cost of the models is not sustainable, not based on what we're doing, but based on this notion of what software development is doing. Eating up 50% of the tokens in the world and hundreds of billions of dollars. Somebody's going to build a better mousetrap for that over time, and that'll compress the prices. That's our belief. Even if that wouldn't happen, I think Falcon would be a great business because we're pushing a lot of things into the deterministic layer.

Rishi Jaluria
Rishi Jaluria
Analyst at RBC

All right. Very helpful. Thank you so much, Peter.

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Tyler Radke with Citi. Tyler, your line is now open.

Tyler Radke
Tyler Radke
Analyst at Citi

Yeah. Thank you for taking the question. Brian, just going back to your comments on the R&D side of the business and talking about the stacking of those S-curves, I was wondering if you could just be a bit more precise in terms of the timing, and when you see the growth inflection happening from those S-curves. If you were to just stack rank those products you mentioned, what have the biggest opportunity to be the next $500 million or billion products within R&D?

Brian Van Wagener
Brian Van Wagener
CFO at Veeva Systems

Yeah. Thanks for the question, Tyler. I think we are excited really about all of those products, all the five that I mentioned, Veeva EDC, Veeva eCOA, Veeva RTSM, Safety, Veeva LIMS. Every one of those is very large and very strategic in their area. Few of them are around clinical. Safety is its own big space. Veeva LIMS is in quality. Each of these is very significant opportunities and it's slightly different stages as you look across them, but all of them pretty early. I think that's what gives us the confidence as we look out to 2030, for example, that we're on track for those goals, is we're making great progress in the product, great progress in the execution, great progress getting customers live and happy and successful in reference selling. We don't put exact timing on that.

Brian Van Wagener
Brian Van Wagener
CFO at Veeva Systems

We don't generally talk year by year, so I'm not going to give guidance out beyond this year. I think we feel very confident in the trajectory that we're on with those products in R&D.

Tyler Radke
Tyler Radke
Analyst at Citi

Got it. In terms of Aspen and your broader ambitions across industries outside of your traditional segments, can you just remind us the ICP there? Is it smaller organizations or how do you clearly such a broad opportunity, so how do you start and prioritize that and staff it?

Peter Gassner
Peter Gassner
CEO at Veeva Systems

There's a few different dimensions.

Brian Van Wagener
Brian Van Wagener
CFO at Veeva Systems

Go ahead, Peter.

Peter Gassner
Peter Gassner
CEO at Veeva Systems

For clarity, ICP, what is ICP?

Tyler Radke
Tyler Radke
Analyst at Citi

Oh, like the.

Brian Van Wagener
Brian Van Wagener
CFO at Veeva Systems

Ideal customer profile.

Tyler Radke
Tyler Radke
Analyst at Citi

Ideal customer profile. Yeah.

Peter Gassner
Peter Gassner
CEO at Veeva Systems

Oh, okay. I'll take that one. Yeah. The ideal customer profile when you're just starting out is really a nimble type company that really wants to work with you. I think in this area, we're going to probably get a lot of young tech startups. They're doing something really innovative in what they're doing, and they don't really want to do the same old thing in CRM for core account contact opportunity management. I think we have early indications that they'll be great companies to work with, but we'll see. Again, I'll let you know a lot more in a year.

Tyler Radke
Tyler Radke
Analyst at Citi

All right. Thanks, and sorry to throw in an.

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Jailendra Singh with Truist. Jailendra, your line is now open.

Jailendra Singh
Jailendra Singh
Analyst at Truist

Thank you, and thanks for taking my questions. I want to go back to Falcon discussion and the five early adopters there. It seems one of them is a top 20 pharma company. Based on your conversations with these top pharma companies around Falcon, do you believe that the work will be shifting to Falcon is something they were outsourcing to other partners such as CROs, or should we think about something they were doing in-house and now they are leveraging Falcon for that? And related to that, any incremental color on the pricing of the Falcon products?

Peter Gassner
Peter Gassner
CEO at Veeva Systems

In terms of where the labor is done or where it will be displaced, I think there will be a combination of internal and outsourced, although generally not the CROs. That is not what I see. It is a different type of outsourcing, some of it from the CROs, but not most of it. In terms of the pricing, it is very early for that. I know we have been in discussions with customers and their desire is for predictability. That is for sure, right? They want predictability for that because for one thing, they get that predictability when they either hire or outsource labor. It is quite predictable, and it is better for them. It is actually better for us too. What gets in the way of that a little bit is, well, Falcon is quite early now.

Peter Gassner
Peter Gassner
CEO at Veeva Systems

It can do certain things, but it cannot do the things that it will do three years from now. How do you have a fixed price when your capabilities are rapidly improving? I think with some of our customers, we will end up having enterprise license agreements, enterprise subscription agreement for the labor based on the size of their company or their function, but it will probably escalate over time. It will be lower in the beginning when Falcon is less mature. If you want a teenage Falcon, it costs you X, and if you want a Falcon that is 25 years old, it costs you a bit more. I think it is going to be like that. Again, this is the type of thing you work out with the early adopters.

Peter Gassner
Peter Gassner
CEO at Veeva Systems

The nice thing here and the structural advantage that we have is this is the same buyer facing the same business problems as our applications. These are people we know deeply. The trust is there. You will hear people say business moves at the speed of trust, and there is a lot to that. We have the trust with these customers. We will get to the right story pretty quickly. All this hinges on having a product that works well, and that is really where our focus is. I would say our early signs are good. When I talk to the engineering and the product management people on Falcon, there is an optimism.

Peter Gassner
Peter Gassner
CEO at Veeva Systems

You will see even the pessimistic ones saying, Oh my goodness, this could really work. In some early test runs, it is like, Wow, we tested this against the humans, what the humans did, and Falcon is already better than what the humans did. There is this sense of optimism, but it is too early to declare success. We have to be very paranoid and pessimistic because we are going into something we have not done before. Veeva has never done agentic labor, and the whole motion is new. That is why the leader of Falcon reports right to me. This is a complete new market and a new motion for Veeva. We do not have all the answers yet.

Jailendra Singh
Jailendra Singh
Analyst at Truist

That makes sense. A quick follow-up on other points you raised in your prepared remarks, and somebody asked that earlier about the focus on CRM win-backs among top 20 companies that did not select Vault CRM. I understand your point that you want to share success stories with them, but just curious, have there been any developments or conversations with customers who have picked Salesforce that is driving that confidence that these opportunities are more actionable, or is it more around delays in rollout by Salesforce that are giving you confidence or opening up windows? It is just curious. It seems like you are a lot more explicit this time around than the past.

Paul Shawah
Paul Shawah
EVP of Strategy at Veeva Systems

Yeah. It's based on our execution and what we're seeing with Salesforce as well. I think Peter alluded to earlier how Salesforce has been struggling with some of the larger projects that they have, and they don't really have any customers live. When you look at what Veeva's doing, it contrasts pretty significantly. We have over 180 customers live. We have customers that are turning AI on. We had a big milestone in CRM this quarter, where one of our top 20s turned AI on in CRM for their entire field force, so really significant milestone. The contrast between how Veeva's executing and what we're seeing on the other side is very significant. As Peter mentioned, we're very close with these customers. They buy a lot of products from Veeva. We have deep relationships. We stay very close with them.

Paul Shawah
Paul Shawah
EVP of Strategy at Veeva Systems

That's what gives us the confidence, our execution, our innovation, getting customers live, that trust, and that's why you hear the bullishness and the confidence in those win-backs. Just more broadly in the overall market, we're executing very well in CRM. It's really clear that we are the market leader. We're going to maintain the market leadership position. Just to paint what we view as the end state, we see Veeva maintaining over 70% share in the CRM space, which means we'll continue to execute, we'll continue to drive innovation for our customers. We feel really good about how CRM is playing out.

Peter Gassner
Peter Gassner
CEO at Veeva Systems

Yeah. Now that you asked about our customer interactions there, yes, we have customer interactions. Lots of people at Veeva deal with these customers, and I personally do at times, too. A common thing you might hear from a customer is, We're not ready to make that decision yet. Right? So they're open to it. They're looking to it. They're not ready yet. Those types of things give us confidence.

Jailendra Singh
Jailendra Singh
Analyst at Truist

Great. Thanks a lot.

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Craig Hettenbach with Morgan Stanley. Craig, your line is now open.

Craig Hettenbach
Craig Hettenbach
Analyst at Morgan Stanley

Thanks, and great discussion around all the AI developments. Peter, from a macro perspective, after a couple of volatile years, whether it was IRA, MFN pricing, tariffs, the backdrop has steadied. I am curious, outside of agentic, in your customer discussions, what are they most focused on? What areas in terms of are they leaning into investments that you are seeing in the business?

Peter Gassner
Peter Gassner
CEO at Veeva Systems

Yeah, Craig, it is interesting. We think things have steadied. It is an interesting comment on the world, right? We have two major wars going on. We have a complete tech disruption in AI that is going on. I think what happened is the life sciences industry has gotten used to, hey, the world is going to have a lot of moving parts, and they are just moving forward. I think it is good to point this out. They are not being disrupted by these disruptions. If we would have something really catastrophic in the future, that can always disrupt things. For example, if we had a major shift in interest rates, well, life sciences is a capital-intensive industry, that can do things.

Peter Gassner
Peter Gassner
CEO at Veeva Systems

If major escalations in war, that can do things, but so far, the industry seems to be executing pretty well and focusing on the jobs to get done.

Craig Hettenbach
Craig Hettenbach
Analyst at Morgan Stanley

Got it. Then just on my follow-up for the EDC segment, compared to one or two years ago, as that was ramping, that got a lot of attention. Can you just maybe give us an update on just how those ramping deals are progressing and then just the opportunity to capture additional top 20 over time?

Peter Gassner
Peter Gassner
CEO at Veeva Systems

Yeah. The EDC is one of the larger areas, and it's certainly a long implementation cycle, so some of our wins are still ramping. We're working with the other ones we have. I believe it's nine out of the top 20. Most of the other ones are with Medidata, not all. We're working on those over time, but it's not the right time for all customers to change out all systems at one time, getting back to they have many other things to do. I would go back to the structural advantage we have. In the Development Cloud, applications all on a common platform, and then with Falcon as well. The structural advantage with Falcon is more things to bring to the same buyer. Especially in clinical, having the clinical operations, clinical data management, and our site solutions.

Peter Gassner
Peter Gassner
CEO at Veeva Systems

The site solutions is very strategic to us, and we're introducing eSource there. I think confident on EDC over time, it just takes a while, and that's something that I think you'll see progress in the next couple of years there.

Craig Hettenbach
Craig Hettenbach
Analyst at Morgan Stanley

Helpful. Thank you.

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Andrew DeGasperi with BNP Paribas. Andrew, your line is now open.

Andrew DeGasperi
Andrew DeGasperi
Analyst at BNP Paribas

Thanks for fitting me in. I just wanted to ask, first, I think you're coming up to the one-year anniversary of your partnership with IQVIA and the settlement with them. I just wanted to understand how is that going. Have you seen any momentum? Because we haven't heard much from that deal, and wanted to know if it is going ahead of expectations or in line or below?

Peter Gassner
Peter Gassner
CEO at Veeva Systems

We're really happy with that IQVIA partnership. I discuss with the management team of IQVIA, and I can represent that they represent to me that they're very happy with the partnership as well. Yes, and customers are especially appreciative of it, right? Much less hassle working with Veeva and IQVIA. I think great things are going to come out of that partnership. They're already starting to come, and I think there's more to come. When you look at it, IQVIA and Veeva, we're both major players to the life sciences industry. We are the two major players, I think it's fair to say, by far. AI is transforming the industry, and for AI, you need services, you need data, you need software. The more Veeva and IQVIA can collaborate, the better it is for the industry.

Peter Gassner
Peter Gassner
CEO at Veeva Systems

It helps the industry grow, helps Veeva grow, helps IQVIA grow, so I couldn't be more happy with that. If you ask me, I feel 500% better about our IQVIA relationship now than I did two years ago. It's probably the best thing that happened to our company 12 months ago, and that was just outstanding. Super happy with that.

Andrew DeGasperi
Andrew DeGasperi
Analyst at BNP Paribas

Thanks. I am curious about the double-digit growth you mentioned in the commercial cloud business, even excluding Crossix. I just want to unpack that. In terms of the, did it come from PromoMats or some of the other marketing tools, or was there something unique about the CRM side that was giving you that acceleration?

Brian Van Wagener
Brian Van Wagener
CFO at Veeva Systems

Not really any one factor that I would point to, Andrew, and I think that is part of what actually makes us feel so much excitement with the results, is that it was CRM, it was add-ons and new customers and content. It was new customers and brands in Data Cloud. It was continued growth in Crossix on both the measurement and the audiences-side. It really was broad-based growth around commercial. I think, I guess what I would point to is some of what Peter and Paul have mentioned is that full commercial story and full capability of all those products on one platform from one provider really resonating in the market and driving growth. Very strong quarter from commercial.

Andrew DeGasperi
Andrew DeGasperi
Analyst at BNP Paribas

Thank you.

Operator

Due to time, we ask that you limit yourself to one question. Thank you so much for understanding. Our next question comes from the line of Dylan Becker with William Blair. Dylan, your line is now open.

Dylan Becker
Dylan Becker
Analyst at William Blair

Hey, guys. Appreciate it. Maybe Peter, if we touch on the strength in consulting and services, I know that there's several components to that, but how would you classify the value of efficiency of being able to do more with the same amount of your existing resources versus the efficiency gains you're seeing there enabling your customers to go faster and capitalize on more of the AI opportunities, maybe meet their increasing willingness, if that makes sense? Because it does seem like that's another area, I know it's not perfectly correlated to the subscription side, but continue to see healthy momentum in driving that change management for a lot of these enterprises.

Peter Gassner
Peter Gassner
CEO at Veeva Systems

I think that the big benefit for Veeva that we will hopefully see over time here is that by more tech-enabling our consulting and especially our services, our software will become more valuable. For example, if somebody wanted to buy our Veeva EDC and if it took $1 billion to implement, nobody would buy it. If it took $10 and a week, everybody would buy it. The faster you can have your implementations go and the more accurate, the less cost, the more valuable your applications become. That's the big driver. Yes, it probably means growth for us in services because people will buy more services. It's about customer success and the industry's success and driving our application business.

Peter Gassner
Peter Gassner
CEO at Veeva Systems

I overall think it'll be a renaissance for services and consulting companies as we go forward, because I think this notion of tech-enabled services, specialized tech-enabled services, is really going to drive growth, rather than going to generalists that say, Hey, I have people that can do a lot of things. No, you have a job to get done. You'll probably go to the specialist that has a tech-enabled service that can get that done. I think that will actually lead many companies to do more with partners rather than doing it internally, because they can get the outcome quicker and better with a tech-enabled service.

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Tamjid Chowdhury with Guggenheim Securities. Tamjid, your line is now open.

Tamjid Chowdhury
Tamjid Chowdhury
Analyst at Guggenheim Securities

Thanks for taking my question. Peter, I wanted to ask you a question on a recent management change. It was announced that Tom Schwenger will be leaving the company to go to a long-standing partner of yours. We understand that he played a pivotal role in many of the company's top 20 biopharma wins. How should we be thinking about the current transition of his responsibilities and maybe the impact of his exit on the relationship he has helped curate over the years, if any?

Peter Gassner
Peter Gassner
CEO at Veeva Systems

Yeah. Tom, of course, sad to see Tom go. Tom was at Accenture before he came to Veeva many years ago and was a great Veeva partner at Accenture. Tom's going to go on to be a CEO of a services-type partner, and we think that he will be a great partner for us there now. All good there. Those relationships don't go away that Tom has, so he will keep those. In terms of Veeva, when a customer, especially when you mention CRM, gosh, that's a business-critical decision that lasts for 10 years. There's many people involved in that, and there's a product involved with that. Tom's departure won't have effect on our CRM business because it's an enduring long-standing thing. It's different than maybe consulting-type work or something like that. This is a product attachment. That's not going to affect our business.

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Billy Fitzsimmons with Piper Sandler. Billy, your line is now open.

Billy Fitzsimmons
Billy Fitzsimmons
Analyst at Piper Sandler

Perfect. Thanks so much for taking the question here. Congrats on the two big top 20 biopharma wins for Vault CRM in the quarter. Can you give a little more color on how those deals played out? What ultimately drove them to Veeva over Salesforce? For the top 20 vendors that have not decided yet, has your level of confidence changed in potentially winning those versus, say, 90 days ago? Thank you.

Paul Shawah
Paul Shawah
EVP of Strategy at Veeva Systems

Yeah. First, we're excited about the exceptional quarter that we had, and that was one of the headlines. You heard us talk about three large companies, two in the top 20, Lilly selecting Vault CRM, Biogen selecting Vault CRM, and then, of course, we had Regeneron as well. The why is pretty simple, and I think we touched on it on this call. It goes back to trust. They trust Veeva to be able to deliver. Then product excellence. The product is working. We are delivering on the promise of all the innovation that we've told the market we would execute on, and that's playing out in the marketplace. It's trust and it's great product. It simply comes down to those two things. In terms of the remaining top 20 commitments that are out there's only two left.

Paul Shawah
Paul Shawah
EVP of Strategy at Veeva Systems

So we have 12 of top 20, and there are two remaining. They'll play out by the end of this year, but we feel good about both of them. They still need to be finalized, but we like our chances in both, and we'll update you as things play out.

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Ryan MacDonald with Needham & Company. Ryan, your line is now open.

Ryan MacDonald
Ryan MacDonald
Analyst at Needham & Company

All right. Thanks for taking my questions and congrats on a nice quarter. Peter, an emerging trend that we've been seeing across large healthcare and life sciences organizations within the industry this year is one in which customers want to embrace AI, but they don't want to take the risk on a new and unproven entrant that offers AI for only a specific point solution or a niche use case, as they don't have the time to evaluate hundreds of new vendors. It sounds like they'd rather consume AI from the incumbent platform vendors that they're already deeply embedded with. One, are you getting this sort of same feedback from your customers?

Ryan MacDonald
Ryan MacDonald
Analyst at Needham & Company

Two, does this dynamic create an opportunity for you to perhaps ramp up the M&A activity, acquire similar types of AI point solutions like Copli, and sell it into your existing base faster than what one of these smaller AI solutions could do on their own? Thanks.

Peter Gassner
Peter Gassner
CEO at Veeva Systems

Sorry, I was giving a great answer on mute. The customers want to be out of the experimentation phase. They definitely want to be out of that. Some months ago, when we first introduced Falcon, I had customers come up to me personally, we were at an event and they said, Oh, thank goodness you're announcing that because that's I didn't want to evaluate all these small vendors. Now that you have an offering, that helps me not have to go and look at all these small vendors. Yes, it's absolutely what customers want. In terms of acquisitions, we may find others that are a cultural fit, but we'll be very discerning. Copli was an excellent acquisition for us, and by the way, the Falcon, which is now Falcon MLR, our sales cycles there are probably more advanced than in any other part.

Peter Gassner
Peter Gassner
CEO at Veeva Systems

That market is very ripe for things. In these other areas, we're getting started, and we're making a lot of progress with Falcon. If we're going to do an acquisition there, it would be more for talent acquisition and not for product, because we've put a real good base in Falcon product, and Falcon platform. I don't think we'll need acquisitions for product anymore. We did look at some when we were just starting Falcon. We looked at a number. I would say at least 20 companies to look at. We found one that was the right fit of culture, product, and of willingness to be acquired. We found that in Copli, so it's sometimes like that. For Falcon, I don't actually expect us to find another acquisition that fits, and we're not dependent on any acquisition, but we'll see what happens.

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Gabriela Borges with Goldman Sachs. Gabriela, your line is now open.

Analyst at Goldman Sachs

Hi, everyone. This is Grayson on for Gabriela. Thank you for taking our question. Just one on Aspen. What are the specific customer problems that Aspen is aiming to solve that maybe the existing horizontal CRM platforms struggle with? What are the milestones that you would point investors to watch for over the next year? Thank you.

Peter Gassner
Peter Gassner
CEO at Veeva Systems

In terms of milestones, I think it's probably just the things that we say on our earnings calls and things like that. There's not going to really be visible milestones, I would say. We'll probably give you updates when the time is there. Your other question was basically how will things be better? Is that what the question is? You could rephrase that again?

Analyst at Goldman Sachs

Yeah. Just what are the specific customer problems that you're aiming to solve with Aspen, versus what some of the existing horizontal CRM platforms struggle with today?

Peter Gassner
Peter Gassner
CEO at Veeva Systems

Yeah. There's a couple. One is price. Price being unpredictable, getting out of control. That would be one. The other one would be just dependability of the vendors, that you can really count on the vendor to be on your side. Scalability of the vendor. Sometimes they want something that really works for a small company but can scale up to a very large. Now in the market, you have to pick, like, do I want something that works for a small company, or do I get something that's too big for me now, but it can scale up? Other things are just like data entry. The existing CRM systems really, if you get into them, okay, they require a heck of a lot of data entry. Most of that with AI doesn't need to be done anymore.

Peter Gassner
Peter Gassner
CEO at Veeva Systems

And then I just think there's this other fundamental thing of better CRM system, and that's just the details of a fundamentally better data model, better business logic, better just details like how do you handle multi-currency? How do you handle forecasting? How do you handle implementation so that you can get the CRM you want for your company in three months, rather than getting half of what you want in three years? I was on the board of Zoom for many, many years, and Zoom was a very small company when I joined, and very few investors wanted to invest in Zoom because they thought, well, there's already Webex, there's all these other things. Eric had an idea, but mine will be fundamentally better. That's the same idea here. That's unusual that could be disruptive, but I think in this case it will be.

Peter Gassner
Peter Gassner
CEO at Veeva Systems

Better, nicer, less expensive, more predictable, faster. I think all those things add up.

Operator

Our last question comes from the line of Scott Schoenhaus with KeyBanc. Scott, your line is now open.

Scott Schoenhaus
Scott Schoenhaus
Analyst at KeyBanc

Thanks, guys, for squeezing me in. I wanted to drill more into Veeva Crossix. From 90 days ago, are you seeing from your purview, from Veeva Crossix, are you seeing pharma marketing advertising budgets become better than they were 90 days ago? And/or do you think that AI is helping to act as a catalyst for pharma budgets, not only across Veeva Crossix but the overall pharma digital advertising space? Thank you.

Paul Shawah
Paul Shawah
EVP of Strategy at Veeva Systems

Yeah, we continue to see strength in the pharma marketing budgets and spend on digital. That is playing out in Crossix. We had another strong quarter of performance in Crossix. AI, what role is that playing? I think that is a nice long-term benefit and driver of what we are doing in Crossix as companies. You have probably heard us talk a little bit about helping companies become an agentic commercial, engage with doctors via AI. They are turning more and more to AI. As that becomes a more important channel, Crossix becomes more important in terms of measuring and understanding and optimizing against that spend. Yeah, absolutely. AI will be a nice tailwind for the foreseeable future for Crossix.

Operator

We have reached the end of the Q&A session. I will now turn the call back to Peter Gassner for closing remarks.

Peter Gassner
Peter Gassner
CEO at Veeva Systems

Thank you, everyone, for joining the call today, and thank you to our customers for your continued partnership and to the Veeva team for your outstanding work in the quarter. I am looking forward to speaking with you again on our upcoming Investor Day on November 5th. Thank you.

Operator

This concludes today's call. Thank you for attending. You may now disconnect.

Executives
    • Gunnar Hansen
      Gunnar Hansen
      Senior Director of Investor Relations
    • Brian Van Wagener
      Brian Van Wagener
      CFO
    • Paul Shawah
      Paul Shawah
      EVP of Strategy
Analysts