Only one company in this corner of data software has reported a quarter since the spring, and it was punished for it.

Datadog, which sells software that watches other companies' software and bills by the server monitored and the log stored, published second-quarter results on 6 August. Revenue reached $1.12bn, with growth accelerating to 35.6% year over year — a fourth consecutive quarterly acceleration, the clearest business improvement any of these names can show. Management raised full-year guidance to $4.45-4.47bn, above the $4.374bn analysts had modelled. The shares closed down 20.4% that day, at $229.29 against $288.13 the session before, because its largest customer — a nine-figure account running 17 Datadog products, which analysts widely believe to be OpenAI — will reduce usage from the third quarter. By 14 August the stock had recovered to $255.46, still 11% below where it went in.

That is what usage-based billing looks like when the meter turns down, and it is worth holding next to what the other two did on no numbers at all.

The rally without a print

Snowflake runs a cloud data platform that stores and queries corporate data and charges by the computing credit consumed. Its last set of financials, published on 27 May, showed product revenue of $1.33bn, up 34% and accelerating from 30% the prior quarter, with net revenue retention of 126% — existing customers spending a quarter more than a year earlier. Everything since has been product news rather than delivered revenue: the Cortex AI Gateway launched to govern enterprise AI agents, with Alteryx, Aembit and 1Password integrating in late July and early August.

The re-rating on those announcements is the largest thing in this story. Snowflake's market capitalization has gone from $49.3bn in early May to $114.0bn. Its price-to-gross-profit — the cleanest lens on a company still losing money at the operating line — has moved from 15.7x to 33.7x over the same stretch. The operating loss is genuinely narrowing, to -23.4% of revenue from -42.9% a year earlier, and consensus has fiscal-2027 revenue at $6.098bn, up 30.9%, slowing to about 26% thereafter. Growth is real; the price has moved considerably faster than it.

Elastic sells Elasticsearch, the open-source search and log-analytics engine that companies use for security monitoring and application troubleshooting. It rose 39.3% in the month, the most of any member, including six consecutive up sessions into 14 August worth 23%, on an upgrade to its security operations product. Strip out its two best days and the month is still +18.4%, so this is a trend, not a spike. But Elastic has not reported since February, and its revenue growth is flat to slowing in the mid-teens — 16.0% last quarter, with consensus at 15.0% and then 14.5%. Its trailing price-to-earnings of 24.5x is an artifact of a one-off gain that produced $435.9m of net income on $450.7m of revenue. On gross profit it is the cheapest name here by a wide margin: 5.94x forward, against Snowflake at 27.8x and Datadog at 26.1x. It is also the only one where a discount is still visible.

The bitcoin half went the other way

Strategy, formerly MicroStrategy, holds bitcoin funded by equity and preferred issuance, atop a shrinking legacy analytics software business that grew 6.9% last quarter to $122.4m. It fell 4.5% over the month and 50.2% over three months, against a 22.1% fall in bitcoin — roughly 28 points worse than the asset it exists to hold. Its market capitalization dropped below the market value of its coins for the first time on 27 June, and it now trades at 0.70x book. Diluted shares still rose 15.2% year over year, to 343.3m.

The financing has inverted. Strategy added $525m from at-the-market sales of common stock to a reserve now at $3.75bn, about 25 months of expected preferred dividends, while buying back 288,930 preferred shares for roughly $25.0m. Common holders are funding the preferred. That is why STRK, Strategy's perpetual preferred paying $8 a year per $100 of stated amount, rose 11.7% on the month while the common fell — a transfer down the capital structure, not coin exposure.

One name has left the group entirely: Clearwater Analytics, which ran investment-accounting software for insurers and asset managers, was taken private for $8.4bn at $24.55 a share on 25 June by Permira and Warburg Pincus.

The setup

Where it stands — The month's gain came from Snowflake and Elastic, neither of which has reported since spring; Datadog reported and fell. Would confirm — Snowflake's next quarter holding product revenue growth above 30% with net revenue retention at or above 126%. Would invalidate — Datadog's third quarter landing below its $1.135bn guidance floor as the large AI customer's usage rolls off. Watch next — Snowflake's fiscal second-quarter results, due in late August 2026. Valuation — Snowflake at 33.7x trailing and 27.8x forward gross profit, against 15.7x in early May; Elastic at 5.9x forward.