What Happened?
A number of stocks jumped in the afternoon session after a two-day wave of AI conviction, sparked by Snowflake's best single-session day on record and extended by Dell's blowout earnings continued to weaken the narrative that weighed on the software sector.
Snowflake's Q1 results sent the stock up 36% on May 28, its strongest single-day gain since its 2020 IPO, showing that AI is accelerating demand for enterprise data platforms rather than cannibalizing them. Then Dell's Q1 report, published after the bell on May 28, confirmed the physical infrastructure layer is expanding at a scale most analysts had not modelled: $43.8 billion in revenue, up 88% year-over-year, AI server revenue of $16.1 billion up 757%, and a record AI backlog of $51.3 billion.
The combined read-through was hard to ignore: enterprises are deploying AI at scale, and they need both the software layer and the hardware stack to do it. A supportive macro backdrop provided additional lift. The 10-year Treasury yield fell to 4.45% on reports of a US-Iran truce extension, reducing the discount rate on long-duration growth stocks.
The stock market overreacts to news, and big price drops can present good opportunities to buy high-quality stocks.
Among others, the following stocks were impacted:
- Sales Software company HubSpot (NYSE: HUBS) jumped 10.8%. Is now the time to buy HubSpot? Access our full analysis report here, it’s free.
- Finance and Accounting Software company Workday (NASDAQ: WDAY) jumped 11%. Is now the time to buy Workday? Access our full analysis report here, it’s free.
Zooming In On Workday (WDAY)
Workday’s shares are very volatile and have had 20 moves greater than 5% over the last year. But moves this big are rare even for Workday and indicate this news significantly impacted the market’s perception of the business.
The previous big move we wrote about was 1 day ago when the stock gained 4.7% on the news that Snowflake's impressive earnings results provided the clearer evidence that the "SaaSpocalypse" — a rolling selloff that had erased approximately $2 trillion from software market values since late 2025 on fears that AI would make subscription software obsolete — had been overstated for platforms sitting at the centre of AI workflows.
Snowflake surged 35%, its best single day ever, after reporting that AI accounts on its platform jumped from 9,100 to 13,600 in a single quarter, product revenue grew 34%, and full-year guidance was raised by $180 million. The read-through was immediate. ServiceNow gained 5%, Palantir rose nearly 6%, Oracle and Microsoft each added roughly 3%, and a broad wave lifted the iShares Expanded Tech-Software Sector ETF (IGV). The SaaSpocalypse thesis rested on a simple fear: that autonomous AI agents would replace per-seat software licences, hollowing out established SaaS business models.
Snowflake's results inverted that logic directly. Instead of AI displacing its platform, AI drove more consumption of it. CFO Brian Robins described Cortex Code as creating a "step function change" in AI revenue potential, and said it was the single largest driver of the full-year guidance raise. Enterprises are not replacing data platforms with AI; they are using AI to generate more workloads that run on those same platforms.
Workday is down 28.8% since the beginning of the year, and at $146.44 per share, it is trading 42.1% below its 52-week high of $252.90 from June 2025. Investors who bought $1,000 worth of Workday’s shares 5 years ago would now be looking at only $646.79.
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