Appian (NASDAQ:APPN) reported fourth-quarter and full-year 2025 results highlighted by continued growth in cloud subscriptions, improved profitability versus prior years, and what management described as accelerating traction for artificial intelligence capabilities embedded within Appian’s process orchestration platform.
Quarterly results and full-year performance
For the fourth quarter of 2025, Appian said cloud subscriptions revenue increased 18% year-over-year to $117.0 million, while total subscriptions revenue rose 19% to $162.3 million. Total revenue grew 22% to $202.9 million. Adjusted EBITDA was $19.7 million.
Chief Executive Officer Matt Calkins emphasized operational improvements, noting Appian generated an 11% adjusted EBITDA margin for 2025, compared with negative 8% two years earlier, and produced $63 million in operating cash flow, compared with an operating cash flow loss two years earlier.
Large deals, public sector momentum, and a new Army agreement
Calkins said 2025 reflected execution on a strategy focused on “big deals” with large organizations. He noted the number of customers purchasing more than $1 million of software grew 50% during the year, and management said the value of seven-figure transactions nearly doubled.
Management highlighted several deal examples from 2025, including:
- A European pharmaceutical research organization that signed a seven-figure software deal to digitize clinical trial site selection, with Appian expected to use AI to accelerate the process.
- A North American aerospace manufacturer that purchased a seven-figure software deal to automate a core manufacturing system, which management said was expected to save nearly $60 million over three years.
- A U.S. military branch that signed a seven-figure software deal in Q4 to unify systems and deploy them to more than 100,000 users, after naming Appian its cornerstone platform to modernize operations.
In the U.S. public sector, Calkins said Appian’s position strengthened as the federal government shifted to work more directly with software vendors and reduce reliance on intermediaries. As an example, he pointed to a new enterprise agreement from the U.S. Army. Management said the Army is already an eight-figure ARR customer, and the newly awarded framework allows the Army to purchase $500 million in Appian software and services over the next 10 years.
During Q&A, Calkins characterized the Army agreement as an important credibility milestone that can help Appian expand discussions across the government and with partners. He also cited “legacy modernization” as a major driver of interest, stating that showing Appian’s ability to convert legacy applications into modern Appian applications often becomes a central topic in customer conversations.
AI traction and the “AI needs process” message
Calkins’ prepared remarks focused heavily on the company’s view that AI requires workflow and process orchestration to be effective in complex, high-stakes enterprise use cases. He argued AI is “probabilistic” and therefore needs a deterministic process layer to provide guardrails, reliability, and error remediation.
Appian said AI usage on its platform grew 14 times year-over-year, and management said it is monetizing that growth through upgrades to an AI license tier that carries an average price increase of 25%. Calkins said a meaningful number of customers make these upgrades each quarter and that most of the seven-figure software deals booked in 2025 were driven by demand for advanced features such as AI.
Management provided examples of AI-related deployments discussed on the call, including use of the company’s Doc Center product to parse incoming emails and documents, pre-populate forms, trigger workflows, and accelerate response times. Calkins said one deployment improved response time by 88%. He also described a large upgrade by an advocacy organization to use AI agents for invoice payment reconciliations and a seven-figure deal with a network of European banks that expects to save more than EUR 20 million over three years using Doc Center for document classification and data extraction.
In Q&A, management said AI has been a positive factor in sales cycles by enabling higher-level executive conversations, expanding Appian’s addressable opportunity, and improving win rates when AI is a decision factor. Management described an upsell path where customers start with proof-of-concepts, then upgrade tiers for production AI use cases, followed by additional workloads as initial deployments prove successful.
Metrics and reporting changes, margins, and capital return
Chief Financial Officer Serge Tanjga outlined several reporting changes intended to improve comparability with other software companies. These included reclassifying certain IT, cybersecurity, and facilities expenses across operating expense line items, introducing a new metric called Cloud Net ARR Expansion, and refining the definition of a customer by aggregating entities under an ultimate parent company or an equivalent government entity.
Tanjga said the company will no longer report cloud gross renewal rate and net revenue retention going forward. For Q4, Appian reported Cloud Net ARR Expansion of 114%, up from 113% a year earlier and 112% in the prior quarter, driven by what management described as a strong quarter of upsells to existing customers.
Appian ended 2025 with 140 customers with more than $1 million of ARR, up from 115 a year earlier. On profitability, non-GAAP gross margin was 73% in Q4, with subscription non-GAAP gross margin at 86%. Non-GAAP net income was $11.1 million, or $0.15 per diluted share.
Appian also announced a $50 million stock repurchase authorization. Tanjga said the company expects the buyback to “essentially offset” dilution from stock grants issued during the year and described it as the beginning of a consistent capital return policy, with an intention to scale repurchases alongside cash flow growth.
Guidance for 2026
For the first quarter of 2026, Appian guided for cloud subscription revenue of $119 million to $121 million, total revenue of $189 million to $193 million, and adjusted EBITDA of $19 million to $22 million. Non-GAAP EPS is expected to range from $0.16 to $0.20.
For full-year 2026, Appian projected cloud subscription revenue of $502 million to $510 million, total revenue of $801 million to $817 million, and adjusted EBITDA of $89 million to $99 million, implying an adjusted EBITDA margin of about 12% at the midpoint. Non-GAAP EPS is expected to range from $0.82 to $0.96.
On the outlook, Tanjga said Q1 cloud growth would benefit from strong Q4 new business and a meaningful foreign exchange tailwind, while FX is expected to be roughly neutral for year-over-year growth in the remainder of 2026 as the company annualizes prior U.S. dollar depreciation. He also said Appian is returning to a moderate pace of investment in 2026, including sales organization growth and engineering expansion in India, while forecasting continued adjusted EBITDA margin expansion.
Appian also announced it will host an Investor Day in New York on May 14, where management said it plans to share product and strategy updates and feature customer speakers.
About Appian (NASDAQ:APPN)
Appian Corporation is a global technology company specializing in low-code automation platforms designed to streamline business processes. Founded in 1999 by Matt Calkins, the company provides an integrated suite of tools that enables organizations to build enterprise applications and workflows rapidly with minimal hand coding. The platform combines process management, robotic process automation (RPA), artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities and data integration into a single environment, allowing businesses to accelerate digital transformation initiatives.
The core offering, the Appian Low-Code Platform, empowers users—ranging from professional developers to business analysts—to visually model, design and deploy applications that can automate complex operations, orchestrate tasks across systems, and deliver real-time analytics.
