The software-as-a-service (SaaS) industry has seen tremendous growth over the past decade. SaaS provides users access to software applications over the internet, usually via a subscription model. Instead of installing software locally, SaaS allows users to access applications in the cloud. This approach offers advantages like lower upfront costs, flexibility to scale usage up and down, and shifts the burden of hardware/infrastructure management to vendors.
The SaaS market was valued at over $225 billion in 2021, and is projected to grow to $530 billion by 2026 according to Statista. As businesses and consumers alike continue adopting cloud-based solutions, the leading SaaS providers stand to see surging demand.
This article will overview the 10 largest publicly traded SaaS companies worldwide, ranked by market capitalization (market cap) as of March 2022. We’ll highlight key facts and figures about each firm’s history, offerings, financials and recent developments. The list features a range of US and international players spanning diverse sectors like cloud infrastructure, customer relationship management and productivity software.
1. Adobe (Market Cap: $198.9 Billion)
Founded in 1982 in California, Adobe has grown from a simple font development shop into one of the world’s leading creative software vendors. Its popular Creative Cloud bundle contains over 20 apps like Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign. The shift to a subscription-based model for Creative Cloud around 2013 proved immensely successful, now accounting for the majority of Adobe’s $15+ billion in annual revenue.
Other major segments include Adobe’s Document Cloud suite built around Acrobat as well as Experience Cloud for enterprise marketing/e-commerce features. With expertise across content creation, analytics and real-time customer data, Adobe provides an integrated stack to support digital experiences. Its strategic acquisitions, like that of e-signature pioneer EchoSign in 2011, have helped expand capabilities.
Adobe’s efforts around AI, augmented reality and predictive marketing signal its product roadmap. With a commanding presence across areas like design, photography and publishing, Adobe enjoys unparalleled brand recognition in the creative space.
2. Salesforce (Market Cap: $182.9 Billion)
Salesforce began in 1999 as one of the pioneers in web-based CRM. Its cloud platform helps businesses manage critical "customer 360" processes including sales automation, marketing campaigns, customer service and more. Salesforce has grown both organically and via acquisitions like that of Tableau for business intelligence and Slack for communication.
Salesforce’s 150,000+ customer base demonstrates the mission-critical role it serves across industries and company sizes. It reportedly controls nearly 20% market share in the CRM applications space that also contains incumbents like SAP, Oracle and Microsoft. Beyond software, Salesforce provides consulting plus platforms for developers and ISVs to build custom solutions.
Under visionary CEO Marc Benioff, Salesforce has championed values like trust, sustainability and equality. With annual revenues crossing $26 billion, it aims to hit $50 billion by 2026 via more mergers and deeper forays into industries like financial services. With a leading CRM platform and growing ecosystem, Salesforce seems poised for continued cloud dominance.
3. Intuit (Market Cap: $130.9 Billion)
Founded in 1983 and based in California, Intuit makes business and financial software for small firms, accountants and individuals. Their solutions support vital tasks like accounting, payroll, tax preparation, invoicing and more. Their flagship products include QuickBooks for managing small business finances and TurboTax for easy DIY tax preparation.
With over 100 million global customers, Intuit has genuinely revolutionized how small enterprises and consumers handle key financial responsibilities. Over 80% of their current revenue reportedly comes from the Small Business & Self-Employed Group along with the Consumer Group. Under CEO Sasan Goodarzi, Intuit has overhauled offerings to focus on AI-driven expert guidance alongside automation.
Recent developments include new vertical versions of QuickBooks tailored to industries like manufacturing and construction. Intuit also now provides same-day payroll for QuickBooks customers. With financial software adoption still relatively low among SMBs, Intuit enjoys a ripe opportunity to convert more customers. Its sustained growth and steady profitability cement its place among the elite public SaaS firms.
4. ServiceNow (Market Cap: $96.2 Billion)
ServiceNow was born in 2004 to transform traditional help desk ticketing for IT departments. Today, this fast-growing firm offers cloud solutions for managing digital workflows across enterprise functions like HR, customer service and security operations. Essentially "the cloud-based workflow company", ServiceNow integrates systems, surfaces real-time data and automates manual processes.
With its Now Platform, ServiceNow aims to standardize service delivery as a core business competency. The company is recognized as a leader in multiple Gartner Magic Quadrants. After hiring former SAP CEO Bill McDermott as its President in 2019, ServiceNow saw accelerated growth amidst pandemic-related digital initiatives. It generates over $5 billion in annual revenues, largely via subscription-based pricing.
ServiceNow faces competition from giants like Microsoft and upstarts like Atlassian. But with IT service management still a fractured, legacy technology domain with low cloud penetration, ServiceNow seems poised for sustained dominance given its early traction.
5. Atlassian Corporation (Market Cap: $68.3 Billion)
Co-founders Scott Farquhar and Mike Cannon-Brookes launched Atlassian in 2002 as college students in Australia – with $10,000 charged onto credit cards. Their vision revolved around "helping teams unleash their potential" via better workplace collaboration. Atlassian has since become a leading provider of software dev tools, project tracking and content collaboration, with over 200,000 global customers.
Flagship Atlassian products like Jira, Confluence and Trello drive significant value at technology and knowledge-work driven organizations. The recent acquisition of Chartio brought business intelligence capabilities to its stack. Atlassian itself pioneered a novel R&D model, investing heavily in its own tools to enhance productivity. The firm prides itself on its team-oriented culture and quirky traditions like "Fedex Days" for informal innovation.
With annual revenue exceeding $2 billion, Atlassian has ridden the explosion in software development and knowledge work teams. It continues deepening integrations between its issue-tracking, planning and workplace collaboration wares. Though it faces intense competition from Microsoft and startups, Atlassian seems poised to grow rapidly as agile digital teamwork becomes the enterprise norm.
6. Snowflake (Market Cap: $49 Billion)
Founded in 2012, Snowflake took the data warehousing world by storm with its innovative cloud-native architecture. Whereas traditional data warehouse platforms relied on costly on-premise infrastructure, Snowflake leveraged low-cost cloud storage and compute. This made it easier and cheaper for enterprises to store and analyze vast datasets.
Snowflake sits at the intersection of two mega-trends – the rise in data generation and shift to the public cloud. It offers data storage, transformation, analytics and more capabilities in a unified platform. Snowflake employs a unique “multi-cluster shared data” architecture to handle workload surges and optimize performance automatically.
After a blockbuster IPO in 2020, Snowflake has seen surging revenues amidst strong demand. However, it faces stiff competition from Amazon Redshift, Google BigQuery and similar cloud data platforms. Much of Snowflake’s continued success depends on sustaining its technology leadership even as incumbents catch up. With data emerging as the world’s most valuable resource, Snowflake seems poised to capitalize on this soaring $100 billion+ TAM if it keeps innovating.
7. Autodesk (Market Cap: $48.4 Billion)
Established in 1982, Autodesk makes software applications focused on engineering design, manufacturing, architecture and media/entertainment. AutoCAD remains its flagship product used by professionals for 2D/3D drafting and design. Related offerings include Civil 3D, InfraWorks, Revit and more covering specialties like civil engineering and structural detailing.
Over 4.5 million users across construction, product design, filmmaking and other segments now rely on Autodesk software. While revenue growth has slowed recently, new business models like subscriptions should unlock greater expansion ahead. Autodesk also aims to augment its design tools leveraging cloud, AI/ML capabilities.
Facing competition from both large rivals like Siemens along with niche tools, Autodesk enjoys brand recognition given AutoCAD’s long legacy. With engineering design and project lifecycle management still fairly fragmented markets, Autodesk seems poised to increase its penetration across customer segments with cloud/mobile-first modernization.
8. CrowdStrike (Market Cap: $44.2 Billion)
Co-founders George Kurtz and Dmitri Alperovitch launched CrowdStrike in 2011 to reinvent endpoint security. Their cloud platform leverages AI to prevent attacks and provide 24×7 threat monitoring – eliminating the need for legacy antivirus software. Riding the explosive rise in cyberattacks and shift to remote work, CrowdStrike has seen surging adoption among enterprises and governments.
Key CrowdStrike modules offer next-gen antivirus, threat intelligence, IT hygiene monitoring and more – all delivered via a unified console. Strategic acquisitions have also expanded its capabilities to cover security areas like identity protection, log management and incident response.
CrowdStrike now serves over 19,000 subscription customers including major players across financial services, healthcare and technology. With businesses facing skyrocketing breach costs, CrowdStrike provides a compelling solution. Analysts estimate this fast-growing firm could control over 10% market share in the nearly $30 billion endpoint security space by 2025.
9. Block (Market Cap: $43.9 Billion)
Formerly called Square, Block began in 2009 as a credit card processor for small businesses. It swiftly became synonymous with mobile payments, powering both in-person retail transactions as well as ecommerce. Today, Block provides tools for payments, payroll, invoices, inventory management, business loans and more – enabling omnichannel commerce.
Millions of sellers worldwide now depend on Block products like Square Point of Sale, Square Online Store, Cash App and Tidal. Beyond payments, Block is expanding into adjacent spaces like music streaming, stock trading and Bitcoin via smart acquisitions and product innovation.
Under iconic founder Jack Dorsey, Block aims to make financial services accessible even to non-traditional businesses. With SMBs now recovering from pandemic losses, Block stands ready to enable both digital commerce and offline retail. Given its alignment with macro trends around mobile commerce, contactless payments and crypto, Block seems poised for massive growth in the next decade.
10. Shopify (Market Cap: $43.4 Billion)
Founded in 2004 by entrepreneurs Tobias Lütke, Daniel Weinand and Scott Lake, Shopify provides the platform powering over 2 million online stores. Its SaaS ecommerce backend handles everything from store hosting, template designs to payment processing. It lets entrepreneurs and SMBs quickly get their business online without technical complexities.
Beyond its hosted ecommerce solution, Shopify also offers integrated tools for marketing, shipping, financing, selling on social channels and brick-and-mortar retail. It lets businesses seamlessly manage inventory, orders and customers across web and physical storefronts.
Shopify has seen tremendous growth driven by the retail shift online – with its merchant share expanding during Covid-19 store closures. Its app store also features over 6,000+ integrations enabling customization like dropshipping workflows. Though Amazon looms large, Shopify‘s focus on empowering SMBs gives it access to a highly fragmented market. Shopify seems ready to ride the digital commerce wave as more entrepreneurs digitize their business post-pandemic.
The Explosive Rise of SaaS
The companies above comprise over $800 billion in combined market value – a staggering figure underlining SaaS industry’s astronomical growth. They represent both pioneering entrepreneurs who saw the early promise in cloud software as well as stalwarts that successfully transitioned client-server offerings to web delivery.
Together, they provide mission-critical applications to millions of businesses and consumers worldwide across functions like sales, finance, design, security and more. Their rapid growth signals the appetite for greater efficiency, accessibility and intelligence enabled by centrally hosted and managed software.
As victims of their own success to some extent, these category leaders also face constant pressure to keep prices low and update features amidst stiff competition. However, with cloud transformation still in early innings for many sectors, these top SaaS vendors seem poised for many years of sustained dominance – even if the ranking order shifts over time. The "winners" will likely be decided based on factors like channel partnerships, vertical solutions and merger success in addition to product innovation.
