C3.ai, Inc. (AI): History, Ownership, Mission, How It Works & Makes Money

C3.ai, Inc. (AI) is the Enterprise AI application software company-but with a full fiscal year 2025 revenue of nearly $390 million and a net loss of $288.7 million, how exactly does this market leader balance aggressive growth with profitability?

You defintely see the headlines about their 25% year-over-year revenue growth and the over 100% surge in their Generative AI business, but do you understand how their model-driven architecture (MDA) platform actually translates into tangible value for clients like Shell and Baker Hughes?

We need to look past the stock ticker and understand the core mechanics-the history that started with C3 Energy in 2009, the ownership structure that keeps Thomas Siebel highly influential, and the precise business model that underpins their push into agentic AI and non-Oil & Gas sectors, which accelerated by 48% in FY2025.

C3.ai, Inc. (AI) History

You need to understand the history of C3.ai, Inc. to grasp its current strategy, which is all about leveraging over a decade of platform investment to capitalize on the generative AI boom. The company's story is one of consistent strategic pivots, moving from a niche energy focus to becoming a pure-play enterprise artificial intelligence (AI) platform provider.

This evolution, backed by the founder's significant personal capital and a willingness to spend nearly $1.5 billion refining the core technology, is why they could quickly launch a generative AI product in 2023 and report a total revenue of $389.1 million for fiscal year 2025.

Given Company's Founding Timeline

Year established

The company was originally founded in 2009 as C3 Energy.

Original location

The initial headquarters were established in Redwood City, California, USA.

Founding team members

The company was founded by Thomas M. Siebel, a seasoned technology entrepreneur who previously founded Siebel Systems.

Initial capital/funding

Initial funding was substantial, primarily provided by Thomas Siebel himself, alongside early venture capital from firms like TPG Growth and Sutter Hill Ventures. Siebel committed significant personal resources, spending roughly $1 billion over the first decade to build the core platform.

Given Company's Evolution Milestones

Given Company's Transformative Moments

The company's trajectory is defintely defined by three major, deliberate shifts that shaped its current form and financial health. These weren't minor tweaks; they were fundamental business model changes.

• The Pivot to Pure Enterprise AI: The journey from C3 Energy to C3 IoT and finally to C3.ai was a strategic narrowing of focus. This was a crucial decision to stop being a general IoT player and concentrate solely on the complex, high-value enterprise AI application market, which is where the most money is made.
• Switching to Consumption Pricing: Moving away from large, multi-year subscription contracts to a consumption-based model was a major commercial decision. This lowered the barrier for customer adoption, accelerating sales cycles and helping close 264 agreements in FY25, a 38% increase year-over-year.
• Embracing Generative AI as an Extension: Unlike many competitors, C3.ai did not treat generative AI as a separate product. They leveraged their existing, deeply invested Model-Driven Architecture (MDA) to quickly integrate C3 Generative AI in 2023. This allowed them to offer secure, enterprise-grade generative AI that is LLM-agnostic, meaning it can use models from Azure's OpenAI Service, AWS Bedrock, or Google's PaLM 2.
• The Microsoft Global Alliance: A new, five-and-a-half-year global alliance agreement with Microsoft, signed in September 2024, was a massive distribution win. This made all C3 AI solutions available directly on the Azure Price List and Marketplace, giving them access to Microsoft's global sales force and accelerating enterprise AI adoption.

For a closer look at the financial results of these strategic decisions, you should check out Breaking Down C3.ai, Inc. (AI) Financial Health: Key Insights for Investors.

C3.ai, Inc. (AI) Ownership Structure

The company operates with a dual-class share structure, meaning control is not strictly proportional to equity ownership, and this structure gives founder Thomas M. Siebel significant voting power despite a smaller equity stake. The company is a publicly traded entity, listed on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) under the ticker symbol AI.

Given Company's Current Status

C3.ai is a public company, having held its initial public offering (IPO) in December 2020. This status means its financial data, like its revenue of $372.1 million for the fiscal year 2025, is publicly disclosed and subject to Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) oversight.

The company employs a dual-class stock system, which is a critical point for understanding its governance. Class A common stock carries one vote per share, but Class B common stock, held primarily by the founder and related entities, carries 50 votes per share. This structure allows insiders to maintain strategic control even as the general public and institutions own the majority of the total outstanding shares.

The founder and related entities controlled approximately 52.4% of the total voting power as of April 30, 2025, a defintely decisive level of control over company direction and major decisions.

Given Company's Ownership Breakdown

The breakdown below reflects the distribution of shares, not voting power, as of late 2025, showing who holds the equity.

Given Company's Leadership

The leadership team underwent a significant change in September 2025, shifting the CEO role to a seasoned operator while the founder remains deeply involved as Executive Chairman. This change was designed to sharpen the company's operational execution.

The key executive team steering the company as of November 2025 includes:

• Stephen Ehikian: Chief Executive Officer (CEO). He was appointed effective September 1, 2025, bringing experience from scaling enterprise AI companies.
• Thomas M. Siebel: Founder and Executive Chairman. He holds the majority of the voting power and continues to guide the overall vision.
• Edward Y. Abbo: President and Chief Technology Officer (CTO). He is responsible for the technology roadmap and product development.
• Hitesh Lath: Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer (CFO).
• Rob Schilling: Executive Vice President and Chief Commercial Officer (CCO).

The board of directors also saw a recent addition in November 2025 with the appointment of Mike Clayville, a former Stripe and Amazon Web Services executive, to bring more cloud infrastructure and customer relationship expertise to the governance. You can see how the leadership's focus on enterprise AI ties directly into the company's core principles in their Mission Statement, Vision, & Core Values of C3.ai, Inc. (AI).

C3.ai, Inc. (AI) Mission and Values

C3.ai, Inc. stands for leading the digital transformation for large enterprises by providing pre-built and customizable Enterprise AI (Artificial Intelligence) applications. The company's cultural DNA is rooted in aggressive innovation and a commitment to delivering measurable economic and social benefits, not just software.

Honestly, their purpose goes beyond the $389.1 million in total revenue they reported for the fiscal year 2025; it's about making AI a practical, scalable tool for global industry. You can dig deeper into the financials here: Breaking Down C3.ai, Inc. (AI) Financial Health: Key Insights for Investors.

C3.ai's Core Purpose

The company's core purpose is to be the foundational technology layer that enables organizations to harness the value hidden in their massive datasets. They focus on delivering a comprehensive platform and applications that solve complex, mission-critical problems across diverse sectors like defense, energy, and finance.

For example, in fiscal year 2025, C3.ai closed 264 agreements, a 38% increase year-over-year, which shows their solutions are accelerating digital transformation for a growing number of global customers. That's a clear action-to-value map.

Official Mission Statement

C3.ai's official mission statement is direct and ambitious, aiming for market dominance while emphasizing stakeholder value.

• To be the global leader in Enterprise AI.
• Delivering the promise of the digital transformation to our customers, partners, and society.

This mission guides their product development, like the C3 Generative AI suite, which saw its revenue grow by more than 100% in FY2025, demonstrating their push for leadership in the newest AI frontier.

Vision Statement

The company's vision is to make AI a seamless, integrated part of every significant business operation, establishing itself as the definitive provider in a massive market.

• Establish and maintain a global leadership position in Enterprise AI applications.
• Targeting an addressable market opportunity that may approach $2 trillion annually.
• Fostering a culture of AI adoption by providing over 130 application offerings as of April 2025.

They defintely see a future where their Agentic AI Platform, which enables the use of natural language to orchestrate business processes, is the industry standard for enterprise-scale AI.

C3.ai Slogan/Tagline

C3.ai uses a concise, authoritative statement to position itself in the market, particularly emphasizing its focus on large-scale, business-critical applications.

• This Is Enterprise AI.

C3.ai, Inc. (AI) How It Works

C3.ai, Inc. operates by providing a unified, model-driven, end-to-end platform for enterprises to rapidly develop, deploy, and operate large-scale artificial intelligence (AI) applications, abstracting away the underlying data and system complexity. The company's core value is delivered through pre-built, industry-specific AI applications that drive measurable economic benefit-like optimizing supply chains or predicting equipment failures-for its customers.

Given Company's Product/Service Portfolio

Given Company's Operational Framework

The company's operational framework is built on a subscription-based, partner-led model that prioritizes rapid deployment and scale, which is essential for enterprise software adoption. In fiscal year 2025, subscription revenue was $327.6 million, representing 84% of the total revenue of $389.1 million.

The business model focuses on making AI accessible without requiring extensive in-house expertise. They offer a 'Get Started with C3 AI' program to implement an application within just six months, which speeds up the time-to-value for customers. Honestly, that kind of fast-track deployment is a huge selling point for large organizations.

• Cloud-Agnostic Delivery: The platform is designed to run on major cloud infrastructures, including Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services (AWS), and Google Cloud, providing flexibility for large enterprise clients.
• Prioritized Engineering Services: This revenue stream, which combined with subscription revenue made up 95% of total FY2025 revenue, involves specialized services to enhance product functionality and ensure production-level software for customers.
• Partner-Driven Sales: A significant portion of deals is closed through their partner network; for example, 62% of total agreements in Q2 FY25 were secured with or through partners.

If you want to dive deeper into the financial performance that drives this operational model, you should read Breaking Down C3.ai, Inc. (AI) Financial Health: Key Insights for Investors.

Given Company's Strategic Advantages

C3.ai's competitive edge comes down to its decade-plus head start in the enterprise AI application space and its strategic ecosystem alliances, which act as a powerful distribution channel. The company has invested over $3 billion into its platform to solve the complex technical challenges of enterprise AI.

• Model-Driven Architecture: The proprietary C3 Agentic AI Platform uses a unified data model (an 'ontology') to integrate and manage data from disparate sources, dramatically simplifying the development and maintenance of AI applications.
• Deep Strategic Alliances: Alliances with technology giants like Microsoft and AWS are critical; these partners have selected C3 AI applications as their preferred AI solutions, integrating them into their sales channels and marketplaces.
• Industry-Specific Focus: By offering pre-built applications for sectors like Defense & Intelligence and Oil & Gas, the company provides solutions that are immediately relevant, accelerating the path to value. Non-Oil & Gas revenue accelerated by 48% year-over-year in FY2025, showing successful diversification.
• Strong Cash Position: The company maintains a defintely robust cash balance, reported at $742.7 million in cash, cash equivalents, and marketable securities at the end of FY2025, providing a cushion for R&D and market fluctuations.

The model-driven approach means customers get valuable upgrades as the product is continuously improved, avoiding the refactoring headache common with highly customized software.

C3.ai, Inc. (AI) How It Makes Money

C3.ai, Inc. primarily generates revenue by selling subscriptions to its Enterprise AI platform and a portfolio of pre-built, industry-specific AI applications, which is a classic software-as-a-service (SaaS) model. This is supplemented by high-value professional services revenue from initial production deployments (IPDs) and customer support, helping clients integrate and scale the complex AI solutions.

C3.ai, Inc.'s Revenue Breakdown

Looking at the fiscal year 2025 (FY2025) data, which ended April 30, 2025, you can clearly see the dependence on recurring software fees, though the most recent quarter shows a concerning shift in growth trajectory. Here's the quick math on the full-year revenue of $389.1 million for FY2025.

The 84% from Subscription and Platform revenue in FY2025 shows a strong foundation for a recurring revenue business. Still, the most recent quarter, Q1 FY2026, saw subscription revenue actually decline by 18% year-over-year, which is a major red flag for a growth company. Professional Services revenue, which includes the prioritized engineering services, makes up the remaining portion and is often tied to the initial, complex deployment of the AI applications.

Business Economics

The core economic model is built on high-margin software subscriptions, but the path to profitability is complicated by the cost of customer acquisition and deployment. The ideal state-a high-margin, sticky software business-is clear in the non-GAAP gross margin for FY2025, which was a healthy 70%. That's what you want to see from a platform company.

• Gross Margin Volatility: The GAAP gross margin for Q1 FY2026 dropped sharply to 38%, down from 60% in the prior year period. This contraction is largely due to a higher mix of costs associated with Initial Production Deployments (IPDs) and lower economies of scale on reduced revenue.
• Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC): The company is spending heavily to land new customers, especially through its strategic alliances with partners like Microsoft and Google Cloud. In Q1 FY2026, selling and marketing expenses were $62.51 million, which is a significant burn rate compared to the $70.3 million in total revenue for the quarter.
• Pricing Strategy: C3.ai, Inc. uses a consumption-based pricing model, which ties customer fees to the amount of data processed or the number of AI applications deployed. This model is great for scaling, but it makes near-term revenue forecasting defintely challenging.

The high cost of getting a new customer live, plus the recent revenue deceleration, means the business is still far from the self-sustaining point. For a deeper dive into the unit economics, you should check out Breaking Down C3.ai, Inc. (AI) Financial Health: Key Insights for Investors.

C3.ai, Inc.'s Financial Performance

While C3.ai, Inc. achieved total revenue of $389.1 million for the full FY2025, the recent financial results show significant pressure on the bottom line and top-line growth. The company is in a heavy investment phase, prioritizing market share over immediate profit, but the recent execution has been poor.

• Profitability: For the full FY2025, the GAAP net loss per share was $(2.24), signaling that the company is still burning cash to fund operations and growth initiatives.
• Operating Loss: The non-GAAP operating loss for Q1 FY2026 was $57.8 million. This is the real cost of running the business before interest and taxes, and it shows the substantial investment in R&D and sales.
• Liquidity/Cash Position: Despite the losses, the balance sheet remains strong. As of July 31, 2025 (Q1 FY2026 end), the company held $711.9 million in cash, cash equivalents, and marketable securities. This cash hoard provides a runway of several years at the current burn rate, which is the company's primary defense against market volatility.

The cash runway is long, but the market wants to see the losses shrink, not grow. The 19% year-over-year revenue decline in Q1 FY2026 to $70.3 million is a serious concern that the new CEO, Stephen Ehikian, must address immediately. The focus needs to shift from simply closing deals to driving profitable, repeatable subscription growth.

C3.ai, Inc. (AI) Market Position & Future Outlook

C3.ai, Inc. is at a critical inflection point in November 2025, pivoting from a period of acknowledged internal execution challenges to a focused, platform-centric growth strategy centered on Generative AI and Agentic AI. The company's future trajectory hinges on the new leadership team's ability to convert its technological strength and strong $711.9 million cash position into consistent, profitable revenue growth, especially against hyperscale competitors.

Honestly, the market is watching closely to see if the recent restructuring and CEO change can stabilize performance after the Q1 FY2026 revenue decline of 19% year-over-year.

Competitive Landscape

In the enterprise AI platform space, C3.ai's competitive standing is defined by its deep vertical expertise and proprietary model-driven architecture, differentiating it from the broader data-centric platforms. While its overall market share is small, its focus on asset-intensive industries like energy and defense gives it a strong niche. The global enterprise AI market size is estimated at $31.512 billion in 2025.

Opportunities & Challenges

The market for enterprise AI is exploding, so C3.ai's core opportunity is to capture a larger slice of the Generative AI spending wave. However, the company must first overcome internal execution issues and the intense pressure from larger, well-capitalized rivals. The exploration of a potential sale also introduces significant uncertainty.

Industry Position

C3.ai, Inc. holds a unique position as a pure-play enterprise AI application provider, rather than a general-purpose cloud or data warehouse company. The company is a significant player in the defense and intelligence sector, providing a smaller, specialized alternative to Palantir Technologies.

The company's strategic focus is on the Enterprise AI application layer, which is a high-margin segment. This is why its non-GAAP gross margin for FY2025 was a strong 70%. Still, the market is demanding a clear path to profitability, especially after the Q1 FY2026 GAAP net loss of $116.8 million widened.

• Maintain a net dollar retention rate above 100% is defintely crucial to show platform stickiness.
• The shift to a consumption-based pricing model aims to lower the barrier to entry for new customers.
• New CEO Stephen Ehikian's priority is stabilizing the sales organization to translate platform technology into consistent financial results.

For a deeper dive into the company's foundational principles, you should review its Mission Statement, Vision, & Core Values of C3.ai, Inc. (AI).