Cognyte Software Ltd. (CGNT): History, Ownership, Mission, How It Works & Makes Money

In a world where global threats are constantly evolving, are government and enterprise security organizations truly equipped to turn massive data streams into immediate, actionable intelligence? Cognyte Software Ltd. (CGNT), a global leader in investigative analytics, is at the core of this challenge, empowering over 1,000 customers across nearly 100 countries with its AI-driven platforms. Following a strong fiscal year 2025 where the company reported annual revenue of $350.6 million and Adjusted EBITDA that more than tripled to $29.1 million, it's clear their technology is resonating in high-stakes markets; so, how exactly does this spin-off from Verint Systems work, and what's the secret to its revenue engine?

Cognyte Software Ltd. (CGNT) History

You need to understand where Cognyte Software Ltd. came from to appreciate its current strategy. The company is defintely not a startup; its roots are deep in the security intelligence space, but its current form as a public, pure-play investigative analytics business is quite new. It's a classic case of a large corporate division being spun out to unlock focused growth.

Given Company's Founding Timeline

Cognyte's history is best viewed in two parts: its operational existence within a larger entity and its life as an independent public company. We focus on the latter, as that's the entity you can invest in today.

Year established

While the business unit's activities began in the mid-1990s and it began operating as a separate entity in 2017, the current, publicly traded Cognyte Software Ltd. was officially established on February 1, 2021, following its spin-off from Verint Systems Inc.

Original location

The company is headquartered in Herzliya, Israel.

Founding team members

The core executive team that led the company immediately following the spin-off included Elad Sharon as Chief Executive Officer and David Abadi as Chief Financial Officer. Sharon had been President of the Cyber Intelligence Solutions business since 2016, providing critical continuity and domain expertise.

Initial capital/funding

The company did not raise capital through a traditional Initial Public Offering (IPO). Instead, the separation was executed as a pro-rata dividend, meaning Verint Systems Inc. shareholders received one share of Cognyte common stock for each share of Verint common stock they owned. This structure gave Cognyte an immediate, substantial foundation and a clean capital structure to start its independent journey.

Given Company's Evolution Milestones

The key to Cognyte's evolution is its transition from a division focused on defense projects to a scalable, software-first model, which is clearly reflected in the milestones and financial performance.

Given Company's Transformative Moments

The most transformative decision for Cognyte was the shift away from a legacy, project-heavy model to a modern, subscription-based software platform. This is what changed the financial profile.

Here's the quick math: in Fiscal Year 2025 (FYE25), the company's total revenue hit $350.6 million, but the real story is the jump in profitability: Adjusted EBITDA surged to $29.1 million, up from $9.0 million the previous year. That's a triple. This improvement wasn't accidental; it was driven by three key strategic pivots:

• Pure-Play Focus on Investigative Analytics: The spin-off itself allowed the company to dedicate all its resources to the intelligence and cyber market, unburdened by the customer engagement focus of its former parent.
• Strategic Shift to Cloud and AI-Driven Software: Recognizing that government and security agencies needed scalable, real-time insights, Cognyte heavily invested in moving its core offerings to a cloud-ready architecture and integrating advanced Artificial Intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) for data fusion and threat detection. This is why software revenue grew to $306.7 million in FY25.
• Acquisition-led Expansion of Threat Intelligence: The January 2025 acquisition of GroupSense immediately expanded the product's scope beyond traditional network intelligence into external threat intelligence, a crucial area for preemptive security. This is a clear action to diversify and strengthen the platform.

This focus on higher-margin software and recurring revenue is what turned a GAAP Net loss of $11.6 million in the prior year into a much smaller loss of $7.2 million in FY 2025, putting them on a clear path to sustained profitability. If you want to dive into the strategic intent behind these decisions, you should check out the Mission Statement, Vision, & Core Values of Cognyte Software Ltd. (CGNT).

Cognyte Software Ltd. (CGNT) Ownership Structure

Cognyte Software Ltd. is primarily controlled by institutional investors and its own insiders, creating a dynamic where large funds and company leadership hold the majority of influence over strategic decisions.

The company's ownership structure, as of the 2025 fiscal year data, shows that a significant portion of its stock is held by professional money managers, which means stock performance is defintely sensitive to institutional buying and selling patterns.

Cognyte Software Ltd.'s Current Status

Cognyte Software Ltd. is a Public company, listed on the Nasdaq Global Select Market (NasdaqGS) under the ticker symbol CGNT. This status subjects the company to rigorous reporting requirements by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), providing transparency for investors. As of November 2025, the company's market capitalization was approximately $609.47M, with 72.97 million shares outstanding.

Cognyte Software Ltd.'s Ownership Breakdown

The company's decision-making structure is heavily influenced by a core group of institutional and insider shareholders, who collectively own over 70% of the company. This concentration of ownership means that the interests of a few large entities, such as Topline Capital Management, LLC, which holds a significant stake, can heavily sway shareholder votes.

For a detailed look at the major institutional players and their investment theses, you can read more at Exploring Cognyte Software Ltd. (CGNT) Investor Profile: Who's Buying and Why?

Cognyte Software Ltd.'s Leadership

The company is steered by a seasoned executive team and a Board of Directors focused on investigative analytics and global security markets. The leadership is tasked with navigating the unique regulatory and ethical challenges inherent in the security software sector.

• Elad Sharon: Chief Executive Officer (CEO). His 2025 compensation was approximately $1.72M.
• David Abadi: Chief Financial Officer (CFO). His 2025 compensation was approximately $1.08M.
• Earl Shanks: Chairman of the Board of Directors.
• Ilan Rotem: Chief Legal Officer.
• Rini Karlin: Chief People Officer.

The Board of Directors was strengthened in 2025 with the appointment of Matthew O'Neill and Nurit Benjamini, adding deep expertise in U.S. federal agency practices and software-sector finance, which is a clear action to support the company's North American expansion strategy.

Cognyte Software Ltd. (CGNT) Mission and Values

Cognyte Software Ltd.'s core purpose is to empower security organizations globally, translating massive amounts of data into actionable intelligence to accelerate investigations and deliver superior outcomes. This mission is grounded in a commitment to innovation and customer success, which helped drive the company's Fiscal Year 2025 revenue to a strong $350.6 million.

Given Company's Core Purpose

You're looking for the DNA of the company-what drives them beyond the bottom line. For Cognyte Software Ltd., it's all about creating a safer world by giving governments and enterprises the tools to confront increasingly complex threats.

Official mission statement

The company's mission is clear and direct: to help security organizations protect what matters most. This isn't just a corporate platitude; it's a mandate for their investigative analytics software, which is crucial for agencies worldwide.

• Protect critical assets and interests for security organizations.
• Provide innovative investigation and security analytics solutions.
• Accelerate security operations for superior outcomes.

Honestly, the mission is simple: find the bad guys faster. The company's focus on this mission contributed to a significant financial improvement, with Fiscal Year 2025 revenue growing by approximately 12% over the prior year.

Vision statement

While Cognyte Software Ltd. does not publicize a single, formal vision statement, their actions and strategic focus paint a clear picture of their long-term aspiration. Their vision is to be the definitive leader in investigative analytics, using cutting-edge technology to create a safer global landscape.

• Become a leader in security solutions and investigative analytics.
• Create a safer world through innovative technology, defintely leveraging AI.
• Empower organizations to effectively combat crime and security threats.

What this estimate hides is the ethical tightrope walk they navigate, ensuring their powerful technology is used responsibly by their government and enterprise customers. You can read more about their principles here: Mission Statement, Vision, & Core Values of Cognyte Software Ltd. (CGNT).

Given Company slogan/tagline

Their tagline is perhaps the most succinct summary of their value proposition, translating their complex software into a clear benefit for the end-user.

• Actionable Intelligence for a Safer World™.

This slogan highlights their core product-investigative analytics software-which transforms raw data into intelligence that customers can act on immediately. The company's commitment to this value proposition is affirmed by the fact that they achieved a non-GAAP operating income of $18.6 million for the full Fiscal Year 2025.

Cognyte Software Ltd. (CGNT) How It Works

Cognyte Software Ltd. operates as a global leader in investigative analytics, turning massive, complex data from diverse sources into actionable intelligence for government and enterprise security organizations. The company's core function is to fuse structured and unstructured data using advanced Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) to uncover hidden patterns and accelerate mission-critical investigations.

Cognyte Software Ltd.'s Product/Service Portfolio

The company's offerings center on a Decision Intelligence Platform that supports a variety of specialized solutions, driving a total software revenue of $306.7 million in the fiscal year ended January 31, 2025 (FYE25).

Cognyte Software Ltd.'s Operational Framework

Cognyte's operational framework is built around a data-to-intelligence pipeline, designed to handle the scale and complexity of modern security threats. The platform's open interface is key, allowing seamless integration with customer systems and third-party data sources. Honestly, the entire process is about connecting dots faster than the bad guys.

Value creation is driven by a three-stage process:

• Data Fusion and Ingestion: Collects and normalizes vast quantities of data-including web, network, social media, and internal records-from siloed sources into a unified workspace.
• Advanced Analytics and Enrichment: Applies proprietary AI and Machine Learning models to enrich the raw data, automatically extract metadata, and run behavioral analytics to identify anomalies and hidden relationships.
• Actionable Intelligence and Decision Support: Presents a 360° holistic view of the entities and threats via intuitive graphical dashboards, enabling investigators to explore hypotheses and generate predictive, actionable leads for case resolution.

The new GenAI Intelligence Co-pilot, released in July 2025, further streamlines this by allowing analysts to use natural language queries, defintely reducing the time-to-insight.

Learn more about the company's core principles at Mission Statement, Vision, & Core Values of Cognyte Software Ltd. (CGNT).

Cognyte Software Ltd.'s Strategic Advantages

The company maintains its market success through a combination of technological superiority and deep institutional trust, which is reflected in its strong financial leverage, with FYE25 Adjusted EBITDA more than tripling to $29.1 million.

• AI-Driven Domain Expertise: Over 30 years of specialized experience in investigative workflows, enabling the development of purpose-built, mission-ready AI/ML models that outperform generic analytics tools.
• Mission-Critical Customer Base: A deeply entrenched position as a trusted partner to Tier-1 government, national security, and law enforcement agencies globally, which provides a stable, high-value revenue stream.
• Comprehensive Data Unification: The ability to fuse and analyze all-source data, including complex and anonymized sources like blockchain transactions, giving investigators a unified picture that competitors struggle to replicate.
• Proactive Cybersecurity Focus: The LUMINAR platform's integration of Cyber Threat Intelligence, Digital Risk Protection, and External Attack Surface Management positions Cognyte as a leader in the emerging 'preemptive cybersecurity' category as of late 2025.

Cognyte Software Ltd. (CGNT) How It Makes Money

Cognyte Software Ltd. primarily makes money by selling its specialized investigative analytics software and associated services to government, national security, and enterprise customers globally. The core of its revenue comes from a mix of perpetual software licenses, appliance sales, and an increasingly important base of recurring subscription and support fees.

Cognyte Software Ltd.'s Revenue Breakdown

The company's financial engine is heavily skewed toward its core software offerings, which generated nearly 90% of its top line in the last fiscal year. This is a classic high-margin software business model, where the professional services component is a smaller, though still growing, enabler of the main product.

Here's the quick math: For the fiscal year ended January 31, 2025 (FYE25), Cognyte Software Ltd. reported total revenue of $350.6 million. The Total Software Revenue stream accounted for $306.7 million, reflecting a strong alignment with their strategy to drive software sales.

The Professional Services and Other Revenue stream, which includes deployment and training, brought in the remaining $43.9 million. This segment is defintely growing, having increased by $9.1 million in FYE25 compared to the prior year, primarily driven by the timing and scale of large software deployments.

Business Economics

Cognyte Software Ltd.'s economic fundamentals are built on high-margin, intellectual property-driven software sales to a sticky, niche customer base of government and large enterprise clients. The high non-GAAP gross margin is a clear sign of this leverage.

• High Gross Margin: The non-GAAP gross margin for the fourth quarter of FYE25 reached 71.5%, which is a significant indicator of the profitability of their software solutions before operating expenses.
• Recurring Revenue Base: The stability of the business is underpinned by its recurring revenue (software services and subscriptions), which increased by 10.3% in Q4 FYE25 to $47.3 million. This recurring stream provides predictable cash flow.
• Pricing Model: The company uses a hybrid model, selling both perpetual licenses (a one-time, upfront fee for the right to use the software indefinitely) and subscriptions (SaaS model for cloud-based services and support). The push toward recurring subscription revenue is a key strategic focus for long-term predictability.
• Cost Structure: A large portion of their operating expenses is dedicated to innovation. In fiscal year 2023, for example, Research and Development (R&D) expenses were $68.4 million, representing 26.1% of total revenue, which is typical for a company developing advanced, proprietary AI and machine learning analytics.

Cognyte Software Ltd.'s Financial Performance

The company's FYE25 results show a clear trend toward operational efficiency and a significant turn in profitability metrics, even while maintaining double-digit revenue growth.

• Total Revenue (FYE25): $350.6 million, an increase of approximately 12% year-over-year.
• Adjusted EBITDA (FYE25): $29.1 million, which more than tripled from the prior fiscal year, demonstrating substantial operating leverage in the business model.
• Non-GAAP Operating Income (FYE25): $15.7 million, a significant improvement from an operating loss of $4.2 million in the previous year.
• GAAP Net Loss (FYE25): $7.2 million, a narrowing of the loss from $11.6 million in the previous fiscal year.
• Financial Visibility: As of the end of FYE25, the company reported a total backlog of $415.5 million and a short-term Remaining Performance Obligation (RPO) of $335.3 million, which gives a solid line of sight into the FYE26 revenue.
• Balance Sheet Health: The company maintained a strong liquidity position with $113.1 million in cash, cash equivalents, and restricted cash as of January 31, 2025, and reported having no debt.

If you want to dive deeper into how these metrics stack up against industry peers, check out Breaking Down Cognyte Software Ltd. (CGNT) Financial Health: Key Insights for Investors.

Cognyte Software Ltd. (CGNT) Market Position & Future Outlook

Cognyte Software Ltd. is solidifying its position as a specialized leader in investigative analytics, moving toward greater profitability by leveraging its deep government and defense sector expertise. The company finished its fiscal year 2025 (FYE25) with a strong turnaround, achieving $350.6 million in revenue and an Adjusted EBITDA of $29.1 million, demonstrating significant operational leverage.

You should view Cognyte as a niche, high-margin player whose future hinges on converting its substantial backlog into recurring, high-value subscription revenue, especially within the global national security and law enforcement sectors. For a deeper dive into the numbers, check out Breaking Down Cognyte Software Ltd. (CGNT) Financial Health: Key Insights for Investors.

Competitive Landscape

The investigative analytics market is fragmented, but Cognyte maintains a strong foothold in the highly specialized government and defense niche. While its overall market share is smaller than broad-platform rivals like Palantir, its deep domain focus gives it a critical edge with Tier-1 agencies. The market share percentages below are estimated based on each company's FY2025 revenue or guidance relative to the broader Investigative Analytics Market, which was valued at approximately $12.56 billion in 2024.

Opportunities & Challenges

The near-term outlook is shaped by the global surge in demand for AI-driven security and the inherent risks of a concentrated customer base.

Industry Position

Cognyte is positioned as a critical, albeit smaller, player in the Investigative Analytics sector, specifically in the government and defense vertical where its solutions are mission-critical. The company's strength is its sticky customer base-Tier-1 national security and law enforcement agencies-which often results in high-value follow-on orders.

The company's focus on operational efficiency has paid off, with FYE25 Adjusted EBITDA more than tripling to $29.1 million, a clear sign of improved business health. This is a turnaround story, defintely not a hyper-growth one yet.

• Sustained profitability: Management expects GAAP operating income in every quarter of 2025.
• Revenue visibility: Total Backlog stood at a robust $484.9 million as of April 30, 2025, which provides a solid revenue floor.
• Geographic concentration: Historically, over 65% of the top line has been derived from Israel, which presents a geographic concentration risk.

The next step for investors is to monitor the growth rate of the subscription revenue, especially following the GroupSense acquisition, to gauge the success of the commercial expansion strategy.