Key Highlights

  • Datadog reported second-quarter 2026 Revenue of $1.12bn, up 36% year on year, with about 4,720 customers spending more than $100,000 in annual recurring revenue.
  • F5 reported third-quarter fiscal 2026 total revenue of $865m, up 11%, marking eight consecutive quarters of double-digit product growth.
  • Akamai reported second-quarter 2026 revenue up 5% to $1.100bn, with cloud infrastructure services revenue up 39% and a disclosed contract worth more than $600m over four years for AI-linked cloud infrastructure.

As workloads migrate to the cloud and artificial-intelligence applications scale, the unglamorous plumbing that keeps software fast, observable and secure has become a genuine growth theme within the S&P 500. Cloud performance is not one market but several, monitoring what applications are doing, delivering and protecting the traffic between them, and providing the compute they run on. Datadog Inc (NASDAQ:DDOG), F5 Inc (NASDAQ:FFIV) and Akamai Technologies Inc (NASDAQ:AKAM) sit at three different points on that chain, and their recent results show how unevenly the AI boom is reaching each of them.

Datadog Inc (NASDAQ:DDOG): Observability Rides the AI Wave

Datadog Inc, the cloud observability and monitoring software company that joined the S&P 500 in July 2025, is the clearest beneficiary. In second-quarter 2026 results released on 6 August 2026, Datadog reported revenue of $1.12bn, up 36% year on year, and about 4,720 customers spending more than $100,000 in ARR, up 23% from a year earlier. Chief executive Olivier Pomel said customers are building and deploying with AI, and using the Datadog platform to observe, secure, and act on their AI-enabled solutions. The company also launched autonomous incident-response and AI-security features. It guided to full-year 2026 revenue of $4.45bn to $4.47bn. The risk is valuation: rapid growth is priced in, and a slowdown in cloud consumption would hurt a usage-based model quickly.

F5 Inc (NASDAQ:FFIV): Application Delivery Meets Security

F5 Inc, an S&P 500 member that supplies application delivery and security for hybrid, multicloud environments, is enjoying a hardware-and-software revival. In third-quarter fiscal 2026 results on 27 July 2026, F5 reported total revenue of $865m, up 11%, with product revenue up 19% and software revenue of $223m, up 7%. It raised full-year revenue growth guidance to 9-10% and lifted its non-GAAP EPS range to $17.21 to $17.33. Chief executive Francois Locoh-Donou argued that AI has empowered attackers and compressed the time between vulnerability discovery and exploitation, positioning F5's role in protecting applications at runtime as a structural tailwind rather than a one-off cycle. The company noted eight consecutive quarters of double-digit product growth, which it links to Demand for securing hybrid, multicloud and AI-driven infrastructure.

Akamai Technologies Inc (NASDAQ:AKAM): Pivoting From Delivery to Compute

Akamai Technologies Inc, the S&P 500 content-delivery, Cybersecurity and cloud-computing company, is the most transitional story. In second-quarter 2026 results on 6 August 2026, total revenue rose just 5% to $1.100bn, but the mix mattered more than the headline. Security revenue reached $604m, up 10%, and cloud infrastructure services revenue rose 39% to $99m. Akamai disclosed a contract worth more than $600m over four years with a US technology company for cloud infrastructure supporting robotics, and said year-to-date customer commitments exceeded $2.8bn. Chief executive Tom Leighton called the wins validation of Akamai's growing position as a key AI infrastructure provider, though margins came under pressure as it invests in that build-out.

Three Speeds, Shared Risks

The trio underline that cloud performance is not a single trade. Datadog offers the fastest growth but the richest valuation; F5 combines steady cash generation with a security-led product cycle; Akamai is trading a maturing delivery Business for a lower-margin, capital-intensive cloud pivot whose returns are unproven. Common risks bind them: all three depend on continued enterprise cloud and AI spending, all face well-funded competition from the hyperscalers whose platforms they sit upon, and all could be squeezed if customers optimise their cloud bills in a slower economy.

Readers should monitor customer-consumption trends and net-retention rates at Datadog, the durability of F5's product-revenue rebound beyond its recent run of double-digit quarters, and whether Akamai's large AI-infrastructure contracts convert into sustained, profitable revenue rather than low-margin volume.