Key Highlights

● RADCOM reported 2025 Revenue of about $71.5 million, up roughly 17%, though Q2 2026 revenue fell sharply on deployment delays.

● Workday reported fiscal 2026 revenue of roughly $9.55 billion, up about 13%, with Net Income near $693 million.

● ExlService Holdings reported 2025 revenue of about $2.09 billion, up roughly 14%, with net income near $251 million.

● AppFolio reported 2025 revenue of roughly $951 million, up nearly 20% year over year, with net income near $141 million.

RADCOM (NASDAQ:RDCM), Workday (NASDAQ:WDAY), So-Young International (NASDAQ:SY), ExlService Holdings (NASDAQ:EXLS) and AppFolio (NASDAQ:APPF) each carry a technology label, yet their businesses, geographies and risk profiles diverge sharply. Within the Nasdaq Composite you can find companies compounding revenue in the high teens, others nursing a guidance cut, and at least one whose core Business sits outside traditional software entirely.

Sector Backdrop: AI Promises Meet Budget Reality

The software and tech-services complex enters autumn 2026 caught between two narratives. The first is durable structural demand: enterprises are still migrating core finance, HR and operational workloads to the cloud, and AI has moved from pilot to purchasing line-item across many buyer categories. The second is discipline, as higher-for-longer interest-rate expectations earlier in the cycle taught software buyers to scrutinize seat counts, consolidate vendors and Demand measurable return before renewing.

The result is bifurcation. Larger, mission-critical platforms with sticky data and switching costs have generally defended growth, while smaller or more deployment-dependent vendors have proven more exposed to timing, Supply and macro shocks. AI is the swing factor: it can lift pricing and margins where it is embedded into a workflow customers already pay for, but it is expensive to build and easy to over-promise.

RADCOM (NASDAQ:RDCM): Strong Year, Bumpy Handoff

RADCOM sells cloud-native, 5G-ready network-intelligence and automated-assurance software to communication service providers, layering AI-driven analytics onto carrier networks. It is the smallest name here by market value, recently near $166 million with the stock around $9.87 as of September 11, 2026.

RADCOM reported 2025 revenue of about $71.5 million, up roughly 17% year over year, with net income near $12 million, a strong operating year for a company of its size. The complication is 2026: reported second-quarter revenue came in around $12 million, sharply lower year over year, and management trimmed full-year expectations, citing customer deployment delays tied to component costs and supply constraints.

For a vendor whose revenue depends on when carriers actually roll out projects, timing risk is the whole story. If those deployments are deferred rather than cancelled, the pipeline may simply shift right; if carrier capex tightens further, the softness could persist. Non-GAAP profitability and cash position are the metrics that tell you which.

Workday (NASDAQ:WDAY): The Enterprise Anchor

Workday is the heavyweight of the group, providing cloud applications for human-capital management, financial management and spend across large enterprises. It carried a market Capitalization near $45 billion with shares around $185.70 in mid-September 2026.

For fiscal 2026, ended in late January, Workday reported revenue of roughly $9.55 billion, up about 13%, with net income near $693 million and diluted EPS reported around $4.86. Trailing-twelve-month revenue has since edged past $10 billion.

Workday embodies the defensive-growth end of software, deeply embedded systems of record, multi-year contracts and high switching costs. That stickiness is exactly what buyers value when budgets tighten. The debate is whether double-digit growth can persist as the installed base matures, and whether Workday's AI features translate into higher realized pricing rather than merely a retention argument.

So-Young International (NASDAQ:SY): The Outlier That Needs a Caveat

So-Young International is the odd fit in this basket, and readers should treat it as such. It operates an online platform for consumption-healthcare services in China, connecting consumers with medical-aesthetic providers, a consumer-internet and increasingly clinic-operating business, not enterprise software. Its Market Value was recently near $272 million with shares around $2.71.

So-Young reported 2025 revenue of roughly RMB 1.52 billion, up modestly, and a narrower net loss of about RMB 242 million versus the prior year. Reported second-quarter 2026 revenue was near RMB 510 million, up around 33% year over year, with aesthetic-treatment revenue growing rapidly as the company expanded its owned clinic centers.

The AI angle here is real but narrow, as the company cites AI integration as an operational-efficiency driver rather than a product it sells. The pivot toward physical aesthetic centers also changes the risk profile, adding Capital intensity and execution risk to what was a marketplace model. The item to watch is whether clinic expansion converts into sustained profitability rather than growth for its own sake.

ExlService Holdings (NASDAQ:EXLS): Services With an AI Wrapper

ExlService Holdings describes itself as a data and AI company, delivering digital operations, analytics and industry solutions across insurance, healthcare and life sciences, banking and capital markets, and international growth markets. It is a labor-plus-technology model with roughly 65,000 employees, a market capitalization near $5.35 billion and shares around $35.26 as of September 11, 2026.

EXLS reported 2025 revenue of about $2.09 billion, up roughly 14%, with net income near $251 million and reported EPS around $1.58.

ExlService sits at an interesting intersection of the AI debate. On one hand, its analytics and domain expertise position it to sell AI-enabled outcomes to regulated clients who cannot easily build in-house. On the other, generative AI is the classic double-edged sword for services firms, since it can compress the very labor hours some contracts are priced on. The bull case is that EXLS moves clients up the value chain faster than automation erodes legacy work.

AppFolio (NASDAQ:APPF): Vertical SaaS Firing on Growth

AppFolio is the vertical-software play, offering cloud-based platforms for property managers spanning accounting, leasing, marketing, maintenance and communications, with AI capabilities marketed under its Realm suite. Shares traded near $208.48 recently, for a market capitalization around $7.4 billion.

AppFolio reported 2025 revenue of roughly $951 million, up nearly 20% year over year, with net income near $141 million. Reported net income was lower than the prior year, which for a company posting strong top-line growth typically reflects prior-period comparisons or Investment timing rather than deteriorating economics.

AppFolio is a clean expression of the vertical-SaaS thesis: own a niche in real-estate operations, embed payments and value-added services, and grow revenue faster than customer count through usage and AI upsell. The valuation, with a trailing P/E in the high 40s, prices in continued execution and leaves little room for a growth stumble.

What Investors Should Watch

Three cross-currents tie these names together into September and beyond. First, AI monetization versus AI cost: Workday, ExlService, AppFolio and even So-Young all invoke AI, but the payoff differs, pricing power for embedded software, Margin risk-and-reward for services, efficiency for platforms.

Second, deployment and demand timing. RADCOM is the cautionary example, a strong 2025 undercut by 2026 deployment slippage; small-cap, project-driven tech is acutely sensitive to when customers spend, not just whether. Third, valuation dispersion: this basket ranges from a sub-$300 million loss-maker to a $45 billion profit engine, and multiples compress fast when growth disappoints.

Converting AI Into Durable Revenue Separates the Winners

These five are all genuinely Nasdaq-listed, but they are not a single trade. Workday and AppFolio represent the resilient, growth-plus-stickiness end of software; ExlService is a services firm trying to ride AI rather than be displaced by it; RADCOM shows how quickly execution timing can dent a small-cap; and So-Young is best understood as a China consumer-healthcare platform that happens to use AI, not an enterprise-software peer. September 2026 is less about whether AI matters and more about who can convert it into durable revenue and margin.