Key Highlights

  • monday.com climbed with no company-specific news, as software stocks reached their highest levels of 2026.
  • Investors appeared to treat AI as an opportunity for established platforms rather than purely a threat.
  • CrowdStrike's CEO said AI safety concerns are a solvable problem, while Zscaler's CEO called agentic AI its biggest opportunity ever.
  • Salesforce slipped against the trend, a reminder that the rally was not uniform even within software.

monday.com (NASDAQ:MNDY) rose on Tuesday, October 6, as part of a broad rally in software stocks that lifted many names across the Russell 1000. The gain came without company-specific news; instead, the stock moved with a sector that reached its 2026 highs during the session.

monday.com was grouped with CrowdStrike (NASDAQ:CRWD), Asana (NYSE:ASAN), C3.ai (NYSE:AI) and Palo Alto Networks (NASDAQ:PANW) as software names that rallied sharply. The common thread was a fading of the worry that has hung over the sector: that AI tools, particularly agents that can carry out tasks on their own, would undercut Demand for traditional software subscriptions.

Why the AI Fear Matters

monday.com sells a cloud-based work-management platform that teams use to plan projects, track workflows and coordinate tasks. Like many software-as-a-service companies, it has faced questions about whether AI assistants could replace some of what such tools do, or reduce the number of paid seats companies need.

On Tuesday, the market leaned the other way, treating AI as an opportunity for established platforms rather than purely a threat. Several software executives made that case at the same time. CrowdStrike chief executive George Kurtz said AI safety concerns are a solvable problem. At Zscaler's (NASDAQ:ZS) investor day, chief executive Jay Chaudhry called agentic AI the most significant opportunity in the company's history, as the company reaffirmed its guidance.

A Sector-Wide Lift

The rally reached well beyond monday.com. Palo Alto Networks climbed after BTIG raised its price target, CrowdStrike and Fortinet (NASDAQ:FTNT) gained, and Datadog (NASDAQ:DDOG), Intuit (NASDAQ:INTU), Autodesk (NASDAQ:ADSK) and Palantir (NASDAQ:PLTR) all edged higher. Shopify (NASDAQ:SHOP) rose after a Piper Sandler analyst said agentic commerce transactions are expanding at twice the pace of standard large language model traffic while delivering roughly double the average order value.

Not every software company joined in. Salesforce (NYSE:CRM) slipped, moving against the trend without specific news, a reminder that the rally was not uniform even within the sector.

Records on Wall Street

The S&P 500 gained 44.98 points to a record 7,818.93, and the Nasdaq Composite closed at a record just under 27,600. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 253.38 points to 51,521.28. The Russell 1000, which covers most of the US large and mid-cap market, tracked the large-cap gains, while the small-cap Russell 2000 slipped to about 2,830. Underneath the Nasdaq's record, decliners outnumbered advancers, a sign that the gains were concentrated in particular themes such as AI and software.

Easing bond yields helped. The 10-year Treasury Yield ended near 5.28 after hitting its highest level since 2002 earlier in the month. Software companies, whose value rests heavily on profits expected years ahead, tend to benefit when yields pull back because those future Earnings are discounted less steeply.

Customer Adoption Will Be the Next Signal

For monday.com, the next test will be its upcoming quarterly results, where investors will look for signs that customers are adopting its AI features and that seat growth is holding up. Sentiment toward the sector has swung sharply on AI headlines, so moves in one direction can quickly reverse.