Data protection specialist N-able says AI's a 'fundamental tailwind'

MSP-focused data protector and cyber-security supplier N-able closed 2025 with double-digit revenue growth, and sees AI as a growth builder.

N-able’s final 2025 quarter revenues rose 11.8 percent year-on-year to $13.3 million, beating its high-end $127.5 million guidance, although the company made a GAAP loss of $7.2 million versus the year-ago $3.3 million profit. This picture was repeated at the full year level with a 10 percent revenue growth rate to $511.4 million, but with a $17 million loss compared to last year’s $31 million profit. Total ARR in the quarter for this subscription business was $539.7 million, up 11.9 percent.

President and CEO John Pagliuca’s overall earnings statement reflected this growth as he said: “We enter 2026 with momentum following another year of profitable growth and with confidence that we can drive continued strong performance. …We believe our strong financial profile, durable position in cybersecurity, and focused strategy set a sturdy, scalable foundation for what comes next. 2026 is a year of execution for N-able and we are excited to deliver.”

In the earnings call he said: “our AI-powered cybersecurity platform delivers the business resilience customers need. Our fourth quarter and full year results reflect this strength with strong results across our key operating metrics.” GAAP profit isn’t a key metric at this stage in N-able’s business progress.

CFO Tim OBrien said: “Customers with over $50,000 of ARR (Annual Recurring Revenue) now represent approximately 61 percent of our total ARR, up from approximately 57 percent a year ago. Our momentum upmarket has been consistent and pronounced.”

Pagliuca added: ”Our teams executed exceptionally well, and the business is meaningfully stronger as a result.”

Looking ahead, and talking about N-able’s strategy, he said: “We believe AI is a fundamental tailwind, and we are not only embracing, but actively capitalizing on it. Second, our foundation is rock solid. With telemetry from 11 million IT assets across more than 500,000 businesses and decades of trust and cybersecurity expertise, we have the structural attributes to succeed in the AI era.”

In fact, “Probabilistic AI doesn't replace deterministic workflows. It complements them. We are combining our SaaS system of record in context with an AI system of action. This unlocks step function value that we believe will take us to $1 billion of ARR and beyond. …The way we see it, AI doesn't erode our moat, it widens it.”

He declared: “We are delivering value with AI now. AI is embedded across our cybersecurity platform, reducing risk and improving customer efficiency.” N-able is previewing its N-zo AI workflow assistant for its User Endpoint Management (UEM) customers; “We believe this is a game changer. With a single query, customers will be able to derive insights and complete actions in seconds that previously took hours.”

N-able wants to “embed these AI assistants or these AI agents in all or most of our offerings.”

Here’s the kicker: ”We're empowering [MSP] customers to automate more tickets, streamline workflows and amplify the capabilities of every technician. Closing the skills gap with technology rather than a headcount unlocks a new frontier of scalable, profitable growth.”

There will be AI agents embedded in products and also “AI-specific SKUs and AI-specific agents that we can go charge for that have their own line item. …N-zo is the first example of that in-product AI agent helping the MSPs and their internal IT departments with their workflows.” 

This year N-able will add: “Disaster Recovery as a Service or DRaaS and Google Workspace workload coverage. These are 2 highly requested billable capabilities across our 14,000 data protection customers and both represent meaningful TAM expansion.”

N-able’s next quarter revenue outlook is $131.5 million +/- $500,000, up around 11.5 percent at the mid-point. The full 2026 year outlook is $556.5 million +/- $2.5 million, an 8.8 percent increase Y/Y.

Comment

We think that N-able’s strategy of adding AI-agents to existing products and also providing separately charged AI Agent products or services will be repeated across the data protection and cyber-security industry.