C3.ai's Siebel plots turnaround: Can the company execute?

C3.ai's fiscal 2026 revenue has fallen to 2022 levels, but the company is plotting a comeback. It remains to be seen whether it can deliver.

For the fourth quarter, C3.ai reported a net loss of $115.6 million, or 79 cents a share, on revenue of $51.6 million. For fiscal 2026, C3.ai delivered revenue of $250.3 million and lost $470.4 million.

C3.ai said it has restructured to save to $135 million in annual operating costs and cut headcount to 700 from 1,075. That restructuring was carried out by then-CEO Stephen Ehikian in February. Ehikian took over for Tom Siebel, who stepped down due to health issues.

The company is enterprise software's poster child of a prove-it story.

• C3.ai's Siebel returns as CEO
• C3 AI’s C3 Code first installment of turnaround plan
• C3 cuts 26% of workforce
• C3 AI names new CEO, cuts outlook

Now Siebel is back and pledging a turnaround. Siebel bought 6.17 million shares of C3.ai at $11.16 a share. C3.ai has $673 million in cash and equivalents including that investment.

The outlook for fiscal 2027 projects a massive rebuild. C3.ai is projecting annual revenue between $210 million and $240 million with a non-GAAP loss from operations of $128 million to $160 million.

The outlook puts C3.ai somewhere between 2022 and 2021 revenue totals.

In fiscal 2025, C3.ai delivered revenue of $389.06 million, up from $310.6 million in 2024. In 2023, C3.ai had revenue of $266.8 million, up from $252 million in 2022.

Should C3.ai hit its fiscal 2027 revenue guidance range it'll be ahead of the $183.2 million in revenue posted in 2021.

For now, Siebel's job is to maintain interest in C3.ai, help stabilize sales under a revamped team and convince Wall Street and customers that it can deliver a turnaround.

Siebel started with accountability and optimism. It's unclear how much time C3.ai has given the rapid development of AI. Do you have time for a turnaround in the AI age?

"We have an enormous opportunity before us, and the opportunity is to create enormous value for our shareholders. The performance of this company has been staggeringly disappointing. We're looking at a turnaround opportunity. And the fundamental nature of this turnaround opportunity is to change everything about the way we manage this business. In the process, we're going to create enormous financial returns for our shareholders," said Siebel.

Siebel said C3.ai has restructured the executive leadership, sales, product and services. "We have put together a strategic plan. We have put together the objectives, and we have a clear plan in place to turn this company around," said Siebel.

The list of C3.ai's revamp is extensive. Siebel noted that the federal government unit has revamped, but so has the rest of the company.

Siebel said:

"In the past weeks, we have reorganized the company top to bottom. We have new leadership throughout the organization. We have restructured the company. We have restructured C3 federal under new leadership. We have restructured C3 sales under new leadership. We have restructured products under new leadership. We have brought together in products, the platform group, the applications group, the product marketing group and the customer services group all in one organization under senior seasoned leadership.

We have restructured the service team, the objectives in place, the strategy is written and we are now going to talent. Just like the company, just like sales, the products group has been completely redesigned and reengineered."

Note the comments about talent. C3.ai has the plan, but turnarounds require net talent and time. Teams need to come together.

Siebel's biggest mission is to get sales rolling. "As I look at the performance of the company in recent quarters and particularly the sales performance, I mean, it is just unspeakably horrible and it's surreal, okay? This is resulting in market multiples for the company that are candidly well earned and scathing analysis from analysts and sell-side analysts that are candidly well deserved. I am here to fix that," said Siebel.

Here's a look at the fix based on C3.ai's earnings call:

• Revamp the business. Siebel said the restructuring and budgets are in place with new executives.
• Become "agentic" and Siebel said AI will be used across the business to "dramatically increase productivity."
• Move faster. "The products organizations today are largely leveraging AI tools for all programming activities. These agentic tools have been adopted across the organization: legal, finance, sales, marketing, wherever it may be to increase productivity really dramatically across the enterprise," said Siebel.
• Sales needs to execute. Sales is also leveraging AI to focus market development, business development and strategies to increase wallet share at existing customers and court new ones globally.

Wall Street analysts were respectful yet also skeptical. Patrick Walravens, an analyst at Citizens JMP Securities, asked Siebel if the company understood what went wrong and where the revenue went.

Siebel said "sales just fell off a cliff" even though customers were satisfied with the product. "It's basically sales execution. It's been miserable. It's reflected in all the operating results. It is completely unacceptable, and it's not that hard to fix," said Siebel. "I think the revenue multiple is well earned. It is. But the good news is it's not that hard to turn around. And so, I think we fixed the sales problem. It fixes revenue growth. It fixes RPO. It fixes cash generation. It fixes everything."

Walravens followed up with a question about churn. CFO Hitesh Lath said the company hasn't experienced a significant loss of production customers. Siebel maintained that C3.ai's issues are all about sales execution, which has been "laughably unacceptable."

Can Siebel and C3.ai deliver? We'll see. Siebel noted that talk is cheap. Siebel didn't have all the answers for questions he was asked. The reality is Siebel and C3.ai don't have all the answers, but realize the company has to show improvement.

"This is now all about execution, and we're going to have our heads down every hour, every day, every month, every quarter. And the early indications are that this is moving in the right direction.

Talk is cheap. And rather than rain forth with idle promises that everybody will largely ignore, we're going to accept the challenge to deliver acceptable financial results to deliver growth, deliver cash generation, non-GAAP profitability generation and let the results speak for themselves. Game on."