ChatGTP lays it out…Super-engineer sure is not pulling his weight.
2025–26 comparison
The comments were in a graph tha cannot be produced here, but this is what is covered:
Company
Recent revenue growth
Employee trend
What it tells us
Teradata
- 5% in 2025
~6,500 → 5,100 since 2023
Shrinking while trying to transform
Snowflake
- 29% FY2026 product revenue
Growing organization
Strong cloud/AI demand
MongoDB
- 23% FY2026 revenue
5,636 employees, up substantially over time
Strong expansion
Databricks
80% recent YoY growth
Expanding aggressively
Explosive AI/data growth
Teradata’s own numbers are particularly revealing. Its 2025 revenue fell 5% to $1.663 billion, while total ARR increased only 3%. Public-cloud ARR did grow 15%, which is the bright spot—but the company’s overall 2026 guidance calls for only 2–4% ARR growth and revenue ranging from down 2% to flat.
By comparison, Snowflake generated $4.47 billion of product revenue in FY2026, up 29%. Its remaining performance obligations were up 42%.
MongoDB’s FY2026 revenue was $2.46 billion, up 23%, and Atlas—the cloud part of its business—also grew 29%.
And Databricks is in another universe right now: it reported more than 80% year-over-year growth in Q2 2026 and a $7 billion annualized revenue run rate. In August, investors valued the private company at $190 billion.
The employee numbers are particularly telling
Teradata had approximately:
7,200 employees in 2021
7,000 in 2022
6,500 in 2023
5,700 in 2024
5,100 in 2025
That’s roughly a 29% reduction since 2021. Teradata’s SEC filings confirm the 6,500 figure in 2023 and 5,700 in 2024, while its 2025 filing reports approximately 5,100.
And this isn’t simply normal attrition. Teradata’s own filing says it initiated a restructuring to realign sales, reduce expenses and improve efficiency, with employee severance and related costs.
There’s an especially interesting development in 2026: Teradata reportedly told its 5,100 employees that there would be no normal annual salary increases, with the money being redirected toward AI investment. The CEO reportedly described the objective as winning in the market with AI.
And look at the stock:
This is perhaps the most objective measure of whether investors think the transformation is working.
Teradata’s own SEC filing shows that if you invested $100 in TDC at the end of 2020, it was worth $136 at the end of 2025.
The same $100 would have become:
$196 in the S&P 500
$258 in the S&P Information Technology Index
(with dividends reinvested)
So over that five-year period, Teradata substantially underperformed both the overall market and its technology sector.
I would be open to hearing any corrections to the numbers, but it looks like they tell a sad story.