MongoDB (MDB) Q4 FY26 earnings call: guidance and Q&A

What were CJ's impressions of developer buy-in at the January San Francisco event, especially regarding increasing mindshare?

CJ noted the event was a great success, exceeding expectations with a long line of attendees. Approximately 70% of attendees were new to MongoDB, indicating increased mindshare among builders, particularly AI native companies. Due to its success, another DotLocal event is planned for August.

“Here, around 70% had not used MongoDB. And that's what gave me a lot of conviction that it was a successful event where we are increasing the mindshare of the builders in the San Francisco Bay area where a lot of AI native companies are being built.”

asked by Raimo Lenschow · answered by Chirantan Desai

Can CJ provide more color on the CRO search status and the primary attributes sought in a successor, especially given Erica Volini's appointment as Chief Customer Officer?

CJ stated they are in the final stages of the CRO search, seeking an excellent candidate. Erica Volini will focus on post-sales support and customer success. The new CRO needs to be focused on high-end enterprise, understand MongoDB's Main Street operations, and be strategic in expanding into AI natives and mission-critical workloads, with experience in consumption-based models.

“I want somebody who is very focused on high end of the enterprise, understands how things work at MongoDB from a Main Street perspective, but also working with the management team as we expand into both the AI natives as well as enterprises who are building more mission-critical workloads on MongoDB, including AI.”

asked by Matthew Martino · answered by Chirantan Desai

Given the large EA deals and renewed importance of on-prem, should investors recalibrate growth expectations for the EA business over the next couple of years?

Mike Berry confirmed that EA will continue to be important, especially for regulated industries and large customers. MongoDB is investing in EA to bring it to feature parity with Atlas, and they expect to continue growing it, potentially accelerating in the future. CJ added that customers in regulated industries globally prefer to keep critical data on-prem.

“So what I would say is yes, it will continue to be of importance. We are actually investing in EA to bring it to parity to Atlas. So certainly, our expectation and hope is that we continue to grow that and can even accelerate it in the future.”

asked by Matthew Martino · answered by Michael Berry

How is MongoDB's product and go-to-market strategy adapting to a future where AI agents, not humans, will increasingly provision databases?

CJ stated the philosophy is that AI agents need to "love MongoDB" as much as human developers do. This requires ensuring the right integrations, machine-friendly APIs, and autonomous scaling/performance during peak/valley usage. The engineering focus is on making the platform autonomous and machine-driven for provisioning and management.

“We want to do the exactly same thing for agents Agents also need to love longer TV. That requires to ensure that we have all the right integration with the right places, whether it's CP or whether we are looking at making sure that our APIs in how you manage how we auto scale, how we ought to perform during the peaks and valleys. All of that truly needs to be autonomous and driven by machines.”

asked by Jason Ader · answered by Chirantan Desai

Can Mike explain the bundling impact that reduced Atlas growth by ~2 points and whether it was anticipated?

Mike explained that while bundled deals are common, a specific exceptionally large transaction in Q4 led to more revenue attribution to EA than Atlas, which was not anticipated at the start of the quarter. This unique size moved the needle, reducing Atlas's reported growth rate.

“This was a little unique in that we had 1 large transaction that once it closed, and thank us again, it's a really good thing that it did. -- we had to attribute more of that revenue to EA versus Atlas, and that took a little bit off the growth rate.”

asked by Karl Keirstead · answered by Michael Berry

Given strong Q4 EA momentum, large deals, and planned feature parity, why is FY27 Non-Atlas guidance still low to mid-single-digit, not higher?

Mike stated that EA product enhancements will occur throughout FY27. Forecasting multi-year deals remains difficult, and the guidance reflects a conservative approach, including only closed deals or those with high probability, to avoid negative surprises. He hopes to do better but prioritizes predictability.

“The biggest variability to the business is not the cohorts, it's what ends up closing as a multiyear deal versus a 1-year deal. That still is difficult to forecast. And as we have said repeatedly, and we'll continue to say it. We will always bake in more upsides than downsides in that number.”

asked by Ittai Kidron · answered by Michael Berry

Will AI play a bigger role in MongoDB's growth equation sooner than anticipated, given recent agentic momentum, especially in enterprise?

CJ believes it's "not if but when" AI will meaningfully contribute to growth. However, he notes that large enterprises are not yet seeing scaled, customer-facing agentic workloads, mostly limited to internal productivity apps. He sees it as an early-stage opportunity requiring top-down engagement with CTOs for modernization.

“So my first thing is, 1 day, it is going to hit in a positive way. where you will have agents making a meaningful difference to the growth of our customers for either new product lines or existing product lines. We are not seeing that today in the large enterprises across pretty much most of the verticals that we speak to because as you know, MongoDB is across every vertical.”

asked by Sanjit Singh · answered by Chirantan Desai