Have you ever watched a stock you’ve been quietly following suddenly blast off like it drank three espressos and remembered it had a board meeting? That was MongoDB tonight.
When the market closed on December 1, 2025, most people were probably thinking about holiday shopping lists. Then MongoDB hit the tape with third-quarter numbers that made traders spit out their coffee. Revenue clocked in at $628 million—that’s a cool 19% higher than last year and almost $36 million above what the smartest analysts on the Street were expecting. Oh, and adjusted earnings? Try $1.32 per share when the whisper number was around 80 cents. Yeah, it was that kind of beat.
The stock didn’t tiptoe higher. It jumped straight to a 15% gain in after-hours trading, and honestly, it looked like it wanted to keep going. In a year when “deceleration” has been the buzzword for almost every software name, MongoDB just flipped the script.
What Actually Happened This Quarter?
Let’s dig into the numbers because they’re worth more than a quick headline scan.
The company’s flagship Atlas cloud database service—the one that basically prints money these days—grew revenue by a ridiculous 51% year-over-year. That’s not a typo. While some competitors are fighting to keep cloud growth in the mid-20s, Atlas is still running like it’s 2021 all over again. Self-serve and direct sales channels both fired on all cylinders, and customer additions stayed strong even in a macro environment that’s supposedly “challenging.”
Non-Atlas revenue (think Enterprise Advanced licenses sold the old-fashioned way) was basically flat, which isn’t shocking. Everyone knows the future is in the cloud consumption model. What did surprise people was how sticky those big enterprise contracts remain while Atlas steals the growth spotlight.
Guidance That Actually Moved the Needle
Here’s where things get spicy. Most software companies have been guiding conservatively for months—sometimes comically so. MongoDB just threw that playbook in the trash.
For the current quarter (Q4 fiscal 2026), management is calling for $665 million to $670 million in revenue. That’s not just a beat on the $640-ish million consensus—it’s the kind of raise that makes options traders do cartwheels. Full-year guidance got lifted to $2.434 billion–$2.439 billion, blowing past the previous high end of $2.36 billion.
“These results reflect the strength of MongoDB’s platform – our flexible document model, expanded database capabilities like search and vector search, enterprise-grade security, durability, availability, performance, and the ability to run anywhere.”
– Outgoing CEO Dev Ittycheria in the earnings release
He’s not wrong. The “run anywhere” part is low-key one of the biggest advantages nobody talks about enough. Developers can start on Atlas, move workloads to AWS, GCP, Azure, or even on-prem without rewriting a line of code. In a world obsessed with avoiding vendor lock-in, that’s pure gold.
The Leadership Handoff Nobody Saw Coming
One subplot that flew under the radar amid the fireworks: Dev Ittycheria officially stepped down last month after 11 years at the helm. Chirantan “CJ” Desai—formerly Cloudflare’s President of Engineering and Product—took over as CEO. First earnings report under new leadership? Absolute sledgehammer. If Desai was feeling any pressure, he certainly didn’t show it.
In my experience, CEO transitions in high-growth tech can go either way. Sometimes the new person comes in swinging the austerity axe. Sometimes they inherit a mess. Here? The baton pass looks seamless so far. Investors clearly approve.
Why This Matters in the Bigger AI Picture
Let’s zoom out for a second. Everyone is obsessed with Nvidia and the pick-and-shovel AI infrastructure plays. Fair enough—GPUs are eating the world. But data is the raw material those models train on, and MongoDB’s document model is weirdly perfect for the unstructured chaos of modern AI workloads.
- Vector search? Built in now.
- RAG architectures for LLMs? MongoDB is everywhere.
- Real-time feature stores for machine learning? Same story.
Developers aren’t choosing between MongoDB and a relational dinosaur because some sales guy knocked on their door. They’re choosing it because it makes their lives easier when they’re building the next generation of AI-powered applications. That’s a moat that doesn’t show up neatly on an income statement but matters way more over a decade.
Side note: I still meet engineers who think MongoDB is “just a JSON store that loses data.” That meme died around 2016. Today’s platform has multi-document ACID transactions, columnstore indexes, time-series collections, and queryable encryption. The company spent years methodically killing every legitimate criticism. Most people outside the developer community haven’t caught up yet.
Valuation Reality Check
Okay, let’s talk price tag—because nothing this good comes cheap.
Even after tonight’s pop, MongoDB trades at roughly 11x forward revenue. That’s not the nosebleed 20x we saw in 2021, but it’s still rich compared to old-school enterprise software peers. The question every investor has to answer: is the growth durable enough to justify it?
Historically, the company has grown revenue between 30-70% for a decade straight. This year will be closer to 20%. Next year? Management isn’t guiding yet, but if Atlas keeps compounding at 50%, total growth could easily re-accelerate into the high 20s. That scenario makes today’s multiple look reasonable, maybe even attractive.
On the flip side, any whiff of consumption slowdown—especially if enterprises start “optimizing” their cloud spend more aggressively—could bring the multiple crashing back to earth. It’s not a low-risk name, never has been.
What the Chart Is Whispering
From a technical standpoint, MDB has been consolidating in a multi-month range between roughly $300 and $420. Tonight’s gap takes it clean through the top of that range on massive volume. If the move holds into tomorrow’s regular session, the next measurable target is the old all-time high around $590 from late 2021.
Yes, that sounds insane after the carnage tech growth stocks endured in 2022-2023. But momentum is a real thing, and right now the tape is rewarding anything that proves the “software is dead” narrative wrong.
The Bottom Line
Tonight wasn’t just a good quarter. It was a statement. In a market that spent most of 2025 convinced software growth had permanently shifted to a lower gear, MongoDB reminded everyone that best-in-class platforms can still put up numbers that make jaws drop.
Are there risks? Absolutely. Valuation, macro uncertainty, potential deceleration in Atlas consumption growth—none of that disappeared tonight. But for the first time in a while, the reward side of the risk/reward equation looks compelling again.
I’ve followed this name for years, and I’ll be the first to admit I thought the easy money was gone after the 2022-2024 digestion phase. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe the next chapter is just getting started.
Either way, if you own shares, enjoy the ride tomorrow. If you’ve been waiting on the sidelines, well… sometimes the market hands you a postcard that says “the story isn’t over.” This feels like one of those moments.
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