Samsara hits profitability as large customers continue to drive growth

Connected operations vendor Samsara delivered another solid set of earnings, with indications that the company is solidifying its position as the go-to platform for enterprise buyers with large, physical operations. Analysts may consider its guidance for 2027 to be somewhat soft given the strength of its earnings this year, but there are some noteworthy milestones this quarter that suggest Samsara is positioned well: namely that this week’s Q3 2026 earnings saw it hit profitability for the first time and that its safety use case is landing well with large customers. 

Speaking with analysts on this week’s earnings call, CEO Sanjit Biswas said: 

We ended Q3 with $1.75 billion in ARR, growing 29% year-over-year. We also achieved our first quarter of GAAP profitability. In Q3, we added 219 customers with $100,000 plus in ARR, a quarterly record. Our $100,000-plus ARR customers now contribute more than $1 billion of ARR, growing 36% year-over-year. We also added 17 $1 million-plus ARR customers tied for a quarterly record.

Our growth is driven by our strategy to partner with the world's largest and most complex operations organizations. Q3 was a milestone quarter for large customers, and we partnered with many new organizations, including the state of New York, one of the world's largest providers of oilfield services and one of the world's largest and most diversified media corporations.

Other noteworthy numbers from the quarter include: 

• 2,990 customers with ARR over $100,000, including an increase of 219 in Q3, a quarterly record
• 164 customers with ARR over $1,000,000, including an increase of 17 in Q3, tying a quarterly record
• Eight $1 million+ net new ACV transactions

Headquarted in the Bay Area, Samsara has expanded its platform in recent years. What started as an IoT business focused on driver safety using video intelligence for on-the-road fleets has expanded to include a broad range of physical operations products. As diginomica has noted in recent years, the physical operations industry is one that has by and large been left behind by the cloud/digital sector, meaning that there is huge untapped potential for a company like Samsara. 

During the company’s recent customer conference, Samsara Beyond, the company announced a number of new products and features, which included asset maintenance for monitoring vehicle and equipment upkeep, commercial navigation tailored to large commercial vehicles, route planning for optimization, AI Multicam providing 360-degree video coverage, and worker safety protection for frontline workers.

The asset tags product, launched last year, and Samsara in Q3 it signed its largest-ever asset tags deal with a global leader in chemistry solutions and engineered equipment for the oil and gas industry. According to Biswas, the company manages thousands of reusable chemical totes but has historically lacked visibility into where these high-value assets are deployed, how long they remain at customer sites, and overall inventory levels. By adopting Samsara’s Asset Tags, they can gain real-time visibility for the first time. Samsara said that this has allowed the company to improve its tote fleet efficiency by 25% through the elimination of excess inventory and more efficient utilization. In addition, the customer expects to cut the manual labour required for quarterly inventory checks by more than 90%, driving  productivity gains and significant cost savings.

Samsara’s primary ambition is to become the workflow and system of record platform for these industrial companies. And according to Biswas, the strategy is resonating: 

Large enterprises are quickly digitizing their operations, and they're demanding a partner that delivers scale and performance. We've become their platform of choice for a few key reasons. 

First, we unified data from many disparate systems across all their vehicles, equipment and frontline teams in a single system of record. Second, we solve challenges across their operations with our broad multi-application platform. Third, we use our massive data asset and AI to deliver actionable insights that save our customers money. 

Fourth, we provide an enterprise-grade platform that delivers the scalability, reliability and security our customers require. And lastly, we provide world-class support and expertise to help our customers drive change management and deliver outcomes, resulting in clear and fast ROI.

Customer examples

Over the years diginomica has highlighted a number of Samsara customer stories - including customers in agriculture, food distribution and chemical sectors, as well as the likes of DHL Supply Chain. During the earnings call, Biswas pointed to two new customer stories from Q3. The first is in student transportation: 

[This] is a complex and highly regulated network responsible for the safe transit of 26 million students every day. After landing First Student, the largest school bus provider in North America, in Q2, we partnered with another 1 of the top 5 largest school bus providers in Q3. 

They transport over 1 million students today in more than 500 school districts across 30-plus states and provinces. Their initial purchase included our Video-Based Safety, Telematics and AI Multicam products. They're looking for a highly accurate and reliable AI solution to enforce their 0 tolerance policy on driver mobile use and eliminate in-cab distractions and driver drowsiness. With Samsara, they'll be able to detect, alert and reduce these behaviors.

And the second is one of the largest mechanical contractors. This company is involved in the AI infrastructure build-out happening in the US, which is an interesting example of how technology vendors can benefit from this roll-out beyond the scope of the infrastructure itself. Biswas said: 

They have over 5,000 employees specializing in custom HVAC and plumbing systems for commercial and industrial projects. They help build major sports stadiums and critical medical and research facilities, and they also design and install the complex systems that power many modern data centers as part of the AI infrastructure build-out. 

The company is using our Video-Based Safety, Telematics, Connected Training and Driver Qualification products to ensure their complex field operations remain safe and efficient.

In their pilot with Samsara, they saw a 44% reduction in the total safety event rate and a 72% reduction in mobile usage. We're proud of the impact we're creating together, and we're excited for the decades-long opportunity ahead.

Looking ahead 

Looking ahead, Biswas outlined a number of areas for development. He said that the company sees a big opportunity for AI to “transform safety coaching” as well as the ability for it to “automating coaching across operations”. The aim is to help customers further scale their coaching programs without adding to their headcount. 

Equally, the CEO sees more opportunity in the international market. Biswas said: 

I've met with dozens of customers in our international markets this year. Every time I meet with them, I'm inspired by the long-term opportunity to expand our impact. There are a few reasons for this. First, the international market is very large. There are more assets and frontline workers in Europe, Canada and Mexico than in the U.S.

He added that the international market is less penetrated than the US and earlier in its digitization journey, whilst there is opportunity for similar impact and customer ROI. Essentially, international markets are being pursued as a growth opportunity for the company. 

Looking ahead, Biswas said that he expects Samsara’s initial Full-Year 2027 revenue guide in terms of dollars will be higher than where current consensus is right now just given the Q3 outperformance, but official guidance for Q4 is revenue to be between $421 million and $423 million, representing 22% year-over-year growth or 21% growth in constant currency; whilst for Full-Year 2026, Samsara expects revenue to be between $1.595 billion and $1.597 billion, representing 28% year-over-year growth. 

The market reacted softly to the guidance being issued, but Dominic Phillips, Samsara’s Executive VP & CFO, was bullish and said: 

First, we have a unique defensible data advantage. By instrumenting physical assets with IoT devices, we generate a large and growing proprietary data asset that cannot be easily replicated or sourced elsewhere. 

Second, AI is accelerating our innovation, enabling us to release new products and meaningful features at a faster pace, driving higher customer engagement and usage. 

Third, our business model scales with fiscal assets rather than head count or knowledge workers and aligns us with end markets poised to benefit from major initiatives such as the global AI infrastructure build-out.

My take

As I said earlier this year when I was at Samsara’s annual conference, the vendor is uniquely positioned to capture a lot of this market for two main reasons. One, it has been underserved for so long and the buyers are there seeking change; and two, its safety use case is a good wedge for expanding its platform across large enterprises. Safety is very sellable as a ‘win’ internally at these companies and it often translates into financial returns e.g. fewer crashes on the road, fewer accidents in the factors, and lower insurance premiums. Once that win is established, buyers feel more comfortable expanding. 

There are challenges, of course. Namely getting these companies in industries that have been underserved for so long to change the way they work and interact more with digital tooling. But my expectation is that there is plenty of room for growth yet and there are few competitors out there doing what Samsara does, as comprehensively as it does it.