Gartner Q2 2025 Earnings Recap

Gartner’s Q2 2025 earnings report showcased moderate (by Gartner standards) revenue growth and a strong strategic focus on its new generative AI tool, AskGartner. The company is actively working to return to its historical double-digit growth rates, while also emphasizing the unique value of its proprietary data as a competitive advantage.

More Takeaways from Gartner’s Q2 2025 Results

AI is important

• Gartner CEO Gene Hall emphasized that “AI is an important opportunity for Gartner across several dimensions.” 
• As revealed in previous earnings reports, Gartner has about 50 employee-facing applications that leverage generative AI. 
• The huge new news is AskGartner, the LLM tool for Gartner clients. AskGartner allows clients to ask questions and receive answers that exclusively leverage Gartner’s proprietary data. AskGartner provides answers, relevant images, and recommended follow-up questions. (It wasn’t clear if those recommended follow-up questions are for analysts, AskGartner, or both.) 
• In development for nearly two years, AskGartner is thriving with a pilot group of clients. One client referred to it as a “game changer” for Gartner. Some in the pilot group report that the tool improved their efficiencies (in getting to answers) by 75%.  
• Hall also revealed that AI is the highest-demand topic among Gartner clients. While this isn’t a surprise, it’s nonetheless notable given the gigantic amount of questions Gartner receives and topics Gartner covers.

The Castle of Gartner Insights, and its Moat

• This earnings report praised – with specifics – the breadth, depth, and value of Gartner’s intellectual property more so than any previous report that I can recall. 
• First, the rebranding of Research to Business and Technology Insights (or Insights for short) is noteworthy. Gartner says the change reflects the nature of the value Gartner provides to clients. 
• Specific research categories mentioned by Hall were cybersecurity, cost optimization, data governance, data management, IT strategy, digital transformation, risk management, finance transformation, HR, and talent planning. Specific industries mentioned were healthcare, energy, banking, and transportation. 
• Second, Hall shared new perspective on how much Gartner experts (analysts and more) interact with Gartner clients and hear from non-clients:
  • There are more than 500,000 two-way conversations between Gartner seatholders and Gartner experts per year. Those calls happen with more than 2,500 Gartner experts and more than 80,000 leaders (Gartner clients) across every major business function in every industry. Gartner leadership stressed that these interactions help clients with “complex journeys, not simple questions.”
  • Gartner experts field more than 27,000 briefings from technology vendors per year. 
  • Those interactions – plus surveys and additional research – add up to “several terabytes of highly proprietary data.”
• Gartner lauded the unique, exclusive value of this data set repeatedly in the earnings call. Including when asked about the potential competitive threat to Gartner from open-access, generative AI tools.
  • When asked by a financial analyst if Gartner sees any clients contract or churn in favor of large-scale generative AI tools, Gartner revealed that A) it does investigate that possibility, but B) the extent to which it happens is “not material … it’s essentially unmeasurable.” 

Double-Digit Growth Will Return

• Despite positive numbers all around, Hall’s second area of emphasis was the plan to return Gartner to double-digit growth. 
• External headwinds were noted, including the cost-cutting attempts of the federal government’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and the impact of tariff-related volatility.  
• Gartner leadership outlined a four-part plan to put the firm back on track for double-digit growth in contract value:
  • Part 1: Most of Gartner’s contracts with the federal government are due for renewal in 2025, with many already happening (or not) in the first half of the year. Discovering clarity there and budgeting for zero growth therein for 2026 will stabilize expectations for this contributor.
  • Part 2: As companies affected by tariffs and trade policies find stability, they will return to normal spending levels with Gartner.
  • Part 3: Gartner is encouraged by the renewed momentum of spending from technology vendors, especially from small- to medium-sized vendors.
  • Part 4: Internal initiatives to optimize costs, promote AskGartner, and help clients leverage more of their Gartner resources.