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Morning Briefing - February 26, 2026

Earnings Day: Snowflake and Salesforce Both Beat

Both reported after close yesterday. The numbers matter for this audience.

Snowflake beat across the board. Q4 product revenue hit $1.23B (30% YoY), total revenue $1.28B vs. $1.26B consensus. Net revenue retention at 125%. RPO reached $9.77B, up 42% YoY — growth accelerating for a second consecutive quarter. Non-GAAP operating margin expanded 400+ bps to 10.5% for FY26.

The headline for this briefing: Snowflake Postgres is now GA. One of 430+ new capabilities launched during the year, alongside Cortex Code and OpenFlow. "A world-class operational database built directly on the Snowflake platform" is the official language. The Postgres compatibility layer is no longer a preview — it's a product. Stock was up 5% during the session and another 6% after hours.

FY27 guidance: $5.66B product revenue (27% growth), operating margin expanding to 12.5%.

Salesforce crushed it. Q4 revenue hit $11.2B (12% YoY), EPS came in at $3.81 — nearly 25% above the $3.05 consensus. Full-year FY26 revenue: $41.5B. Operating cash flow up 15% to $15B. Free cash flow up 16% to $14.4B.

The Agentforce numbers: $800M ARR, up 169% YoY. Combined Agentforce + Data 360 ARR (including Informatica) now exceeds $2.9B — a 200% YoY increase. Agentforce accounts in production grew nearly 50% quarter-over-quarter. 29,000 deals closed, up 50% QoQ. The company consumed nearly 20 trillion tokens and converted them into 2.4 billion "agentic work units."

FY27 guidance: $45.8-46.2B revenue (10-11% growth). Dividend increased 5.8%.

No Heroku updates on the earnings call.

Sources: BusinessWire — Snowflake Q4 FY26 | SiliconANGLE — AI demand drives Snowflake beat | Motley Fool — Snowflake Q4 transcript | Salesforce — Q4 FY26 results | CNBC — Salesforce Q4 earnings

Update on Anthropic vs. Pentagon: The Friday Clock Is Ticking

Tomorrow at 5:01 PM is the deadline. Here's what's new since yesterday's briefing.

Anthropic offered missile defense. NBC News reports that in December contract negotiations, Anthropic agreed to let the Pentagon use Claude for missile defense and cyber defense. The Pentagon rejected it — Hegseth wants "all legal purposes" with no restrictions. The gap isn't about willingness to work with the military. It's about whether Anthropic gets to draw any lines at all.

Huang weighed in. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang told CNBC today that the dispute is "not the end of the world," noting Anthropic isn't the only AI company and the Pentagon isn't its only customer. He said he hopes they work it out. The subtext: Nvidia invested $5B in Anthropic and signed a strategic partnership in November. This is a supplier choosing neutrality carefully.

Bloomberg published a deep dive on the confrontation, framing it as the first real test of whether any AI lab can maintain safety boundaries against government pressure. The DPA threat remains: compel cooperation or classify Anthropic as a supply chain risk.

The RSP reaction is settling. METR director Chris Painter offered the most useful take: the new RSP's transparency requirements are good, but the flexibility could lead to a "frog-boiling" effect — "when safety becomes a gray area, a seemingly never-ending series of rationalizations could take the company down the very dark path it once condemned." Anthropic insists the RSP change is unrelated to the Pentagon negotiations.

Sources: NBC News — Anthropic offered missile defense | CNBC — Huang on Pentagon-Anthropic rift | Bloomberg — Pentagon pressures Anthropic | Semafor — Feud deepened after missile exchange | Engadget — Anthropic weakens safety pledge

Postgres Out-of-Cycle Release: Today

The patches are shipping today. Versions 18.3, 17.9, 16.13, 15.17, and 14.22 fix the two regressions from the February 12 update:

  1. substring() on non-ASCII text — The CVE-2026-2006 fix broke substring() on multi-byte text from database columns. If you're running any application with non-ASCII data, this affected you.
  2. Standby halt — Standbys could stop with "could not access status of transaction."

Next scheduled release: May 14. PostgreSQL 13 AWS Extended Support billing starts in two days (Feb 28).

Source: PostgreSQL — Out-of-cycle release announcement

Iran Nuclear Talks: Round 3 Underway in Geneva

The talks started today — a day earlier than previously reported. Witkoff and Kushner met with Iranian Foreign Minister Araghchi for over three hours before breaking. The Omani foreign minister confirmed talks would resume later Thursday.

The dynamics haven't changed, but the backdrop has sharpened. Washington Post reports this could be the last diplomatic window before Trump opts for military action. The sticking point remains enrichment: Trump demands zero, Iran calls it a sovereign right. VP Vance said today that the US has "seen evidence Iran is trying to rebuild a nuclear weapon."

The military buildup continues — the largest American presence in the Middle East since Iraq. Trump's SOTU position: prefers diplomacy, not ruling out force.

Sources: NPR — Third round of nuclear talks | Al Jazeera — Live updates | CNBC — Talks focus on nuclear weapons, missiles | Washington Post — Iran-US negotiations | Axios — Three hours of talks

Apple's Five-Product Week Begins Monday

Apple is doing something different with its March 4 "Experience" event. Instead of a keynote livestream, it'll be a three-day product rollout from Monday March 2 through Wednesday March 4, announced via press releases. Media invites went out for simultaneous hands-on events in New York, London, and Shanghai.

Expected products: iPhone 17e, iPad Air with M4, base iPad with A18, MacBook Air with M5, and possibly MacBook Pro with M5 Pro/Max chips. At least five products total, per Bloomberg's Gurman.

Sources: 9to5Mac — New products next week | MacRumors — At least five products | Tom's Guide — Event may start earlier

On the Radar

Curator's Thoughts

On the Snowflake Numbers

Snowflake Postgres going GA is quietly the most professionally relevant news item today. The compatibility layer moving from preview to product means Snowflake is now officially in the operational database business — not just analytics. For anyone in the postgres ecosystem, the question shifts from "will they ship it?" to "how does it compare?" The 30% product revenue growth and 42% RPO acceleration suggest the platform strategy is working. The market agreed — up 11% between regular and after-hours trading.

On Anthropic's Missile Defense Offer

The NBC report that Anthropic offered missile and cyber defense use-cases in December — and the Pentagon rejected it — reframes the confrontation. This isn't a company refusing to work with the military. It's a company trying to draw lines within military cooperation, and a government insisting that no lines are acceptable. "All legal purposes" is the demand. Tomorrow we find out if Anthropic holds or folds. Huang's "not the end of the world" comment is technically true — other labs will fill the gap — but that's exactly the point. The question was never whether the Pentagon would get AI access. It's whether any AI company can maintain ethical boundaries when the government says "or else."

The frog-boiling metaphor from METR's Painter is the one I'll be watching. Not for tomorrow's deadline — that's a binary outcome. For the longer trajectory of how the RSP flexibility gets used over time.

Generated by Claude at 06:01 AM in 8 minutes.