Last week I rang the closing bell at the New York Stock Exchange. It made for a great photo, sure, but that’s not really why I was smiling.

There’s 234 years of history on that trading floor. Some of the most iconic companies in the world have stood exactly where we stood. Being part of that lineage means something, and going public means something too. It’s transparent. It’s a kind of democratization. Anyone can decide to invest, or not, in what PagerDuty is building. Our ticker isn’t just a number. It’s a living scorecard for what a company and its people can actually achieve.

I shared the moment with Jennifer Tejada, our Executive Chair, and we spoke afterward with NYSE-TV’s Taking Stock about where PagerDuty is headed, and about AI-first incident management: a shift from reacting to failures to preventing them from happening. You can watch the full conversation below. 

The world is creating more software than ever, and it’s fragile

When J.D. Durkin from NYSE-TV asked what’s next for PagerDuty, the answer starts with our customers. They are some of the biggest companies in the world and represent nearly one in four of the companies listed on the NYSE. 

Companies are creating more software than ever before, and that software keeps breaking in new ways. Our job at PagerDuty is to help the most important companies in the world stay resilient, and keep their operations running 24/7, 365 days a year.

That’s not a new mission. It’s the one PagerDuty was founded on in 2009, and the one Jenn adopted while scaling the company 10X over the past decade: champion the customer, build trust, and back it up with a platform that’s resilient enough to run at enterprise scale. Today, that platform automatically detects, diagnoses, and fixes issues, orchestrating AI agents and automated workflows with context pulled from over 750 integrations across a customer’s stack.

What’s next: AI that acts, not just alerts, catching problems before users see them

We shared in the interview what our AI-powered SRE agents actually do. 

Historically, SREs were people, the engineers keeping a company’s software running around the clock. What we’ve built extends that role with AI. Our SRE Agents leverage telemetry from thousands of customers to automate diagnosis and resolution, fixing problems faster and more accurately, and surfacing the forensics teams need to make sure the same failure doesn’t happen twice.

The result is infrastructure that keeps getting smarter. It’s resilient by design, not because a team stayed up all night fighting fires. That matters more as the AI economy itself comes to depend on the software PagerDuty helps keep running.

Our goal is a more resilient infrastructure for our customers, and a more stable foundation for the AI economy that’s now running on top of it. We’re here to support our customers during the tsunami that’s coming in the form of a massive wave of new code shipping faster than ever. 

Ten years, two-thirds of the Fortune 100, and a baton worth passing with care

Jenn spent a decade building PagerDuty into a platform that two-thirds of the Fortune 100 now trust to run their most critical operations. She said it best: no matter what’s happening in the market, whether it’s public service outages or cyberattacks, PagerDuty has shown up for customers on their hardest days.

That track record, plus a platform now bolstered by AI agents and intelligence built on our leadership in incident management, four consecutive quarters of GAAP profitability, a strong customer base, and a deep team, is what made this the right moment for her to hand over the reins. I’m grateful for the extraordinary leadership that got us here, and for a transition that felt less like a change in direction and more like a baton pass.

Confidence in where we’re headed

We also touched on the $100 million share buyback we announced last quarter. That decision demonstrates our conviction in our ability to keep generating the cash to execute against it, and our confidence in where PagerDuty goes next. 

We’re doubling down on the customers we’ve already earned trust with, including nearly half the Fortune 500, many of whom were in the room with us last week, and helping them capture the upside of both digitization and AI so they can focus on growing their own businesses.

PagerDuty was founded on the principle that our customers deserved better ways to provide reliable experiences to their users and customers. That customer centricity is what I’m excited to continue building on for the next wave of PagerDuty’s growth. 

Here’s the full interview on the NYSE floor.

Full Episode: NYSE-TV’s Taking Stock — closing bell interview with PagerDuty leadership

• J.D. Durkin — Host, NYSE-TV’s Taking Stock
• John DiLullo — CEO, PagerDuty
• Jennifer Tejada — Executive Chair, PagerDuty

Transcript of NYSE-TV interview with PagerDuty

J.D. Durkin: John DiLullo, CEO of PagerDuty — and Jennifer Tejada, Executive Chair — it’s great to have both of you. Thank you for taking the time.

John DiLullo: Thank you, J.D.

J.D. Durkin: John, I’ll start with you. Congratulations on your new role as you ring the closing bell here at the New York Stock Exchange. What is your vision for PagerDuty’s next chapter?

John DiLullo: I think PagerDuty’s next chapter is going to align with all of the great things that are happening in the world right now. The world’s creating more software than it ever has before. That software continues to be fragile, continues to break in different ways, and we’re there to help the most important companies in the world be more and more resilient — and to keep their operations running 24/7, 365 days a year.

Jennifer Tejada on the decade since PagerDuty’s IPO

J.D. Durkin: And Jennifer, I want your take, because I know it’s not the first time you’ve been down here to the New York Stock Exchange. You led the company during the 2019 IPO. Now you’re back for a new chapter. What does that moment mean to you, then and now?

Jennifer Tejada: Well, it’s a thrill to be back on the floor and back on the podium. The New York Stock Exchange has been such a tremendous partner to PagerDuty. It’s been a wonderful 10-year run running a business that really takes care of our customers and their need to deliver for their brands. And, you know, in 10 years we 10x’d the business, but nothing is more exciting for me than seeing a wonderful new leader come in and prepare the company for what I think is going to be its best days ahead.

J.D. Durkin: Let me stay with you for the next one. After leading the company here for nearly a decade, why is now the right time to pass the baton? And any of the other core values for PagerDuty that have stood the test of time over this last decade or so?

Jennifer Tejada: Well, our number one value is champion the customer, and it’s all about building trust. In the effort to do that, we’ve invested for many, many years, since the founding of the business in 2009, to build the most resilient, enterprise-scaled, secure platform for operations. And now, with AI, we’re able to do more, automate more, and enable our customers to do what they’re great at — and that’s deliver a wonderful brand experience. As we look forward, I’m really excited about the ability for us to take the proprietary data platforms we have for John to lead the business into its next phase of growth — really growing into not just the enterprise, but, you know, native AI companies. It’s just a tremendous opportunity, and again, an absolute thrill to be here at the New York Stock Exchange.

John DiLullo on AI-powered SRE Agents

J.D. Durkin: All right, John, let’s kick it back over to you. I want to get into some of the technicals here and help our audience better understand some of your business. What is actually an SRE agent, for people who are unfamiliar? I know you have a new AI-powered one — what are you most hoping that it actually does for your business at PagerDuty?

John DiLullo: Well, what we’re really hoping is that it just continues to improve the experience that our customers enjoy when they’re working with our products. SRE agents are people who are today helping keep the software estate running around the world. The SRE Agents that we deploy leverage all the telemetry we can see from thousands and thousands of customers to help build an even better solution that’s automated in its execution — one that ensures that when there are problems, they’re fixed even faster, they’re fixed more accurately, and you have great telemetry on exactly what happened, so you make sure you don’t do it again. That ultimately lets our customers have much more resilient infrastructure and keeps this AI economy running.

Fortune 500 trust and the leadership transition

J.D. Durkin: And Jennifer, under your leadership we saw such a high percentage of the Fortune 500 put their trust into PagerDuty. Why was that the case, and what is the feedback like from a lot of those massive firms?

Jennifer Tejada: I mean, at the end of the day, two-thirds of the Fortune 100 and nearly half of the Fortune 500 choose PagerDuty because we are the only enterprise-grade platform that’s demonstrated, through our track record, that no matter what’s going on in the market — public service outages, cyberattacks, etc. — we are there to support our customers on their most important and sometimes most difficult day. We’re in a great place from a platform perspective, with AI features throughout the platform, a very strong customer base, and a terrific team — and it made this the right time to hand off the baton. But the thing that also made it a brilliant opportunity is that John is the right next leader, and I’m just thrilled to partner with him. The board and I are so proud to have him here today and to introduce him to everybody here on the trading floor.

The $100 million share buyback

J.D. Durkin: So, John — one more on the technicals, and a big order of business. You recently announced a $100 million share buyback. Talk to me, first and foremost: what does that say about your confidence in where the firm is? And where do you see PagerDuty going next?

John DiLullo: Well, I think that announcement we made last quarter really speaks for itself. We feel very confident about our ability to generate the cash we would need to execute against it. I think where we’re going next is just helping the customers we’ve already had so much success with. We have, as Jen alluded to, two-thirds of the Fortune 100 as customers — that’s where we plan to continue to invest. A lot of them are listed here on this exchange. We’re just excited to be part of keeping their businesses running and allowing them to benefit not only from digitization, as I mentioned, but also from AI, and to focus on growing their businesses and making their businesses more profitable. That’s what we exist for — that’s what we’ve done so well for the last 10 years under Jen’s leadership.

Closing

J.D. Durkin: You’ve had incredible growth, incredible momentum. I’m really grateful for the time from both of you — after ringing the closing bell — to stick around a few extra minutes for the broadcast. John, congratulations on the new role. Jen, welcome back to the exchange. Thank you both.

John DiLullo / Jennifer Tejada: Thank you, J.D