Healthcare · Profile from Healthcare Research Companion
Veeva Systems Inc.
The vertical cloud-software company that built the pharmaceutical industry's standard sales CRM on top of Salesforce, then used that foothold to become the operating system of drug development and commercialization: clinical trials, regulatory filings, safety, quality, customer data and AI agents. In 2021 it became the first public company to convert to a public benefit corporation, and from 2022 to 2030 it is carrying out one of the largest platform migrations in enterprise software: moving its CRM customers off Salesforce and onto its own Vault platform while Salesforce competes for them.
At a glance
- Founded
- 2007, Pleasanton, California (incorporated as Verticals onDemand, Inc.; renamed Veeva Systems in 2009, verify year)
- Founders
- Peter Gassner (CEO), formerly of IBM, PeopleSoft and Salesforce; Matt Wallach (president until 2012, later board), who came from pharma sales-force technology. Some sources list early co-founders Doug Ostler and Mitch Wallace (verify)
- Headquarters
- Pleasanton, California; large operations in Toronto, Barcelona, Raleigh-Durham, Columbus and elsewhere; most employees work remotely ("Work Anywhere")
- Ownership / structure
- Public company, NYSE: VEEV (IPO October 2013). Delaware public benefit corporation since 1 February 2021. Dual-class structure collapsed into a single class in 2023 (verify date). S&P 500 member
- Leadership (2026)
- Peter Gassner, founder and CEO; Brian Van Wagener, CFO (from September 2024); Tom Schwenger, president and COO (verify title); Paul Shawah, EVP commercial strategy (verify)
- Segment and buyer
- Health IT for life sciences. Buyers are pharmaceutical, biotech, medtech, consumer health and animal health companies, plus CROs; within them, commercial (sales, marketing, medical) and R&D (clinical, regulatory, safety, quality) functions
- Scale
- ~1,550 customers (FY2026, reported); ~7,900 employees (January 2026); FY2026 (year to 31 January 2026) revenue $3,195.3m (+16%), subscription revenue $2,684.2m (+17%), GAAP operating income $916.4m, GAAP net income $908.9m
- Capital raised / market cap
- Raised only ~$7m of venture capital (Emergence Capital-led, 2008, reported) and was profitable before its IPO; IPO raised ~$261m at $20/share (~$2.4bn valuation at pricing); market cap ~$51bn in October 2026 after a deep sell-off and recovery during 2026 (reported, verify)
- Signature moves (incl. failures)
- Founding on Salesforce as a pharma CRM (2007); Vault content platform (2011); NYSE IPO (2013); IQVIA data litigation (2017–2025); Vault clinical and EDC push against Medidata (2017); Crossix acquisition (2019); public benefit corporation (2021); Salesforce split and Vault CRM (2022); Veeva AI agents (2025)
9 strategic moves analysed
Each one gets a full strategy file in the companion: context, the decision, the financing, what happened, and the lesson.
2007
Founding Pharma CRM on Salesforce
Founding / partnership
2011
Vault Own Cloud Platform
Launch / platform
2013
NYSE IPO
IPO
2017
IQVIA Data Litigation
Litigation / regulatory settlement
2017
Vault EDC Clinical Platform
Launch / expansion
2019
Crossix Acquisition
Acquisition
2021
Public Benefit Corporation
Restructuring / governance
2022
Salesforce Split and Vault CRM
Pivot / platform separation
2025
Veeva AI Agents
AI launch