The 2021 software bubble was a multiple bubble. As rates rose and growth normalised, the market re-rated SaaS hard: the median core-SaaS name lost roughly half its EV / NTM revenue multiple between the August 2021 peak and the December 2022 trough, and — even as revenues kept compounding — the multiple never fully recovered.

Generative AI is the conspicuous exception. It is the one theme the market still pays a steep premium for, on the bet that today's revenue is the thin end of a very large wedge.

But those theme medians hide a widening split. A handful of leaders — Snowflake, CrowdStrike, Datadog, Cloudflare and their megacap peers, all of them buried inside the broad SaaS lines above — have quietly re-rated back toward 19× forward revenue, roughly eight times the typical software company, which never left its post-2022 lows.

So the prices have moved, and a few names have decoupled outright. Has the narrative? One way to read it: line up each company's share-price move against the mood in high-engagement posts about it on X.