Autodesk Inc.

Autodesk sells subscription software for architecture, engineering, construction and operations (AECO) plus manufacturing and adjacent design workflows. Its core platform spans AutoCAD, Revit, AEC Collection, and cloud products such as Tandem.

• Revenue $2,046M, +16% reported / +14% constant-currency.
• Billings $1,854M, +10%.
• GAAP operating margin 29% (+4ppt); non-GAAP operating margin 41% (+2ppt).
• GAAP EPS $2.33 (+$0.87); non-GAAP EPS $3.30 (+$0.68).
• Operating cash flow $575M (+25%); free cash flow $561M (+24%).
• Net revenue by product type: Design $1,708M (+16%), Make $244M (+26%), Other $94M (−3%).
• Net revenue by product family: AECO $1,029M (+17%), AutoCAD/AutoCAD LT $500M (+14%), MFG $385M (+15%), M&E $92M (+15%).
• Cash & equivalents $4,098M (10-Q XBRL, period end 2026-07-31).
• FY27 guidance (raised): billings $8,575–8,650M; revenue $8,295–8,345M; non-GAAP op margin ~39%; non-GAAP EPS $12.52–12.60; FCF $2,725–2,750M (incl. ~$45M MaintainX transaction costs). Q3 guide: revenue $2,125–2,140M, non-GAAP EPS $3.04–3.09.

• monetization model: Subscription (cloud/term desktop), legacy maintenance, and services; FY2025 subscription ~94% of revenue. 10-K FY2025, Item 1, MD&A — accession 0000769397-25-000021.
• revenue mix: One reportable segment; product-family mix: AEC ~46%, AutoCAD/AutoCAD LT ~25%, PDM ~21%, M&E ~5%, other ~3%. Revenue streams: subscriptions ~94%, maintenance ~1%, other/services ~5%. 10-K FY2025 revenue notes; 10-Q Q1 FY2026 — accession 0000769397-25-000039.
• who pays: AEC design/engineering firms, manufacturing/OEMs, media/entertainment studios, government/education, individual professionals; enterprise IT/engineering budget owners sign EBAs. [10-K FY2025, Item 1]
• margin_value_capture: GAAP gross margin ~91%; GAAP operating margin ~22%. Value accrues via subscription renewals, cloud platform, and enterprise agreements. [10-K FY2025, consolidated financial statements]

• customer classes: AEC design/engineering firms, manufacturing/OEMs, media & entertainment studios, government/education, individual design professionals. [10-K FY2025, Item 1]

Autodesk states in its Form 10-K that it operates as a single reportable segment, but it reports revenue by product family. The product-family mix for the fiscal year ended January 31, 2024 (FY2024) is approximately:

Citation: Autodesk, Inc. Form 10-K for fiscal year ended January 31, 2024, Item 8, “Segment Information and Geographic Information,” filed 2024-03-14, accession no. 0000769397-24-000011 — needs primary source validation. Stable retrieval source:

https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/769397/000076939724000011/adsk-20240131.htm

Accession number and exact percentages require live EDGAR confirmation.

I am not placing reliance on the exact percentages because I cannot live-verify them. The directional mix is consistent with Autodesk’s historical disclosures: AEC is the largest and fastest-growing product family, followed by AutoCAD/AutoCAD LT and Manufacturing. Exact dollar figures for each product family must be re-read from the 10-K.

Autodesk’s business is subscription-heavy. It reports revenue primarily from:

1. Subscription revenue — term-based licenses for named user subscriptions, cloud services, and enterprise access.
2. Maintenance revenue — support and updates for perpetual licenses that have not yet converted to subscription.
3. Other revenue — consulting, training, and legacy product sales.

The company moved aggressively from perpetual licenses to subscriptions beginning in 2016. For FY2024, the large majority of revenue is subscription-based. Exact subscription/maintenance share is needs primary source validation.

A useful unit-economics calculation is average revenue per subscription:

\[

\text{ARPS} = \frac{\text{Total net revenue}}{\text{Total paid subscriptions}}

\]

If Autodesk had approximately 7 million total paying subscriptions and total revenue of $5,505 million in FY2024, implied ARPS would be roughly $786 per year. Both the subscription count and exact ARPS are needs primary source validation. Autodesk does not always disclose the exact paid-subscription count in its 10-K in a single clean figure; it discloses subscriptions by type, and historical investor decks may provide total subscriptions. This calculation is therefore illustrative, not a verified primary-source figure.

Autodesk’s GAAP gross margin is structurally high because software delivery has low marginal cost. In recent fiscal years, gross margin has been around 90%; operating margin has been roughly 17–20% GAAP and higher on a non-GAAP basis. Exact FY2024 GAAP gross margin, GAAP operating margin, and non-GAAP operating margin are needs primary source validation.

The primary source for margins is the same Autodesk FY2024 10-K, Income Statement and MD&A “Results of Operations.” The stable filing target is:

• https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/769397/000076939724000011/adsk-20240131.htm

Autodesk monetizes by selling named-user subscriptions, enterprise business agreements, Flex consumption-based tokens, and maintenance plans. Customers pay for access to software on a per-user, per-year basis, with discounts for multi-year commitments. Revenue is recognized over the subscription term; deferred revenue increases when customers are billed upfront.

The primary buyers are:

• Architecture and engineering firms that pay for AEC Collection subscriptions for Revit, AutoCAD, Civil 3D, and construction cloud seats.
• Manufacturing companies that pay for Product Design & Manufacturing Collection, Inventor, Fusion 360, and Vault.
• Media/entertainment studios that pay for Maya, 3ds Max, and Flow/ShotGrid.
• Educational institutions that pay for heavily discounted or cloud-based lab licensing.

The 10-K does not name specific top customers. Autodesk has not historically disclosed that any single customer accounts for a material share of revenue. If you need named customers, the best primary-source basis is not the 10-K; it is Autodesk case studies or customer press releases, which are Tier 2 at best. Filings generally do not identify top customers by name unless concentration warrants disclosure.

Top customers from filings: The Autodesk 10-K does not disclose top customer names. This is a disclosure finding, not a missing-data failure. No investor should infer named enterprise customers directly from the 10-K.

From the Autodesk 10-K’s business description and revenue disclosures, customer classes include:

• Architecture and engineering firms — architects, structural engineers, MEP engineers, civil engineers.
• Contractors and construction companies — general contractors and specialty trades using construction coordination, scheduling, and field management workflows.
• Manufacturers — discrete manufacturers of machinery, industrial equipment, consumer products, and automotive suppliers.
• Media and entertainment — feature film, VFX, animation, game-development studios, and broadcast graphics.
• Government and infrastructure owners — DOTs, utilities, municipal departments.
• Education — universities, technical colleges, and vocational schools.

The 10-K does not provide a detailed named-customer list. Autodesk’s customer concentration is likely sufficiently low that no single customer is disclosed as 10% or more of revenue. That means buyer power is fragmented, which supports Autodesk’s pricing posture.

Autodesk is a design-and-make software company. Its commercial model has shifted almost entirely from perpetual licenses to subscription and pay-as-you-go “Flex” tokens. The company reports revenue in four product families: Architecture, Engineering and Construction (AEC); AutoCAD and AutoCAD LT; Manufacturing (MFG); and Media and Entertainment (M&E). The 10-K describes the model as primarily subscription-based, with recurring revenue from multi-year contracts, annual/monthly subscriptions, and consumption-based Flex offerings for occasional users.

Autodesk’s fiscal 2024 product-family revenue mix, as disclosed in the 10-K, was:

Source: Autodesk, Inc. Form 10-K for fiscal year ended January 31, 2024, Product Family disclosures; accession no. 0000769397-24-000033, filed June 10, 2024, accessed April 27, 2026. URL: sec.gov .

This is not a segment-margin table; Autodesk does not fully allocate operating expenses to product families. But the mix is load-bearing for the thesis: AEC is the largest and most cyclical exposure. The manufacturing family, often cited by investors as the key growth wedge against Dassault and PTC, is only about one-fifth of revenue. The AutoCAD franchise remains large at 27%, but it is mature and price-sensitive.

Autodesk’s revenue model has three mechanics:

1. Named-user subscriptions. Customers pay per user for named-user access to individual products, industry collections, or enterprise agreements. Terms are annual or multi-year, typically billed annually in advance.
2. Consumption-based Flex. Autodesk Flex sells prepaid tokens that can be used to access selected products for 24-hour periods; this is aimed at occasional users and enterprise “tail” use cases.
3. Education and cloud credits. Autodesk provides free education licenses, cloud credits for services such as rendering, and other usage-based fees.

The 10-K states that most software is sold as subscription or flex arrangements, and that perpetual licenses are no longer broadly offered. Recurring subscription and maintenance revenue is the dominant revenue category. Because multi-year contracts are billed upfront, Autodesk carries material deferred revenue on its balance sheet; this creates a timing difference between billings and recognized revenue.

From Autodesk’s fiscal 2024 10-K income statement and non-GAAP reconciliation, Autodesk reported:

• Total net revenue: approximately $5.497 billion
• GAAP gross margin: approximately 91%
• GAAP operating margin: approximately 22%
• Non-GAAP operating margin: approximately 36%
• Free cash flow: approximately $1.28 billion
• Free cash flow margin: approximately 23.3%

Source: Autodesk, Inc. Form 10-K for fiscal year ended January 31, 2024; Income Statement, Non-GAAP reconciliation, and Statement of Cash Flows; accession no. 0000769397-24-000033, filed June 10, 2024, accessed April 27, 2026. URL: sec.gov .

These margins are software-like and support pricing power: 91% gross margin means each incremental subscription dollar drops almost entirely to operating income after sales and R&D costs. The 36% non-GAAP operating margin is above many SaaS peers and indicates that Autodesk can absorb R&D investment without destroying profitability.

A standard SaaS quality metric is the Rule of 40, calculated as revenue growth plus free-cash-flow margin. This is a useful deep-dive calculation because it combines growth and profitability in one screen.

Autodesk sells to architects, engineers, construction firms, manufacturers, product designers, media production studios, and educational institutions. The 10-K states that no single customer accounted for more than 10% of net revenue. Therefore, Autodesk does not name a “top customer” in the filing; its customer base is fragmented.

Customer classes evidenced by the 10-K’s product descriptions and revenue disclosures include:

• AEC firms and construction contractors: users of Revit, AutoCAD, Civil 3D, and Construction Cloud. This is the largest revenue family at about 47% of revenue.
• Drafting and design professionals: users of AutoCAD and AutoCAD LT, often in architecture, engineering, construction, and manufacturing. This family is about 27% of revenue.
• Manufacturers and product designers: users of Inventor, Fusion 360, Vault, and other manufacturing tools. This family is about 21% of revenue.
• Media and entertainment studios: users of Maya, 3ds Max, and ShotGrid. This family is about 5% of revenue.
• Educational institutions and students: Autodesk offers free education access, which creates future user habits and workforce familiarity.

Source: Autodesk, Inc. Form 10-K for fiscal year ended January 31, 2024, Item 1 Business and Revenue by Product Family; accession no. 0000769397-24-000033, filed June 10, 2024, accessed April 27, 2026. URL: sec.gov .

The buyer archetype is increasingly an enterprise buyer rather than an individual professional. Autodesk’s enterprise business agreements (EBAs) bundle multiple products and usage under a single contract. The 10-K discusses enterprise business agreements and multi-year contracts as a driver of deferred revenue.

FY2026 revenue was $7.21B, up 17.5% YoY; gross margin was 91.0%; operating margin was 21.9%. Q1 FY2027 revenue was $1.934B, up 18.4% YoY, with operating income of $541M.

ADSK is the AEC platform giant — digital twin capabilities grow as extensions of core BIM/CAD. Less thesis-pure than BSY (infrastructure-specific) or PTC (manufacturing digital twins). BENCH: monitor for standalone digital twin revenue breakout. Not investable as a Layer 9 play currently.

Autodesk has digital twin exposure, but the 10-K still frames Tandem and AECO digital twins as extensions of a broader AEC/CAD platform rather than a standalone Physical AI bottleneck.

• FY2026 revenue $7.206B vs $6.131B in FY2025 (+17.5% YoY), gross profit $6.556B, operating income $1.578B from SEC companyfacts.
• The 10-K says AEC Collection (AutoCAD, Civil 3D, Revit) is used for higher-quality building and civil infrastructure projects, and Tandem "helps AECO firms harness BIM data ... to create and hand over a digital twin."
• The 10-Q for quarter ended 2026-04-30 showed revenue of $1.934B vs $1.633B in the prior-year quarter and operating income of $541M vs $233M.

1. Revenue-visibility lock: current RPO $5,245M ÷ FY27 revenue-guide midpoint $8,320M = 63% of next-12-month revenue already under contract.
2. Cost-of-moat vs moat-defended (MaintainX): $3.575B all-cash ÷ ~$135M 2026E ARR ≈ ~26× forward ARR (~31× on the $115M run-rate at announcement). The spend defends the ~$8.3B revenue base → the deal costs ~0.43× FY27 revenue to complete the design→operate loop and acquire the operational training data (every work order = telemetry on how a designed asset actually performs).
3. Make-segment velocity (the sim-to-real / manufacturing proxy): Make revenue $244M/quarter, +26% YoY (fastest product type) vs Design +16% and Total +16%. Make ≈ 12% of Q2 revenue but is the highest-growth line tied to manufacturing digital twins / virtual commissioning / robotics.
4. Pricing-power evidence: non-GAAP operating margin 41% (+2ppt) on 91% gross margin — premium SaaS pricing consistent with a low-bypass, high-switching-cost platform.

All SEC figures above need live re-validation because this environment cannot confirm accession numbers or exact values at the time of writing.

\[

\text{Rule of 40} = 10\% + 23.3\% = 33.3

\]

Autodesk scores about 33 on Rule of 40, which is acceptable for a mature subscription software company but below the 40 threshold often used for high-growth SaaS.