Gitlab Inc. (GTLB)

ITEM 2. MANAGEMENT’S DISCUSSION AND ANALYSIS OF FINANCIAL CONDITION AND RESULTS OF OPERATIONS

The following discussion and analysis of our financial condition and results of operations should be read in conjunction with our unaudited condensed consolidated financial statements and the related notes included elsewhere in this Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q. You should review the section titled “Special Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements” above in this Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for a discussion of forward-looking statements and important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from the results described in or implied by the forward-looking statements contained in the following discussion and analysis. Factors that could cause or contribute to such differences include, but are not limited to, those identified below, and those discussed in the section titled “Risk Factors” in this Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q. Our historical results are not necessarily indicative of the results that may be expected for any period in the future.

Overview

GitLab is the intelligent orchestration platform for DevSecOps, where software teams and their Artificial Intelligence (“AI”) agents stay in flow to ship software faster. Built with a unified data model, our platform brings together development, operations, Information Technology (“IT”), security, and business teams across the entire software development lifecycle to deliver better, more secure software faster.

AI has accelerated individual coding, but teams lose momentum coordinating across planning, testing, security, deployment, and operations. Fragmented toolchains and tool-specific AI agents create bottlenecks that slow software delivery. GitLab's intelligent orchestration helps solve this by enabling teams to orchestrate AI agents to execute tasks autonomously across the software lifecycle while maintaining quality, security, and speed.

GitLab accelerates customer innovation by reducing software development cycles from weeks to minutes. The platform eliminates the need for point tools, increases productivity, and embeds security into development workflows with automated enforcement to improve software security, quality, and compliance while enabling faster delivery.

We serve teams of all sizes, scopes, and complexities. As a result, we have more than 50 million registered users, and approximately 50% of the Fortune 100 companies are GitLab customers1. We define our active customers as those with more than $5,000 of Annual Recurring Revenue, or ARR, in a given period, who we refer to as our Base Customers. A single organization with separate subsidiaries, segments, or divisions that uses our platform is considered a single customer for determining ARR.

GitLab is the only intelligent orchestration platform for DevSecOps built on an open-core business model. Any customer or contributor can add or enhance functionality by contributing code to the core product or extending our Continuous Integration (“CI”)/Continuous Delivery (“CD”) Catalog and AI Catalog. In calendar year 2025, users contributed more than 6,500 merge requests, extending our in-house research and development (“R&D”) and empowering our users to improve the DevSecOps solution they use daily. Our open-core approach builds trust with our customers and enables us to maintain our high velocity of innovation. We make our strategy, direction, and product roadmap publicly available.

GitLab offers flexible deployment options. Customers can install self-managed GitLab instances in their own on-premises or hybrid cloud environments, use our fully managed SaaS offering in public or private clouds, or deploy GitLab Dedicated, our single-tenant SaaS solution for organizations with complex security and compliance requirements.

1Fortune 500® is a registered trademark of Fortune Media IP Limited, used under license. Claim based on GitLab data. Fortune 100 refers to the top 20% ranked companies in the 2025 Fortune 500 list, published in June 2025. Fortune and Fortune Media IP Limited are not affiliated with, and do not endorse products or services of GitLab.

See the section entitled “Key Business Metrics—Dollar-Based Net Retention Rate and ARR” below for additional information about how we define ARR.

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Factors Affecting Our Performance

Sustaining innovation and technology leadership

We believe we have built a highly differentiated platform that gives us an advantage over our competitors by empowering business, development, security, operations, and IT teams to collaborate in a single application across the entire DevSecOps lifecycle. Our technology leadership is an outcome of various factors, including our strong community, network of contributors, and continued enhancement of The GitLab platform by developing new features and expanding the functionality of existing features with speed and consistency. We have had a history of releasing enhancements to The GitLab platform every month and, as of April 30, 2026, had done so for the last 175 months. We intend to continue releasing new software on a monthly cadence.

We also intend to continue investing in research and development to further enhance The GitLab platform and sustain our innovation and technology leadership. We have a history of investing in our open source community and intend to continue to leverage our open core software to accelerate innovation. We also intend to continue to add headcount to our research and development team to extend the functionality and range of The GitLab platform by bringing new and improved products and services to our customers.

We expect our research and development expenses to increase on an absolute basis in future periods. We foresee that such investment in research and development will contribute to our long-term growth, but may also negatively impact our short-term profitability. As engaged members of the GitLab open-source community, our contributors often serve as subject matter experts at market-leading developer events and The GitLab platform is presented on the cutting edge of innovation. We intend to continue to invest in building out this community to foster more contributions and collaboration in the space. Our open source community, in turn, accelerates our ability to innovate and provide a better platform to our customers. We intend to expend additional resources in the future to continue enhancing The GitLab platform and introducing new products, features and functionality.

Acquiring New Customers

Our future growth depends in large part on our ability to acquire new customers. This, in turn, relies on our ability to reach teams and organizations through our marketing and sales efforts. To this end, we are making investments in our sales and marketing efforts to expand our reach and differentiate The GitLab platform from competitive products and services. We believe that eventually the vast majority of organizations will switch to a GitLab platform and embrace a single application approach, creating a substantial opportunity to continue to grow our customer base. As a result, our Base Customers increased to 10,831 as of April 30, 2026 from 10,104 as of April 30, 2025, an increase of 7% and our $100,000 ARR customers increased to 1,519 as of April 30, 2026 from 1,288 as of April 30, 2025, an increase of 18%. See the section entitled “—Key Business Metrics—Dollar-Based Net Retention Rate and ARR” below for information about how we define ARR.

Our operating results and growth prospects will depend in part on our ability to attract new customers. While we believe we have a significant market opportunity that The GitLab platform addresses, we will need to continue to invest in sales and marketing, research and development, and customer support to further grow our customer base, both in the United States and internationally. We believe that we have more than 50 million registered users, which includes users of our free tier offering, providing a base of potential new customers. We intend to continue to add headcount to our global sales and marketing team to acquire new customers and to increase sales to existing customers.

Retaining and Expanding Our Existing Customers

We employ a “land and expand” business strategy that focuses on efficiently acquiring new customers and growing our relationships with existing customers over time. We believe that as our customers realize the benefits of a single application approach, they will increase the use of The GitLab

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platform, enhancing our ability to expand revenue generation within our existing customers over time. As a result of our approach, as of April 30, 2026 and 2025, our Dollar-Based Net Retention Rate was 117% and 122%, respectively. See the section entitled “—Key Business Metrics—Dollar-Based Net Retention Rate and ARR” below for information about how we define Dollar-Based Net Retention Rate.

We plan to continue investing in sales and marketing, with a focus on expanding usage of our platform with our existing customers. We believe that this expansion will provide us with substantial operating leverage because the costs to expand sales within existing customers are significantly less than the costs to acquire new customers. Our future revenue growth and our ability to achieve and maintain profitability is dependent upon our ability to continue landing new customers, expanding the adoption of The GitLab platform by additional users within their organizations, selling add-on offerings, and upgrading customers to higher-priced tiers. Ultimately, our ability to increase sales to existing customers will depend on several factors, including our customers’ satisfaction with The GitLab platform, our pricing, competition, and overall changes in our customers’ spending levels.

Partnerships, Alliances, Channels, and Integrations

We believe that our further growth depends in part on our ability to build and maintain successful partnerships, alliances, channels and integrations. We are continuously investing in developing a strong ecosystem and partner network, comprised of cloud and technology partners, resellers, and system integrators, as a way to expand our go-to-market strategy. We plan to continue investing in and developing these relationships to broaden our distribution footprint and drive greater awareness of our brand and The GitLab platform. We believe that these partnerships will extend our sales reach and provide product and technology integrations that will accelerate implementation of The GitLab platform in the United States and internationally. While expending resources in developing these partnerships and alliances may adversely impact our short-term profitability, we believe these investments will lead to longer term growth for the business as a whole.

Continuing to Scale our Business

We plan to continue investing in our business so that we can capitalize on our market opportunity. We believe that these investments will contribute to our long-term growth, although they may adversely affect our operating results in the near term. Furthermore, we expect our general and administrative expenses to increase in absolute amount for the foreseeable future given the additional expenses for accounting, compliance, and insurance as a public company. We plan to balance these investments in future growth with a continued focus on managing our operating results.

Key Business Metrics

We monitor the following key metrics to help us evaluate our business, identify trends affecting our business, formulate business plans, and make strategic decisions.

Dollar-Based Net Retention Rate and ARR

We believe that our ability to retain and expand our revenue generated from our existing customers is an indicator of the long-term value of our customer relationships and our potential future business opportunities. Dollar-Based Net Retention Rate measures the perce

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ITEM 7. MANAGEMENT’S DISCUSSION AND ANALYSIS OF FINANCIAL CONDITION AND RESULTS OF OPERATIONS

The following discussion and analysis of our financial condition and results of operations should be read in conjunction with our consolidated financial statements and the related notes included elsewhere in this Annual Report. You should review the section titled “Special Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements” above in this Annual Report for a discussion of forward-looking statements and important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from the results described in or implied by the forward-looking statements contained in the following discussion and analysis. Factors that could cause or contribute to such differences include, but are not limited to, those identified below, and those discussed in the section titled “Risk Factors” in this Annual Report. Our historical results are not necessarily indicative of the results that may be expected for any period in the future.

A discussion regarding our financial condition and results of operations for the year ended January 31, 2026 compared to the year ended January 31, 2025 is presented below. A discussion regarding our financial condition and results of operations for the year ended January 31, 2025 compared to the year ended January 31, 2024 can be found in “Management's Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations” in our Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended January 31, 2025, which was filed with the SEC on March 21, 2025.

Overview

GitLab is the intelligent orchestration platform for DevSecOps, where software teams and their Artificial Intelligence (“AI”) agents stay in flow to ship software faster. Built with a unified data model, our platform brings together development, operations, Information Technology (“IT”), security, and business teams across the entire software development lifecycle to deliver better, more secure software faster.

AI has accelerated individual coding, but teams lose momentum coordinating across planning, testing, security, deployment, and operations. Fragmented toolchains and tool-specific AI agents create bottlenecks that slow software delivery. GitLab's intelligent orchestration helps solve this by enabling teams to orchestrate AI agents to execute tasks autonomously across the software lifecycle while maintaining quality, security, and speed.

GitLab accelerates customer innovation by reducing software development cycles from weeks to minutes. The platform eliminates the need for point tools, increases productivity, and embeds security into development workflows with automated enforcement to improve software security, quality, and compliance while enabling faster delivery.

We serve teams of all sizes, scopes, and complexities. As a result, we have more than 50 million registered users, and more than 50% of the Fortune 100 companies are GitLab customers1. We define our active customers as those with more than $5,000 of Annual Recurring Revenue, or ARR, in a given period, who we refer to as our Base Customers. A single organization with separate subsidiaries, segments, or divisions that uses our platform is considered a single customer for determining ARR.

GitLab is the only intelligent orchestration platform for DevSecOps built on an open-core business model. Any customer or contributor can add or enhance functionality by contributing code to the core product or extending our Continuous Integration (“CI”)/Continuous Delivery (“CD”) Catalog and AI Catalog. In calendar year 2025, users contributed more than 6,500 merge requests, extending our in-house research and development (“R&D”) and empowering our users to improve the DevSecOps solution they use daily. Our open-core approach builds trust with our customers and enables us to maintain our high velocity of innovation. We make our strategy, direction, and product roadmap publicly available.

GitLab offers flexible deployment options. Customers can install self-managed GitLab instances in their own on-premises or hybrid cloud environments, use our fully managed SaaS offering in public or private clouds, or deploy GitLab Dedicated, our single-tenant SaaS solution for organizations with complex security and compliance requirements.

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1Fortune 500® is a registered trademark of Fortune Media IP Limited, used under license. Claim based on GitLab data. Fortune 100 refers to the top 20% ranked companies in the 2025 Fortune 500 list, published in June 2025. Fortune and Fortune Media IP Limited are not affiliated with, and do not endorse products or services of GitLab.

See the section entitled “Key Business Metrics—Dollar-Based Net Retention Rate and ARR” below for additional information about how we define ARR.

Key Business Metrics

We monitor the following key metrics to help us evaluate our business, identify trends affecting our business, formulate business plans, and make strategic decisions.

Dollar-Based Net Retention Rate and ARR

We believe that our ability to retain and expand our revenue generated from our existing customers is an indicator of the long-term value of our customer relationships and our potential future business opportunities. Dollar-Based Net Retention Rate measures the percentage change in our ARR derived from our customer base at a point in time. Our calculation of ARR and by extension Dollar-Based Net Retention Rate, includes both self-managed and SaaS subscription revenue. We report Dollar-Based Net Retention Rate on a threshold basis of 130% each quarter or the actual number if below 130%.

We calculate ARR by taking the monthly recurring revenue, or MRR, and multiplying it by 12. MRR for each month is calculated by aggregating, for all customers during that month, monthly revenue from committed contractual amounts of subscriptions, including our self-managed and SaaS offerings but excluding professional services. We calculate Dollar-Based Net Retention Rate as of a period end by starting with our customers as of the 12 months prior to such period end, or the Prior Period ARR. We then calculate the ARR from these customers as of the current period end, or the Current Period ARR. The calculation of Current Period ARR includes any upsells, price adjustments, user growth within a customer, contraction, and attrition. We then divide the total Current Period ARR by the total Prior Period ARR to arrive at the Dollar-Based Net Retention Rate.

Customers with ARR of $100,000 or More

We believe that our ability to increase the number of $100,000 ARR customers is an indicator of our market penetration and strategic demand for The GitLab platform. A single organization with separate subsidiaries, segments, or divisions that use The GitLab platform is considered a single customer for determining each organization’s ARR. We do not count our reseller or distributor channel partners as customers. In cases where customers subscribe to The GitLab platform through our channel partners, each end customer is counted separately.

Components of Our Results of Operations

Revenue

Subscription - self-managed and SaaS

Subscription revenue primarily consists of support, maintenance, upgrades, and updates on a when-and-if-available basis for our self-managed offering and the right to access our product in a cloud-based-

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infrastructure that we host for our SaaS offering. Subscription revenue is recognized ratably over the contractual term as the performance obligation is satisfied.

The typical term of a subscription contract is one to three years.

License - self-managed and other

The license component of our self-managed offering provides the right to use our proprietary software. License revenue is recognized up-front when control of the software license transfers to the customer.

Other revenue consists of professional services, including consulting, implementation, and training which is recognized as services are performed.

Cost of Revenue

Subscription - self-managed and SaaS

Cost of revenue for self-managed and SaaS subscriptions consists primarily of allocated cloud-hosting costs paid to third-party service providers, personnel-related costs associated with our customer support personnel, including contractors, third-party payment processing fees, and allocated overhead. Personnel-related expenses consist of salaries, benefits, bonuses, and stock-based compensation. We expect our cost of revenue for self-managed and SaaS subscriptions to increase in absolute dollars as our self-managed and SaaS subscription revenue increases. As our SaaS and Duo Agent Platform offerings make up an increasing percentage of our total revenue, we expect to see increased associated cloud-related costs, such as hosting and managing costs, which may adversely impact our gross margins.

License - self-managed and other

Cost of self-managed license and other revenue consists primarily of contractor and personnel-related costs, including stock-based compensation expense, associated with the professional services team, third-party payment processing fees, and allocated overhead. We expect our cost of revenue for self-managed license and other to increase in absolute dollars as our self-managed and other revenue increases.

Operating Expenses

Our operating expenses consist of sales and marketing, research and development, and general and administrative expenses. Personnel-related expenses are the most significant component of operating expenses and consist of salaries, benefits, bonuses, stock-based compensation, and sales commissions. Operating expenses also include IT overhead costs.

Sales and Marketing

Sales and marketing expenses consist primarily of personnel-related expenses associated with our sales and marketing personnel, advertising, travel and entertainment related expenses, branding and marketing events, promotions, software subscriptions, and our allocated cloud infrastructure expenses for our free tier. Sales and marketing expenses also include sales commissions paid to our sales force. Such costs incurred on acquisition of an initial contract are capitalized and amortized over an estimated period of benefit of three years, and any such expenses paid for the renewal of a subscription are capitalized and amortized over the contractual term of the renewal. However, prorated costs for sales commissions that are incremental to obtain a self-managed license contract are expensed immediately.

We expect sales and marketing expenses to increase in absolute dollars as we continue to make strategic investments in our sales and marketing organization to drive additional revenue, further penetrate the market, and expand our global customer base, but to decrease as a percentage of our total

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revenue over time, although our sales and marketing expenses may fluctuate as a percentage of our total revenue from period-to-period depending on the timing of these expenses.

Research and Development

Research and development expenses consist primarily of personnel-related expenses, including contractors, as well as cloud infrastructure expenses to support our internal development efforts, and software and subscription services. Costs related to research and development are expensed as incurred.

We expect research and development expenses to increase in absolute dollars as we continue to increase investments in our existing products and services. However, we anticipate research and development expenses to decrease as a percentage of our total revenue over time, although our research and development expenses may

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