What happened

Tempus AI (TEM) is up about 10.1% today, at $68.48 against yesterday's $62.21 close, as reported by StockAnalysis — one of the biggest large-cap gains on the US movers board. Market cap is about $12.36bn.

Here's the odd part: there was no filing and no results today. No 8-K, no deal, no earnings. What there was, per Tempus's own 4 September release, is CEO Eric Lefkofsky doing a fireside chat at Morgan Stanley's 24th Annual Global Healthcare Conference — scheduled for today, 15 September.

Why it moved

The takeaway circulating from that chat is narrow and specific: the diagnostics and data businesses are compounding, and FDA approvals plus pricing upgrades are what turn that growth into margin. That's not a new story — it's the July guidance raise being restated with conviction to a room full of healthcare funds.

The numbers behind it, from the Q2 2026 report on 30 July: revenue $382.5m, up 22% YoY. Genomics did $289.3m (+20%), Data and Apps $93.2m (+28%), with data licensing and modelling up 36%. Adjusted EBITDA was $8m — a $13.6m swing versus a year earlier — and GAAP net income was $5.6m. Full-year 2026 guidance was raised to $1.595–1.605bn (~25% growth) with adjusted EBITDA around $65m, a $72m improvement on 2025.

The "pricing" piece has a number attached. FDA approval for the tumour-only xT CDx test is expected to add roughly $85m of annual revenue from 2027. Reimbursement is the mechanism most people skip: a genomic test only earns its list price once a payer assigns it a rate, so an approval is really a pricing event with a lag. That lag is why a 2027 number moves a 2026 share price.

The business

Tempus isn't one product. On a trailing-twelve-month basis it did $1.43bn of revenue: Genomics $1.07bn (sequencing patient tumours and, in a smaller hereditary line worth $107.4m last quarter, inherited-risk testing) and Data and Services $361.9m — licensing its de-identified clinical-plus-molecular dataset to drug companies. It has delivered a foundation model to AstraZeneca and signed a multi-year data licence with BioNTech. Its MRD line — tests that hunt for leftover cancer after treatment — ran about 9,000 tests last quarter, up 38% QoQ. So today's "pricing upgrade" story touches the genomics two-thirds, not the whole company.

Valuation

Tempus loses money — a $254.4m TTM net loss — so there is no meaningful P/E. On sales it trades at a reported P/S of 7.44, against 8.26 for FY2025 and 7.67 for FY2024. That is its entire range as a public company; it only listed in June 2024, so there is no five-year history to place it against. Gross margin is 63.98%.

For a peer: Natera carries a $50.31bn market cap on $2.71bn of TTM revenue — roughly 19x sales on those reported figures — and is also unprofitable. So Tempus is growing slower than Natera but is valued at well under half the sales multiple. Whether that gap is a discount or a judgement is the argument. Note too that H.C. Wainwright's price target, raised to $66 from $56 four days ago, sits just below where the stock is trading now.

Who it touches

• Diagnostics peers. Adaptive Biotechnologies is up about 9.0% to $27.02 today and is presenting at the same Morgan Stanley conference; Revvity is up about 5.6%. Some of today's move is conference-week flow across the cohort, not Tempus alone.
• Pharma data buyers. AstraZeneca, BioNTech and Merck are customers, not casualties — the more clinical-molecular data Tempus assembles, the less any one buyer can replicate it internally.
• Natera and Guardant compete directly in MRD. A 38% quarterly jump in Tempus test volumes is share moving somewhere.

The one risk

The whole re-rating leans on margin arriving. Guided adjusted EBITDA of ~$65m on ~$1.6bn of revenue is about a 4% margin, and the GAAP business still lost $254m over the last year. If the pricing upgrades land late, or payers assign lower rates than assumed, the $85m of 2027 uplift slides right — and there is no earnings base underneath to cushion it.

What to watch

Q3 2026 results, due around early November, are the first check on whether the 25% full-year growth and the ~$65m EBITDA guide still hold — dates on the calendar. Watch the Data and Apps growth rate specifically: at 28% it is the segment carrying the margin story.

As of 3:47 PM ET, 15 September 2026. Sources: StockAnalysis, Tempus AI Investor Relations, Yahoo Finance. For discussion and education only — not investment advice. Verify before acting.