Palantir Technologies (PLTR) — Company Research

Last Updated: 5 September 2026

Palantir Technologies (NASDAQ: PLTR) builds data-integration and AI software platforms for governments and large enterprises. Its most recent reported period is Q2 2026 (quarter ended 30 June 2026, reported 3 August 2026); Q3 2026 has not yet been reported. The company delivered $1,935m of quarterly revenue, up 93% year on year, and raised full-year 2026 revenue guidance for the second time this year to $8,150m to $8,158m. This report refreshes every section against the latest 10-Q, the Q2 2026 earnings release and SEC XBRL data. You can track the shares on our live charts, check upcoming macro dates on the economic calendar, and discuss the company in the ChartsView forum.

1. Company Snapshot

2. Bull vs Bear Case

Bull Case

• AI platform demand is compounding, not plateauing: revenue growth accelerated for the ninth straight quarter to 93% in Q2 2026, with US commercial revenue up 149% to $764m and US commercial remaining deal value up 124% to $6.2bn, implying a long runway of contracted work.
• Government franchise is widening internationally: US government revenue grew 90% to $809m in Q2 2026, the US Army enterprise agreement runs for a decade at up to $10bn, NATO has adopted the Maven Smart System on a sole-source basis and the UK Ministry of Defence signed a £240.6m follow-on agreement effective 1 April 2026.
• Profitability is unusually high for a growth business: Q2 2026 GAAP operating margin was 47% and adjusted operating margin 62%, giving a Rule of 40 score of 155%; management guides FY2026 adjusted operating income of $4,889m to $4,897m on revenue of ~$8.15bn.
• Fortress balance sheet: $9.4bn of cash and marketable securities with no funded debt at 30 June 2026, trailing free cash flow of ~$3.4bn, and a customer base that pays upfront (customer deposits and deferred revenue).
• Guidance has been raised three times in eight months: FY2026 revenue guidance moved from $7,182m to $7,198m in February to $7,650m to $7,662m in May and to $8,150m to $8,158m in August, a pattern that has repeatedly reset expectations upwards.

Bear Case

• Valuation leaves no room for error: at ~149x trailing GAAP earnings, ~68x trailing sales and ~125x trailing free cash flow, the shares price in many years of hyper-growth; even a small deceleration has historically produced 30%-plus drawdowns.
• Relentless insider selling: co-founders and officers sold hundreds of millions of dollars of stock in 2026 alone, including Peter Thiel's $289.7m sale in March and Alex Karp's $86.1m sale in August, most of it under pre-arranged 10b5-1 plans but on a scale that caps share-count reduction.
• Stock-based compensation and dilution: SBC was $684m in FY2025 and $467m in the first half of 2026 alone; diluted share count has grown from 1.92bn in FY2021 to 2.57bn, so per-share metrics lag headline growth.
• Concentration and political exposure: US government work was 41% of FY2025 revenue and the US as a whole 74%; the company is exposed to budget cycles, procurement disputes and a pending 10th Circuit securities class action, while international commercial revenue is shrinking as a share of the mix.

3. Business Segments

Palantir reports two operating segments, Commercial and Government, and since 2024 has emphasised a US commercial / US government / international disclosure in its earnings releases. The table below uses the FY2025 disclosure (total revenue $4,475.4m).

4. Business Model & Moat

How it makes money. Palantir licenses software platforms on a subscription basis, priced per deployment and scaled by data volume, users and modules. The two core products are Gotham (defence and intelligence) and Foundry (commercial data operations), delivered through Apollo (continuous deployment across cloud, on-premise and classified environments). Since 2023 the Artificial Intelligence Platform (AIP) has layered large language models on top of the Foundry Ontology, letting customers build agents that act on live operational data. Contracts are typically multi-year, paid partly upfront, and expand once a deployment proves itself, which is why total contract value closed ($3.37bn in Q2 2026) and remaining deal value are the leading indicators management highlights.

Where the moat lies. The Ontology is the durable asset: once a customer's entities, relationships and actions are modelled in Palantir's semantic layer, workflows, permissions and AI agents all depend on it, and re-platforming is expensive and slow. In government, accreditation for classified networks (IL5 and IL6, plus FedRAMP) and a two-decade operating history with the US intelligence community and NATO create barriers that hyperscalers and start-ups cannot quickly replicate. The FedStart programme extends this by letting other software vendors ride on Palantir's federal authorisations.

Unit economics and operating leverage. Gross margin runs at about 85% (Q2 2026 cost of revenue $297m on $1,935m of revenue) and operating expenses are growing far slower than revenue, so GAAP operating margin has moved from a 9% loss in FY2022 to 47% in Q2 2026. The offset is stock-based compensation, which is added back in adjusted figures and remains one of the largest single cost lines.

Go-to-market. Palantir sells through forward-deployed engineers embedded with customers, AIP bootcamps that compress evaluation to days, AIPCon customer conferences (AIPCon 9 in March 2026 and AIPCon 10 in June 2026) and partner channels such as the newly expanded PwC alliance, Mercury Systems and Zeta Global.

5. Financial Health

All figures are from Palantir's 10-K filings, quarterly earnings releases and the SEC XBRL companyfacts dataset. Palantir carries no funded debt; the FY2021 balance sheet was the last to show a long-term debt line, and it was zero. Adjusted EPS excludes stock-based compensation and related employer payroll taxes, per the company's non-GAAP reconciliation.

Quarterly detail, most recent first. Revenue in $m. The FY2025 row is the audited full-year total.

Cash generation has scaled with revenue. FY2025 operating cash flow was $2,134.5m against capital expenditure of $33.9m, and the first half of 2026 alone produced $2,115.3m of operating cash flow against $22.0m of capex. On a trailing-twelve-month basis to 30 June 2026 (FY2025 less H1 2025 plus H1 2026), revenue is $6,155.9m, GAAP net income $3,016.7m, operating income $2,634.6m, depreciation and amortisation $28.0m, operating cash flow $3,400.3m and capex $42.0m. Note that GAAP net income now exceeds operating income because of roughly $0.4bn of annual interest income on the $9.4bn cash pile. Diluted shares averaged 2,568.7m in Q2 2026, up from 1,923.6m in FY2021; the $1bn buyback authorised in 2023 had absorbed only $75.0m of repurchases in FY2025.

6. Valuation Metrics

Raw metrics, September 2026. Not opinions on whether the stock is cheap or expensive.

Price basis: $174.33 close on 4 September 2026. Share count 2,403.1m (Class A 2,300.7m, Class B 101.3m, Class F 1.0m per the Q2 2026 10-Q cover, 27 July 2026). Trailing figures are the twelve months to 30 June 2026 built from the 10-K and 10-Q filings.

7. What Are They Building

AIP and the Ontology. The Artificial Intelligence Platform remains the growth engine. It connects large language models (including customer-chosen or sovereign models) to the Foundry Ontology so that AI agents can read live enterprise data and trigger actions with permissions and audit trails. In July 2026 Palantir and Nvidia announced a sovereign-AI arrangement that lets US agencies and critical-infrastructure operators run and retrain Nvidia Nemotron models inside Palantir's locked-down infrastructure.

Maven Smart System and defence. Maven is Palantir's AI targeting and decision-support system for the US Department of Defense. In 2026 NATO agreed a sole-source procurement of Maven Smart System NATO after adoption across nine member nations, one of the fastest procurement cycles in the alliance's history. The UK Ministry of Defence's £240.6m enterprise agreement, effective 1 April 2026, more than triples the prior £75.2m 2022 deal and is designed to interoperate with NATO systems.

Warp Speed for manufacturing. Warp Speed is a manufacturing operating system built on Foundry. "Warp Speed for Warships", launched with the BlueForge Alliance, digitises US Navy shipbuilding supply chains; other Warp Speed customers include Anduril, Panasonic Energy, Epirus, Red Cat, Saildrone, Saronic, Ursa Major and Sierra Nevada Corporation. Mercury Systems (announced alongside Q2 2026 results) is using it to automate material planning and build a digital twin of its defence supply chain.

Partner ecosystem and FedStart. The PwC alliance expanded on 3 September 2026 to target M&A integration and ERP transformation work. Zeta Global is re-architecting its marketing Data Cloud on Foundry. FedStart lets third-party software vendors (for example Oligo Security, which joined in June 2026) obtain federal authority-to-operate by running on Palantir's accredited cloud, turning Palantir into a distribution layer for other vendors' software in government.

8. Peer Comparison

Market caps are as of the 4 September 2026 close. Metrics are the latest reported by each company.

9. Insider Activity

CEO Alex Karp, chairman Peter Thiel, president Stephen Cohen and CTO Shyam Sankar all sold stock in 2026, largely through option exercises and pre-scheduled Rule 10b5-1 plans that vest and sell on the 20th of February, May and August. The largest single transaction was Thiel's 2,000,000-share sale on 2 March 2026 for $289.7m, after which he still held 68.9m shares indirectly. Karp's August 2026 sale of 492,348 shares at $174.79 raised $86.1m. CFO David Glazer's sales were far smaller (17,438 shares in February and 17,128 in May). Source: SEC Form 4 filings, CIK 1321655.

10. Key Risks

• Valuation compression: the shares trade at ~149x trailing GAAP earnings and ~68x trailing sales; the stock has already fallen about 16% from its 52-week high of $207.52 despite accelerating growth, showing how sensitive the price is to sentiment rather than results.
• US government concentration and budget politics: US government customers supplied 41% of FY2025 revenue and 42% of Q2 2026 revenue; continuing resolutions, procurement protests, changes in Pentagon AI policy (a federal judge ruled a Pentagon AI-related restriction unlawful on 29 August 2026) and shifting political alignment can all move large contracts.
• Securities litigation: a CalPERS-led securities-fraud class action alleging executives sold more than $2.2bn of stock while making misleading statements about government-revenue sustainability was revived and argued before the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in March 2026; a ruling remains pending.
• Insider selling and governance: the founders' Class F shares give them 49.999999% voting control regardless of economic ownership, and officers and directors sold well over $600m of stock in 2026; the structure limits shareholder influence over capital allocation and compensation.
• Stock-based compensation and dilution: SBC of $684m in FY2025 and $467m in H1 2026 keeps GAAP margins well below adjusted margins and has expanded the diluted share count by a third since FY2021, while buybacks have been negligible ($75m in FY2025).
• Competitive convergence: Microsoft, Oracle, Snowflake, Databricks and the hyperscalers are embedding agentic AI directly into data platforms that customers already own; Databricks alone runs at ~$5.4bn of annualised revenue and is preparing an IPO, and enterprise AI budgets could consolidate around incumbents.
• International softness and reputational exposure: international revenue fell to roughly 19% of the total in Q2 2026, and Palantir's defence, immigration-enforcement and health-data work (UK NHS Federated Data Platform, US government agencies) attracts activist scrutiny that has cost it commercial and public-sector deals in Europe before.

11. Recent Developments

• 03 Sep 2026 — PwC alliance expanded. PwC and Palantir widened their strategic alliance to scale enterprise AI, targeting M&A integration and ERP transformation programmes; the shares rose about 7% on the day, partly reversing weakness after a widely circulated bearish thesis from investor Michael Burry.
• 29 Aug 2026 — Court ruling on Pentagon AI restriction. A federal judge ruled a Pentagon AI-related ban unlawful, a decision commentators read as supportive of Palantir's defence pipeline, including Maven Smart System expansion.
• 20 Aug 2026 — CEO Alex Karp sells $86.1m of stock. Karp exercised options and sold 492,348 shares at $174.79 under his 10b5-1 plan, the latest in a quarterly sequence of founder sales.
• 03 Aug 2026 — Q2 2026 results and third guidance raise. Revenue rose 93% to $1,935m, US commercial revenue 149% to $764m and US government 90% to $809m; GAAP EPS was $0.41, adjusted free cash flow $1,220m (63% margin), and FY2026 revenue guidance was lifted to $8,150m to $8,158m with adjusted FCF of $4.5bn to $4.7bn.
• 03 Aug 2026 — Mercury Systems partnership. Announced alongside the results, Mercury Systems will use Warp Speed to automate material planning and build a digital twin of its defence-electronics supply chain.
• 02 Jul 2026 — CTO Shyam Sankar sells 185,000 shares. The $24.1m sale at $130.00 was executed under a 10b5-1 plan; Sankar sold a further 35,000 shares on 6 August 2026.
• 04 Jun 2026 — AIPCon 10. Palantir's tenth customer conference showcased AIP and Ontology deployments across defence, healthcare and manufacturing customers, three months after AIPCon 9 on 12 March 2026.
• 01 Apr 2026 — UK Ministry of Defence agreement takes effect. The £240.6m follow-on enterprise agreement, more than three times the prior £75.2m 2022 deal, covers data analytics for strategic and tactical decision-making and is designed to interoperate with NATO systems.
• 02 Mar 2026 — Peter Thiel sells 2,000,000 shares. The chairman's $289.7m sale at $144.85 was the largest single insider transaction of the year; he retained about 68.9m shares held indirectly.

12. Key Dates

• Expected 2 Nov 2026 — Q3 2026 results. Market-data calendars list 2 November after the close; some trackers show 9 November. Palantir had not published its own date announcement at the time of writing. Management guided Q3 revenue of $2,160m to $2,164m and adjusted operating income of $1,292m to $1,296m.
• Expected Dec 2026 — Nasdaq-100 annual reconstitution, relevant to index-fund flows in a stock that transferred to Nasdaq in November 2024 specifically to gain index eligibility.
• Expected Feb 2027 — Q4 and full-year 2026 results with initial FY2027 guidance, followed by the FY2026 10-K.
• TBC — 10th Circuit Court of Appeals decision on the revived securities-fraud class action argued in March 2026.

Ongoing items without a fixed date include the US Army enterprise agreement task orders, further NATO member adoptions of Maven Smart System and any announcement of AIPCon 11.

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