People stroll by a banner that includes the emblem of Palantir Technologies (PLTR) on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) on the day of their preliminary public providing (IPO) in Manhattan, New York City, U.S., September 30, 2020.
Andrew Kelly | Reutersa
When Palantir hit the inventory market in September 2020, there was lots that might go flawed. The Covid pandemic was sweeping throughout the globe, society was in lockdown and markets had been risky.
Meanwhile, Palantir was operating at a loss whereas coping with ongoing criticism over its authorities work, specifically with U.S. Customs and Immigration. And the corporate was going public via a direct itemizing moderately than a standard IPO.
At its opening price of $10 per share, Palantir was valued at $16.5 billion, down from its personal market peak of $20.4 billion in 2015.
“It was the beginning of the pandemic, no one knew what was happening,” CFO David Glazer mentioned in an interview. “The stock market wasn’t ripping, everyone wasn’t trying to go public, and we decided to go public as quickly as possible.”
Exactly five years later, Palantir has reached heights that might’ve been laborious for even the most important bulls to fathom.
The inventory worth has surged greater than 1,700%, closing on Tuesday at $182.42 for a market cap of over $432 billion. That places it among the many 20 most-valuable U.S. corporations, and above tech stalwarts like Cisco and IBM. Last 12 months, Palantir joined the S&P 500, changing American Airlines.
Quarterly income surpassed $1 billion for the primary time last quarter, and is anticipated to succeed in $4.2 billion this 12 months, based on analysts surveyed by LSEG, up nearly sixfold from 2019. The firm’s roster of shoppers grew from 125 within the first half of 2020 to 849 on the finish of June. During that point, Palantir has added 1,500 full-time workers.
CEO Alex Karp, who based the corporate in 2003 alongside notable buyers like Peter Thiel and Joe Lonsdale, was exerting optimism on day considered one of Palantir’s life on the general public market.
“We’ve reached a base where our company is very significant,” Karp, who holds a legislation diploma from Stanford and PhD in neoclassical social concept from Goethe University in Frankfurt, Germany, told CNBC in an interview on itemizing day. “Being in the public space will help us with our clients and help us grow.”
Its dizzying ascent since then has perplexed Wall Street, which is unfamiliar with these sorts of multiples, particularly for corporations of this measurement.
Palantir trades for 226 instances earnings over the subsequent 12 months, with a ahead income a number of of over 80. Those numbers dwarf even the multiples on Tesla, which trades for 194 instances ahead earnings and 14 instances income over the subsequent 12 months.
In a report last month, Citron Research’s Andrew Left, a famous short-seller, referred to as Palantir “detached from fundamentals and analysis.” When in comparison with OpenAI’s latest $500 billion valuation, he mentioned Palantir ought to be priced at $40, or lower than one-quarter of its present worth, if it was assessed the identical income a number of as the bogus intelligence startup.
“Karp and his team should be proud. But for investors, that’s where discipline kicks in,” Left wrote. “Comparison is the enemy of happiness, and when measured against true AI leaders, Palantir’s price already reflects success beyond its fundamentals.”
Karp, who would not shrink back from a dispute, not too long ago told detractors to “exit” in the event that they “don’t like the price.”
“We are going to be the most important software company in the world, and people will figure out what that’s valued over a long period of time,” Karp said on the day of the corporate’s NYSE debut.
Palantir declined to make Karp obtainable for an interview.
Alex Karp, CEO of Palantir, attending the annual Allen & Co. Media and Technology Conference in Sun Valley, Idaho, on July 9, 2025.
David A. Grogan | CNBC
Valuation is not the one supply of controversy. Critics have additionally raised considerations about how Palantir’s instruments are being utilized by the likes of ICE and different authorities companies.
Palantir was based as a response to nationwide safety threats within the wake of 9/11. The firm developed hefty software program that it helped customise for shoppers to allow them to compile and analyze massive information units. On its website, Palantir says that it’s partnered with the U.S. Army since 2008, “embedding alongside users to design and deploy modern mission essential software solutions.”
Federal documents from April present that ICE paid Palantir $30 million to offer “real-time visibility” on individuals self-deporting. Earlier this 12 months, the New York Times reported that Palantir helps the Trump administration collect information on Americans.
In a blog post, Palantir referred to as the reporting “reckless and irresponsible.” Karp mentioned in a June interview with CNBC that Palantir was “not surveilling Americans.”
‘Not nearly Israel’
The firm has additionally confronted backlash for offering know-how to the Ukrainian and Israeli militaries.
Karp told CNBC in March 2024 that workers had left the corporate resulting from his public assist of Israel, and that he anticipated extra to go away. Palantir took out a full-page advert in The New York Times following the lethal Oct. 7 assault by Hamas the prior 12 months that mentioned the corporate “stands with Israel.”
“From my perspective, it’s not just about Israel,” Karp mentioned within the CNBC interview. “It’s like, ‘Do you believe in the West? Do you believe the West has created a superior way of living?'”
Over the final five years, Palantir has scooped up massive authorities offers in opposition to contractors like RTX and partnered with aerospace giants comparable to L3Harris and Boeing. Over the summer season, the corporate landed a software program and information contract with the Army price up to $10 billion.
Karp has lengthy been an unapologetic defender of Palantir’s enterprise pursuits.
Originally headquartered in Palo Alto, California, Karp moved the corporate to Denver in 2020 as he grew more and more disgruntled with what he considered as Silicon Valley’s monoculture.
In a letter to investors forward of its direct itemizing, Karp mentioned, “the engineering elite” of Silicon Valley have no idea “how society should be organized or what justice requires” and that the corporate shares “fewer and fewer of the technology sector’s values and commitments.”
While Palantir has been a standout performer available on the market over the previous five years, long-term buyers needed to climate some darkish days alongside the way in which.
By the tip of 2020, Palantir’s inventory had jumped to $23.55, a acquire of just about 136%. In Karp’s letter forward of the direct itemizing, he asserted that “effective software can be essential to an organization’s survival” throughout instances of disaster.
Skepticism began constructing within the second half of 2021. Early the next 12 months, rising rates of interest and hovering inflation pushed buyers out of dangerous securities and into safer belongings like bonds. Palantir shares misplaced two-thirds of their worth in 2022, closing the 12 months at $6.42, properly beneath the direct itemizing worth.
But November of that 12 months introduced with it the introduction of ChatGPT and a brand new period of AI that revived and redefined the tech business.
Palantir launched its AI platform referred to as AIP in April 2023. It was designed to assist securely combine massive language fashions when coping with delicate information, making it a lot quicker and extra environment friendly for Palantir’s know-how to drag in and analyze info.
The firm has attributed a lot of its enlargement within the industrial market to AIP. Government enterprise nonetheless accounts for many of its income, however Palantir has attracted company shoppers comparable to Wendy’s and American Airlines.
Glazer mentioned on the newest earnings name in August that the full contract worth of bookings within the quarter soared 185% to $1.1 billion, with U.S. industrial income leaping 93% from a 12 months earlier.
“AIP continues to drive existing customer expansion and new customer conversions in the U.S.,” Glazer mentioned.
One buyer the corporate cited was auto provider Lear and a latest five-year partnership between the 2. Palantir mentioned that Lear makes use of AIP for assist with “proactively managing their tariff exposure, automating multiple administrative workflows, and dynamically balancing their manufacturing lines.”
Palantir’s inventory soared 341% final 12 months and is up one other 141% up to now in 2025.
The AI is getting loads of use in authorities, too.
In 2024, Palantir landed a contract to create AI-powered mobile ground stations capable of accumulate information for troopers utilizing area sensors. In May of this 12 months, the Pentagon lifted the corporate’s whole ceiling for its Maven Smart Systems contract for AI capabilities to $1.3 billion.
Akash Jain, Palantir’s know-how chief and president of its U.S. authorities enterprise, mentioned in an interview that AI has created an entire new set of dangers, forcing the federal government to rethink how it makes use of industrial applied sciences.
“We’re perfectly positioned for the growth,” he mentioned.
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