Palantir stock: what is actually going on

Palantir is one of the most argued-about stocks in the market, and 2026 has given both sides plenty of material. The share price fell more than 40% in the first half, then rose about 77% off its June low, and now sits a little above where it started the year. This page is our running explanation of what the business actually is, what the last reported quarter showed, and what is moving the stock now. Every figure comes from Palantir's own filings and releases or from exchange data, with the date attached.

What changed since our last update

• The stock is up about 7% in two weeks. It was $189.84 at 12:30 p.m. ET on Friday, October 2, against a close of $177.64 on September 18, when this page was first written. The biggest single day in that stretch was September 23, when it rose 3.7%, from $184.99 to $191.79, on volume of 35.1 million shares. That was the same week investor Michael Burry said he was adding to bearish positions on Palantir and several chip names; the stock rose anyway (our coverage).
• An earnings date estimate. Nasdaq's data provider, Zacks, estimates third-quarter results on November 2, 2026. That date comes from an algorithm based on past reporting dates; Palantir had not announced it as of October 2.
• New equity awards for top officers. Form 4 filings dated October 1 show the chief financial officer, David Glazer, and the chief revenue and chief legal officer, Ryan Taylor, each received 92,908 Class A shares on September 29, reported at no cost. At that day's $186.97 close, each award is worth about $17.4 million. The chief accounting officer, Jeffrey Buckley, received 16,714 stock appreciation rights at a $186.97 exercise price that are fully vested at grant and carry a maximum term of 40 years, an unusually long life for an equity award.
• Small, preplanned director selling. A Form 144 filed October 1 shows director Lauren Stat proposing to sell 1,337 shares, worth about $250,000, under a 10b5-1 trading plan, following sales of 1,342 shares on September 1 and 3,032 shares on August 5.

Where the money comes from

Palantir sells software platforms: Gotham for defense and intelligence work, Foundry for commercial and industrial operations, Apollo for deploying and updating software across environments, and AIP, its artificial intelligence platform, layered on top. Customers pay for subscriptions, on-premises licenses with ongoing maintenance, and professional services.

The company reports two segments. In the quarter ended June 30, 2026, on total revenue of $1.935 billion:

• Government: $990.0 million, roughly 51% of revenue, with a 71% contribution margin.
• Commercial: $945.4 million, roughly 49%, with a 78% contribution margin.

Geographically the business has become steadily more American. The United States was $1.573 billion, or 81% of revenue, in the quarter, up from 73% a year earlier. The rest of the world was $362.4 million, or 19%.

Inside the US number, the fastest growing piece is US commercial: $764 million in the quarter, up 149% from a year earlier. US government revenue was $809 million, up 90%.

The share price and the size of the company

Palantir was trading at $189.84 at 12:30 p.m. ET on Friday, October 2, 2026, down 0.11% from Thursday's close of $190.04, according to Nasdaq. Market value is roughly $456 billion. The 52-week range is $106.37 to $207.52, which leaves the stock about 8.5% below its high. Palantir pays no dividend.

The path this year is the story. The stock closed 2025 at $177.75, fell to a 2026 low of $107.27 on June 25, and is now about 77% above that low and about 7% above where it began the year. The single biggest day was August 4, the session after second-quarter results, when the stock rose 29% from $125.65 to $162.66.

On the company's raised full-year revenue guidance of $8.150 billion to $8.158 billion, the current market value works out to roughly 56 times this year's sales, up from about 52 times when this page was first written two weeks ago. The business did not change in those two weeks; the price did. That multiple is the whole debate in one number.

The last reported quarter

Palantir reported second-quarter 2026 results on August 3, 2026. The headline figures:

• Revenue: $1.935 billion, up 93% from a year earlier and up 19% from the prior quarter.
• GAAP income from operations: $912.0 million, a 47% margin. Adjusted income from operations was $1.194 billion, a 62% margin.
• GAAP net income: $1.062 billion, a 55% margin. GAAP and adjusted earnings per diluted share were both $0.41.
• Cash from operations: $1.216 billion. Adjusted free cash flow was $1.220 billion, a 63% margin.
• Deals: 220 deals of at least $1 million, 98 of at least $5 million and 73 of at least $10 million. Total closed contract value was $3.373 billion, up 49%, including $2.132 billion of US commercial contract value.
• Balance sheet: $9.2 billion in cash, cash equivalents and short-term US Treasury securities.
• Guidance: third-quarter revenue of $2.160 billion to $2.164 billion and full-year revenue raised to $8.150 billion to $8.158 billion.

Chief executive Alex Karp framed it this way in the release: "Demand for AI sovereignty has now been unleashed."

What is driving the stock right now

1. The August repricing has not been tested yet. The stock's whole 2026 recovery rests on one quarter. The next check is third-quarter results, where the company has guided to about $2.16 billion. According to Nasdaq, nine analysts tracked by Zacks expect earnings of $0.34 a share for the quarter, against $0.18 a year earlier.

2. "Sovereign AI" is turning into signed partner deals. On September 10, NVIDIA published a technical account of a supply chain command center built on Palantir Foundry, with NVIDIA's cuOpt optimizer and a 30-billion-parameter Nemotron 3.5 Lightning model post-trained on allocation decisions. The same day, Palantir and Fujitsu renewed their partnership, with Fujitsu signing a new agreement for AIP and Foundry and becoming a "Global FDE Partner" that builds forward-deployed engineering teams for clients in Japan and abroad, Investing.com reported. The companies cited one Japanese manufacturer that tied together more than 3,000 suppliers and 18 factories and saved over $10 million in a year. Partners that staff their own engineers matter because Palantir's growth has long been limited by how many of its own people it can send into customers.

3. Data control is a selling point. The Information reported in mid-September, as summarized by PYMNTS, that Palantir will not offer Anthropic's Fable model through its platform until Anthropic provides an irrevocable zero-data-retention guarantee. Palantir customers can still get the model directly from Anthropic. Enterprises worrying about where their data goes is the demand Palantir is built to capture.

4. Not every government deal lands. The FAA's $875.95 million award for its FMDS and SMART air traffic flow software, announced June 22, went to Boston startup Air Space Intelligence, according to the Department of Transportation. DroneXL reported that Palantir and Thales were the losing bidders. Palantir is not the prime contractor on that work.

5. Commercial land-and-expand keeps producing recognizable names. WIRED reported in September that Chipotle is piloting a food safety platform built on Foundry that combines health department inspection scores, pest incidents and employee illnesses to rank risk at individual restaurants. Chipotle's chief corporate affairs and food safety officer, Laurie Schalow, told WIRED the pilot helps the company spot trends, prioritize follow-up and act earlier, according to Restaurant Technology News. Chipotle has not said how many restaurants are involved.

The bear case, stated fairly

Most of the strongest bearish points are in Palantir's own filings.

The multiple. At roughly 56 times guided 2026 revenue, the stock prices in years of compounding at close to current rates. Growth of 93% will not continue indefinitely; the company's own third-quarter guide implies sequential growth slowing from 19% to about 12%.

Concentration. Accounts receivable were $1.5 billion at June 30, up from $1.0 billion at the end of 2025, and the 10-Q discloses that a single customer, identified only as Customer I, was 27% of total receivables, up from 25%. Revenue is also increasingly dependent on one country.

Visibility is shorter than the growth rate suggests. Remaining performance obligations, the contracted revenue not yet recognized, were $4.9 billion at June 30, of which Palantir expects to recognize about 43% over the next 12 months. That is less than a year of revenue at the current run rate, which is one reason the company points investors to contract value and remaining deal value instead.

Dilution and fixed costs. Stock-based compensation was $265.2 million in the quarter, about 14% of revenue, up from $160.0 million a year earlier, and the new officer awards above show it continuing. Separately, Palantir amended a cloud hosting agreement in March 2026 committing it to spend at least $5.6 billion over ten contract years through February 2036, with annual minimums of $268 million to $979 million.

Control. The multiple share class structure, including Class F shares, leaves founders effectively controlling stockholder votes. Palantir disclosed that excluding Class F voting power, the founders and their affiliates held shares carrying about 22% of voting power as of July 27, 2026.

What we are watching

• Third-quarter results, estimated for November 2 but not yet confirmed by the company. Watch revenue against the $2.160 billion to $2.164 billion guide, and whether US commercial growth holds near triple digits.
• US commercial remaining deal value, which was $6.238 billion at June 30, up 124% from a year earlier. This is the cleanest forward indicator the company gives.
• Receivables and Customer I. Whether the receivable balance keeps growing faster than revenue and whether that one customer's share keeps climbing.
• Partner-led deployments. Whether Fujitsu-style partners show up as faster customer additions outside the US, where revenue share has been shrinking.
• Rates. Long-duration, high-multiple software is among the most rate-sensitive parts of the market. Live levels are on the markets page.

Sources: Palantir second-quarter 2026 results release, August 3, 2026; Palantir Form 10-Q for the quarter ended June 30, 2026; Form 4 and Form 144 filings via SEC EDGAR; Nasdaq quote, summary, historical price and earnings-date data for PLTR retrieved 12:30 p.m. ET October 2, 2026; NVIDIA technical blog; Investing.com; US Department of Transportation; DroneXL; The Information via PYMNTS; WIRED via Restaurant Technology News. Percentage moves, award values and the sales multiple are our calculations from the figures cited. This page is updated as the numbers change. This is market information, not investment advice.