Analysis
US Commercial Did the Heavy Lifting
Palantir reported second-quarter revenue of $1.94 billion, up 93% from about $1 billion a year earlier, according to Yahoo Finance. US commercial revenue -- the segment Palantir has spent three years building outside its original government contracts -- grew 149% to $764 million, while US government revenue grew a still-substantial 90% to $809 million. Net income came in at $1.06 billion, or $0.41 per diluted share, and the company raised full-year guidance to at least $8.15 billion company-wide.
The stock reaction was the story's second act. Shares closed up 29.45% at $162.66, and per Seeking Alpha, short sellers who had built roughly $2.7 billion in mark-to-market gains betting against Palantir earlier in 2026 watched most of that position reverse in a single session. Palantir has been one of the market's most contested AI stocks precisely because bears argue its valuation already prices in years of growth it hasn't delivered yet -- Tuesday's print did not settle that argument, but it did not help the bear case either.
“Net income came in at $1.06 billion, or $0.41 per diluted share, and the company raised full-year guidance to at least $8.15 billion company-wide.”
Karp used the results to needle Palantir's AI-lab rivals directly, per Foreign Policy Journal's coverage of the call, framing Palantir's ontology-based deployment model as the difference between AI pilots that ship and ones that stay stuck in a lab. That is a real competitive claim and also a convenient one for a company whose stock just had its best day in months.
The counterweight worth noting: Palantir still trades at a valuation multiple far above almost any enterprise software comparable, US commercial remaining deal value of $6.24 billion is a backlog rather than booked revenue, and a single quarter's beat does not resolve whether that backlog converts on the timeline the stock now prices in.
What to watch: whether Palantir's US commercial customer count keeps growing at the same rate its revenue per customer is growing, and whether Karp's public criticism of Anthropic and OpenAI turns into disclosed competitive wins Palantir can point to by name.
