Palantir Insider Sales and Fresh Bank, Federal Wins Put Valuation Back Under the Microscope

Palantir shareholders have had plenty to sort through this week: a string of insider disposals, a new banking customer, a federal cloud partnership, and a high-profile fund manager trimming its stake. Each item lands on the same underlying question — how much execution is already baked into a stock trading far above its software peers.

Start with the selling. Director Alexander D. Moore offloaded 16,000 shares, a mandatory SEC filing showed on October 15. Eight days earlier, on October 8, Chief Revenue Officer and Chief Legal Officer Ryan D. Taylor sold 18,000 shares, and Director Lauren Elaina Friedman Stat disposed of 5,026 shares. Both October 8 transactions were executed under Rule 10b5-1 trading plans — a detail that matters, since such arrangements are set up in advance and should not be read as a knee-jerk response to any single news item.

Separately, Ark Invest kept reducing its Palantir position, following up Monday's sales with another round on Tuesday. Across the two days, the firm sold 46,139 shares through its ARKK fund for close to $9 million. That is a portfolio decision by Ark, not a signal of operational trouble at Palantir, and on its own it says nothing about where the business is headed.

A Bank Signs Up, and Washington Gets a Faster Lane

On the operating side, Customers Bank — a subsidiary of Customers Bancorp — said on October 15 that it will deploy Palantir's Foundry and AIP platforms to streamline onboarding of deposit customers. The work centers on gathering documents, verifying legal entities, and consolidating risk signals, which spells out concrete day-to-day tasks inside a named client's operations.

Two days earlier, Palantir and Knox Systems unveiled a partnership aimed at US government customers, designed to speed software delivery in FedRAMP and IL5 environments. The pair will pair Palantir's accredited infrastructure with Knox's managed cloud services for federal agencies — a different job entirely from the banking project, focused on how software is provisioned inside specific security settings.

The Multiple That Prices In Years of Perfection

Valuation remains the elephant in the room. George Tsilis of Charles Schwab pegs Palantir at roughly 124 times expected earnings, against about 22 times for comparable software companies. At that level, the shares already discount "years of exceptional execution," he argues. He also points out that international commercial expansion is lagging the US business, which limits how much the domestic momentum can tell us about the broader rollout.

The growth itself has been formidable. Revenue hit $1.94 billion in the second quarter of 2026, up 93% year over year. Adjusted operating margin came in at 62% for the same quarter, and management lifted its full-year 2026 revenue growth guidance to 82%. Those figures explain the confidence — and they also show how steep the bar has become for further positive surprises.

HSBC Reviews Its Position

Investor-side attention is also on HSBC, which is reviewing its Palantir holding in its Islamic Global Equity Index Fund after concerns were raised by UK pension funds. The Financial Times reported that the fund bought Palantir shares in the first half of the year. Nest said executives have opened talks with HSBC, and the bank plans to examine the investment alongside independent experts. No exclusion has been decided — a review is not the same as a completed sale.

Taken together, the picture splits cleanly in two. Insider filings and Ark's sales document securities transactions; the Customers Bank and Knox announcements describe where Palantir's platforms will actually be used. Neither of the former tells us anything about demand for Palantir's products. The real test stays execution: the numbers back the growth case, while Tsilis's critique shows how much success the share price already assumes. Strong business performance and an attractive valuation are, as ever, two separate judgments.