Palantir's Revenue Jumps 93% as Washington Influence and European Resistance Collide

Palantir's Q2 revenue rose 93% to $1.94B as US commercial doubled, while Thales builds a European alternative to its NATO command software.

Palantir finds itself pulled in two directions at once. In the United States, demand for its software keeps accelerating and Wall Street keeps raising the bar. Across the Atlantic, the company's growing grip on defense infrastructure is triggering a pushback that could reshape how Western governments buy their technology.

The tension surfaced again on Friday, when co-founder Joe Lonsdale took the stage at the Reuters Momentum AI conference in Austin. His target: rivals who, in his telling, stoke fears about existential AI risks to steer regulators toward rules that protect incumbents and lock out newcomers. It was a pointed jab at competitors who dress up market protection as safety advocacy.

A control model worth copying

Lonsdale's combative tone fits a company that has become a template for others. Reuters reported Thursday that Anthropic is weighing an overhaul of its ownership structure, with chief executive Dario Amodei and six co-founders aiming to lock up 50.1% of voting rights. The blueprint is Palantir's own governance setup, which leaves founders holding the final word even after enormous capital raises.

That rising AI players would imitate the structure is hardly surprising. Anyone building foundational systems wants insulation from the short-term demands of outside backers. Yet Palantir simultaneously demands hard limits from the very model builders it inspires. Alongside Nvidia and Booz Allen Hamilton, the company threatened in mid-September to shut out modern AI models unless providers such as Anthropic and OpenAI offer irrevocable guarantees against intellectual property misuse and the storage of sensitive data.

The numbers behind the story

Operationally, Palantir shows little sign of distraction. Second-quarter revenue climbed 93% year over year to $1.94 billion, powered above all by its home market, where US commercial business more than doubled over the same stretch. Management is targeting record full-year revenue above $8.15 billion.

Anyone still filing Palantir under "government contractor" is missing that shift. The company is also turning its AIP platform into an open hub that integrates even rival models, including those from OpenAI. Rather than walling itself off, Palantir is positioning itself as the orchestration layer for enterprise AI — an openness that, in this view, underpins its long-term moat.

Analysts have taken note. Rosenblatt reaffirmed its buy rating with a $225 price target, while UBS went further, setting its target at $250. The message from the sell side is that operating leverage outweighs political risk, and that appetite for practical AI infrastructure still dominates the conversation despite a rich valuation.

Europe builds its counterweight

Not everyone is cheering. The NATO headquarters adoption of Palantir's Maven Smart System has galvanized European resistance. As Reuters reported on September 17, French defense group Thales is advancing its own alternative to software-driven NATO command, pitting Europe's digital sovereignty agenda directly against US technological dominance.

Palantir sits at the most sensitive nodes of Western armed forces. That position grants exceptional pricing power but also makes the company a target of state industrial policy — a double-edged sword investors are weighing against a market capitalization of EUR 400.14 billion.

The stock traded at EUR 165.80 on Monday, a modest 0.4% daily decline. In a separate session it changed hands at EUR 165.84, down 0.3%, leaving it roughly 7.9% below its 52-week high but still within striking distance of record levels.

Insiders, incentives, and the road ahead

Executive profit-taking in such phases is routine. Director Alexander D. Moore sold 16,000 Class-A shares in mid-September under a pre-arranged trading plan — a footnote against the bigger picture.

What matters more is that Palantir is rewriting its industry's rules. It refuses opaque models inside its software architecture and imposes its data-protection standards even on heavyweights. Meanwhile, Jana Partners is pressing financial services firm Fiserv to adopt Palantir software to retire legacy systems and cut costs — a reminder that pragmatism, not politics, drives purchasing decisions where efficiency is the goal.

The coming months will show whether European challengers like Thales can genuinely narrow Palantir's lead. Until then, the company remains the driving force where software, state power, and defense intersect — an investment that bets not merely on enterprise software but on geopolitical infrastructure itself.