MIAMI, May 4, 2026, 16:07 EDT
- Palantir reported first-quarter revenue of $1.633 billion, up 85% from a year earlier, and adjusted earnings of $0.33 a share.
- The company lifted its 2026 revenue forecast to $7.650 billion to $7.662 billion, above its prior guide of $7.182 billion to $7.198 billion.
- The report lands as investors test whether Palantir can stay apart from a software selloff tied to AI disruption fears.
Palantir Technologies beat Wall Street’s first-quarter sales and profit expectations on Monday and raised its full-year outlook, giving investors fresh evidence that demand for its artificial-intelligence software remains strong despite a broad pullback in software stocks.
The result matters now because Palantir has become a proxy for a harder question in markets: whether AI helps software companies sell more, or lets newer rivals chip away at their business. Bloomberg reported earlier Monday that Palantir shares had fallen nearly 17% this year as software stocks sold off on fears that AI tools could weaken earnings growth across the sector.
Revenue rose to $1.633 billion in the quarter ended March 31, above the $1.54 billion expected by analysts tracked by Visible Alpha. Adjusted earnings per share came in at $0.33, compared with expectations of $0.28.
The U.S. business did most of the work. Palantir said U.S. revenue more than doubled to $1.282 billion, with U.S. commercial revenue up 133% to $595 million and U.S. government revenue up 84% to $687 million. The company’s Artificial Intelligence Platform, or AIP, is software that helps customers put AI models into day-to-day operations rather than leaving them in test projects.
Chief Executive Alex Karp said “momentum surged” and pointed to “an accelerating U.S. market.” Palantir said its Rule of 40 score reached 145%; the Rule of 40 is a software metric that adds revenue growth to adjusted operating margin. Business Wire
The company now expects second-quarter revenue of $1.797 billion to $1.801 billion and adjusted operating income of $1.063 billion to $1.067 billion. For 2026, it raised adjusted free cash flow guidance to $4.2 billion to $4.4 billion and said U.S. commercial revenue should exceed $3.224 billion, implying growth of at least 120%.
That is a sharper guide than the one Palantir issued three months ago, when it forecast 2026 revenue of $7.182 billion to $7.198 billion and U.S. commercial revenue growth of at least 115%. The new forecast gives management more room to argue that the company is not just riding a short AI spending wave.
Deal activity also stayed firm. Palantir closed 206 deals worth at least $1 million in the quarter, including 47 worth at least $10 million. Total contract value, the potential lifetime value of contracts at signing, rose 61% from a year earlier to $2.41 billion.
Some analysts had expected a beat. Wedbush analyst Daniel Ives said before the release that the Street’s $1.54 billion revenue estimate was “beatable,” citing AIP’s role in delivering value to customers, Investor’s Business Daily reported. The actual top line cleared that mark by about $93 million. Investors
But the risk case has not gone away. HSBC analyst Stephen Bersey downgraded Palantir to Hold from Buy ahead of the print, saying competitors such as OpenAI were adopting similar forward-deployed engineering models and that Anthropic’s growth could be coming at Palantir’s expense. That is the harder test after the earnings beat: whether Palantir can keep its pricing power and growth rate as AI-native rivals move closer to enterprise customers.
Valuation is the other pressure point. Investopedia reported before the results that options traders were pricing in a move of about 9% in either direction by the end of the week, a sign that investors were braced for a sharp reaction. Strong numbers may not settle the debate if the market decides the stock already discounts too much growth.
Palantir is due to discuss the results on a 5 p.m. ET webcast. The call will likely focus on whether U.S. commercial demand can keep rising at triple-digit rates, how durable government spending is, and whether management sees OpenAI and Anthropic as real competitive threats or just part of a larger AI market still opening up.
