$423 B and Counting: What Palantir’s AI Is Really Powering

Palantir’s $423 billion valuation places it among the top 25 global companies - driven by an AI platform delivering measurable results across healthcare, defence, and industry. According to Choni Goldfein, Investment Analyst at EasyAssetManagement, "This signals real traction and long-term potential. We hold Palantir in our EasyETFs AI World Actively Managed ETF, part of our thematic approach to investing in structural shifts like AI."

Disclaimer: Past performance is not an indication of future performance. Time period taken 19 November 2025. Source: EasyEquities Platform. Images are for illustrative purposes only.

Key Takeaways

• Palantir’s business with U.S. companies more than doubled — revenue in that segment grew 121% in one year, reaching $397 million.
  
  

• Existing customers are spending more. For every R1 clients spent last year, they’re now spending R1.34, showing strong loyalty and growth.
  
  

• Profit margins are healthy. For every R100 made, Palantir kept R33 after costs and over R40 in net earnings, which is high even for big tech.

EasyAssetManagement Report

Palantir Technologies is a US software company that helps governments and large organisations make sense of vast, fragmented data. Founded in 2003 with CIA backing, it began by supporting intelligence and defence agencies before expanding into the commercial world.

Its software platforms — Gotham, Foundry, and Apollo — integrate data from multiple sources, allowing users to analyse, model, and act on information in real time. Gotham is used mainly by military and intelligence clients for mission-critical work such as battlefield logistics and counterterrorism. Foundry powers data-driven decision-making for businesses across manufacturing, healthcare, finance, and energy. Apollo enables continuous software deployment across secure, hybrid, and cloud environments.

Palantir’s client base spans both the public and private sectors. It supports the US Department of Defence and NHS England, while commercial partners include Airbus, BP, Merck KGaA, and Ferrari — using Palantir to optimise supply chains, research, and performance analytics.

The company earns revenue through software subscriptions and long-term service contracts, following a “land-and-expand” model that begins with pilot projects and scales into enterprise-wide adoption. Once embedded, its systems become mission-critical, creating sticky, recurring income.

Palantir now positions itself as a platform for operational intelligence, blending data science, AI, and real-world decision-making. Whether in a military operation or a manufacturing plant, its software aims to turn raw data into insight, and insight into action.

Palantir Q3: Growth, Efficiency, and the Scaling of Enterprise AI

Palantir’s Q3 results underscore a company operating with strong and accelerating momentum, combining robust revenue growth with clear gains in operational efficiency across its customer base. The ongoing transformation from a government-focused contractor into a diversified commercial AI platform continues to gather pace, highlighting the leverage in its model and the scalability of its AI-native infrastructure.

Source: Palantir Q3 Results Presentation

Business Momentum: Execution at Scale

The company’s US commercial division remains the standout driver of growth, with CEO Alex Karp declaring that it “will become, on its own, one of the most significant business stories of the century in American economic life.” Revenue from this segment rose 121% year-on-year to $397 million, driven by a record pace of large-deal wins and a rapidly expanding base of enterprise clients standardising on Palantir’s Artificial Intelligence Platform (AIP). The number of contracts valued at $10 million or more has more than tripled year-on-year, with 53 such deals closed in the quarter and a total of 204 deals signed during Q3. Customer additions increased by 7% quarter-on-quarter and 45% year-on-year, underscoring the company’s accelerating commercial adoption.

Source: Alex Karp's letter to Shareholders Q3 2025

What stands out most is the operational impact AIP is having inside client organizations. Palantir is not just selling data-integration tools, it’s embedding real-time decision-making systems that replace traditional processes with AI-driven workflows. A prime example comes from the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York, where an insurance-appeals process that once took 45 minutes now requires only five minutes through Palantir’s AIP. This is emblematic of what’s driving adoption: measurable productivity gains that directly translate into cost savings and higher throughput.

Source: Palantir Q3 Results Presentation

The platform’s growing footprint across critical industries —healthcare, manufacturing, logistics, and financial services — reflects a consistent pattern: initial deployments in one business unit often expand rapidly across the enterprise. Once integrated, customers tend to deepen their usage, driving Palantir’s net dollar retention to an all-time high of 134%. This dynamic of expanding within existing clients, rather than relying solely on new logos, is sustaining growth at scale.

Efficiency and AI Integration

Palantir’s go-to-market model continues to differentiate it from peers in the enterprise-software space. The company still absorbs upfront implementation costs, betting instead on long-term customer value. This unconventional approach has paid off — enabling faster onboarding, smoother integration, and higher retention.

The co-development partnership with Nvidia adds further momentum. The collaboration integrates Palantir’s Ontology software directly with Nvidia’s AI hardware and model stack, enabling joint reference workflows that deliver optimized performance out of the box. It’s a meaningful step toward offering enterprises a turnkey AI solution, reducing the friction between infrastructure and application layers.

Source: Palantir Q3 Results Presentation

Government and International: Broader Reach, Deeper Integration

Palantir’s government business continues to perform strongly, reinforcing its role as a critical software supplier to US federal and defence agencies. The segment generated $486 million in revenue, growing 52% year-on-year, and continues to benefit from renewed budget allocations toward AI-enabled situational awareness, intelligence, and logistics.

What stands out is how Palantir’s software is now being deployed as an operational AI layer, rather than just a data-analytics tool. Its platforms are embedded across decision workflows in the Department of Defence, the FBI, and other federal agencies, allowing faster intelligence synthesis, real-time mission planning, and autonomous data correlation. In many ways, Palantir has become the connective tissue linking data silos across the US security ecosystem.

The recurring nature of these contracts — often renewed or expanded under multi-year frameworks — provides strong visibility and stability to revenue. Unlike typical SaaS deals, Palantir’s government deployments evolve continuously, adapting to emerging use cases such as cyber defence, logistics automation, and predictive maintenance for defence infrastructure.

Profitability and Efficiency

Palantir’s business model is scaling efficiently. Operating margins widened to 33%, while net margins exceeded 40%, surpassing even Big Tech peers. Stock-based compensation, once a concern, has moderated to 15% of revenue, down meaningfully from a year ago. Cash reserves now stand at over $6 billion, providing flexibility for future acquisitions or reinvestment.

Source: Palantir Q3 Results Presentation

Valuation: Execution Meets Extremes

At a market capitalization of ~$423 billion, Palantir ranks among the 25 largest global companies. On consensus estimates, the stock trades at ~117× sales and ~450× earnings—ratios rarely seen at this scale. Even assuming strong compounding (e.g., revenue tripling and margins sustaining), modelled returns over the next five years suggest mid-single-digit annualized gains unless multiples remain elevated.

The market appears to be valuing Palantir as an early winner in AI infrastructure, pricing in future dominance rather than current earnings power. Recent results highlight the company’s expanding scale, tangible value creation and strong growth potential, yet the present valuation multiples leave little margin for error.

The EasyAssetManagement Approach

At EasyAssetManagement, we take a thematic approach to investing, focusing on long-term structural trends that are reshaping industries and economies. As part of this strategy, we currently hold a position in Palantir within EasyETFs AI World Actively Managed ETF, as part of our AI theme.

If you are looking for exposure to global equities, AI-themed opportunities, or a balanced investment strategy check out our EasyETFs Global Equity Actively Managed ETF, EasyETFs AI World Actively Managed ETF and EasyETFs Balanced Actively Managed ETF.