Palantir Smashes Expectations With Its First-Ever $1 Billion Quarter

Palantir’s CEO, Alex Karp, saw no reason to be humble after his company’s blockbuster second-quarter earnings.

“As usual, I’ve been cautioned to be a little modest about our bombastic numbers, but there’s no authentic way to be anything but have enormous pride and gratefulness about these extraordinary numbers,” he said as he kicked off his part of the earnings call on Monday.

He struck a similar tone in his letter to shareholders.

“The skeptics are admittedly fewer now, having been defanged and bent into a kind of submission,” he wrote.

The Denver-based AI software company beat analyst estimates Monday with adjusted earnings of 16 cents per share on $1 billion in revenue, topping LSEG projections of 14 cents and $940 million, respectively. The stock peaked at more than 5% in after-hours trading compared to when the market closed at 4 p.m ET.

Palantir’s commercial revenue in the US nearly doubled since last year’s second quarter to $628 million, while government revenue climbed 53% year-over-year to $426 million, mostly thanks to a 10-year, $10 billion contract with the US Army, which consolidated 75 contracts into one.

Ryan Taylor, chief revenue officer and chief legal officer, said that the US Space Force awarded the company a $218 million delivery order and raised the spending ceiling for Palantir’s Maven Smart System to $795 million in preparation for “significant demand.”

The company also raised its full-year revenue guidance midpoint to just north of $4 billion, a nine-point increase from last quarter.

Karp concluded the call with a message for investors. “Maybe stop talking to all the haters — they’re suffering,” he said.

Palantir did not immediately respond to a request for comment.