Palantir’s latest numbers suggest US customers still love its AI pitch, even as foreign governments look queasy about its politics.
According to the Financial Times Palantir lifted its full-year outlook after strong US demand gave the spy-adjacent software outfit another boost.
Palantir chief executive Alex Karp told investors that companies were buying its software to stop handing their data to the big AI model shops.
The Florida-based outfit said it now expects full-year revenue of at least $8.15 billion. It expects US commercial revenue to reach about $3.4 billion, which was better than the analysts had pencilled in. Palantir posted second-quarter numbers that beat expectations. US sales rose 23 per cent to $1.57 billion, while net income hit $1.06 billion.
Karp said Palantir was cashing in on the fashion for AI sovereignty. “The revolution for independence and AI sovereignty is now well under way,” Karp said in a letter to shareholders. The demand from our partners is clear… It is for control over data.”
The cocaine nose jobs of Wall Street liked the sound of it. Palantir shares jumped more than 12 per cent in after-hours trading. Before the update, Palantir shares had fallen 25 per cent in the year to date.
On the earnings call, Karp accused some AI labs of puffing up the technology’s power to flatten everything in sight. He said customers were handing over data to companies that could use it to build rival products.
Karp then took a swing at a “tiny group of people” trying to “colonise” customers and decide how AI should be used on moral grounds. That looked rather pointed at Anthropic, even if the name was not nailed to the dartboard.
Anthropic chief executive Dario Amodei has become one of the loudest voices warnings that better AI models could shove white-collar workers towards the exit. Anthropic’s tools have rattled markets this year, with investors fretting that software engineers, lawyers and other office types might be next in the automation grinder.
Amodei has tried to moderate how the technology is used in defence, which has helped create a long legal scrap with the Pentagon.
Palantir was founded after the 11 September 2001 attacks and has spent years presenting itself as a western bulwark against similar threats. That flag-waving act is harder to sell abroad now Karp has tied Palantir more tightly to the Trump administration and its policies, including the crackdown on illegal immigration.
Karp has called the business “anti-woke” and talked about its tools being used to kill US enemies, which is one way to liven up an investor roadshow.
Foreign governments are increasingly trying to pull away from Palantir and other US tech suppliers to keep systems outside Washington’s gravitational field.
France’s domestic intelligence agency signed a deal with ChapsVision in June. Paris has lined up an AI assistant for government workers powered by France’s Mistral. Palantir’s UK contracts have been picked through with some force. Germany’s armed forces have kept the company out of contracts.
Officials in Denmark and the Netherlands have made similar noises about uncoupling from the US software group. Palantir is now leaning harder on the US, where its business is becoming more concentrated.
International customers accounted for about 19 per cent of quarterly revenue, down from 26 per cent in 2025. The company has signed commercial deals, including a June agreement with law firm Kirkland & Ellis.
That project is meant to deliver an AI system that can draft letters, track agreements and monitor compliance, which sounds like the legal department finally discovered macros.
Those deals are still dwarfed by Palantir’s $10 billion Pentagon agreement from 2025 to provide tools for the US Army across the next decade.
