Palantir surges 16% to $145.50 after Q2 revenue beats consensus, up 93% YoY

David Moadel Tue, August 4, 2026 at 6:04 AM PDT | 4 min read

• PLTR -2.60%
• IGV -0.68%
• PATH -1.99%
• AI -1.39%
• ^NDX -0.83%

Quick Read

• Palantir's Q2 revenue surged 93% to $1.94 billion, beating consensus, with U.S. commercial total contract value hitting a record $2.1 billion.
• PLTR rocketed 16% while AI and PATH caught zero sympathy bid, confirming this as a pure single-stock reaction to earnings.
• CEO Alex Karp raised FY2026 revenue guidance to $8.15 billion; Deutsche Bank upgraded Palantir to Buy with a $200 price target.
• Act now: the analyst who called NVIDIA in 2010 just named his top 10 AI stocks — and Palantir didn't make the cut. Grab the names FREE today.

Palantir (NASDAQ: PLTR) stock is ripping higher early Tuesday, with shares up 16% to $145.50 after the company posted a blowout Q2 2026 and raised its full-year outlook. The rally follows Monday's after-close earnings release and has not spread to peer agentic-AI names.

Shutterstock / Piotr Swat

The bounce comes off a rough stretch. Palantir stock was down 29% year to date (YTD) prior to the earnings bump. The NASDAQ 100 is up 1.05% for broader context, but this move is very much a single-name story.

Q2 Blowout Powers the Move

Palantir reported Q2 2026 revenue of $1.94 billion, up 92.8% year over year (YoY), beating the $1.81 billion consensus. Adjusted EPS came in at $0.41, marking the company's ninth straight EPS beat.

The standout was Palantir's U.S. commercial business:

• Revenue grew 149% YoY to $764 million
• Total contract value rose 153% to a record $2.1 billion

Additionally:

• U.S. government revenue rose 90% YoY to $809 million
• Rule of 40 score hit 155%

The company raised its FY2026 revenue guidance to $8.15 billion – $8.158 billion (from $7.65 billion – $7.662 billion) and guided Q3 revenue to $2.16 billion – $2.164 billion. Palantir also set FY2026 adjusted free cash flow guidance at $4.5 billion – $4.7 billion, with Q2 free cash flow already at $1.22 billion.

CEO Alex Karp called the quarter "otherworldly" and pointed to a "sovereign AI revolution," declaring, "Demand for AI sovereignty has now been unleashed."

Act now: the analyst who called NVIDIA in 2010 just named his top 10 AI stocks — and Palantir didn't make the cut. Grab the names FREE today.

Analyst Split Between Deutsche Bank and Jefferies

Wall Street reacted quickly:

• Deutsche Bank's Brad Zelnick upgraded Palantir to Buy from Hold with a $200 price target, joining Citi and D.A. Davidson's Gil Luria (who cited "parabolic" U.S. AI demand) on the bullish side.
• Jefferies's Brent Thill kept an Underperform rating while raising his price target to $80 from $70, warning that "the setup gets harder from here" as comparisons stiffen into 2027 and international growth moderates.

Palantir stock trades at a forward P/E ratio of 84x, down from a 199x four-quarter average, though still well above the S&P 500's 20x.

Prediction market traders skew with the bulls. Polymarket assigns:

• 0.85 probability to Palantir stock hitting $150 in August
• 0.517 probability to $162
• Downside scenarios below $120 carry under 10% probability

C3.ai and UiPath Don't Join the Rally

• C3.ai (NYSE: AI) shares are unchanged at $9.73
• UiPath (NYSE: PATH) stock is down 2% to $12.83

Both agentic-AI peers remain mired in their own turnaround stories, and neither is catching a sympathy bid from Palantir's print.

The iShares Expanded Tech-Software Sector ETF (NYSEARCA: IGV) is unchanged at $97.75, even though Palantir sits inside the fund.