Palantir just hit its first-ever billion-dollar quarter, smashing expectations with a huge AI-driven revenue surge.
The data analytics giant reported $1 billion this quarter, up 48% year-over-year. U.S. revenue jumped 68% to $733 million. Domestic commercial sales exploded 93%. Profits soared 33% to $327 million. Full-year revenue guidance is now $4.14 billion to $4.15 billion.
CEO Alex Karp credited AI integration across the company for this boom. Palantir is automating tasks that once needed large teams of coders. 
Karp on the earnings call and shareholder letter called it a “phenomenal quarter” and said AI impact is “astonishing.”
Karp warned in a statement to Fortune that America must stay aggressive on AI or risk losing its lead:
“America is in the lead in government and commercial, but we could lose the lead. We must have an all-of country, all-in effort to keep America first or we will lose.”
“It’s not a given that we win just because we’re ahead. In fact, being so far ahead is often a danger zone.”
On CNBC, Karp announced plans to grow revenue while shrinking headcount, aiming for 10x revenue with around 3,600 employees, down from 4,100 now.
The company already cut its IT team sharply — from 200 to under 80 full-time staff. Palantir will freeze hiring and rely on AI to boost productivity per employee.
Chief Revenue Officer Ryan Taylor praised Palantir’s custom models for making large language models actually work in the real world:
“LLMs simply don’t work in the real world without Palantir,” Taylor said.
“This is the reality fueling our growth.”
Taylor also slammed standalone LLMs:
“In one moment, they may appear to outperform humans in some problem-solving task, but in the next, they make catastrophic errors no human would ever make.”
CTO Shyam Sankar highlighted Palantir’s 20-year lead and AI empowering American workers from nurses to EV battery techs.
Karp challenged elite colleges, saying once you join Palantir, your school pedigree doesn’t matter anymore:
“If you did not go to school, or you went to a school that’s not that great, or you went to Harvard or Princeton or Yale, once you come to Palantir, you’re a Palantirian—no one cares about the other stuff.”
“Most of them come from university, where they’ve just been engaged in platitudes.”
Karp wants AI-backed reindustrialization to raise blue-collar wages and pitched the story as “an America story.”
“Just tell the haters: Read ’em and weep.”
Wall Street is bullish too. William Blair analysts praised Palantir’s AI momentum. Bank of America reiterated a buy rating, calling Palantir “best in class for deploying and operationalizing AI into enterprises.”
Palantir crushed its Q2, showing AI isn’t just hype but a clear driver for growth and efficiency gains. Its $1 billion quarter is a wake-up call to any doubters.
