Palantir beat Wall Street estimates by a wide margin in the second quarter of 2026, reporting revenue of $1.94 billion against expectations of $1.80 billion. The company's stock surged 12% after the results were released Monday.
According to CNBC, earnings per share came in at 41 cents adjusted, compared to the 35 cents analysts had expected. Net income for the quarter reached $1.07 billion, or 41 cents per share, up from about $329 million, or 13 cents per share, in the same period a year ago. Total revenue climbed 93% from roughly $1 billion a year ago.
CEO Alex Karp did not hold back in his response to the numbers. "Forget consensus," Karp told CNBC's Seema Mody in an exclusive interview. "To my knowledge, no businesses at our scale has even grown half this much."
The results were driven heavily by a surge in commercial business inside the United States. U.S. commercial revenue jumped 149% from a year ago to $764 million. When accounting for compounding, that figure represents a 380% increase since 2024. The company's remaining U.S. commercial deal value more than doubled from a year ago to $6.24 billion.
Palantir is widely known for its work selling software to the U.S. government and military. That segment also posted strong growth. U.S. government revenue grew 90% from a year ago to $809 million.
Off the strength of those numbers, Palantir raised its full-year revenue guidance to between $8.15 billion and $8.16 billion, up from prior guidance of $7.65 billion to $7.66 billion. The company also lifted its U.S. commercial revenue forecast to in excess of $3.42 billion for 2026, compared to a previous estimate of $3.22 billion.
Palantir shares had lost 29% earlier this year as investors grew concerned that the AI software trade was running out of momentum. Monday's results pushed back hard against that narrative.
Karp said in the CNBC interview that the strong growth "looks like this is going to go on for at least another 18 months." He also weighed in on the debate over open-weight AI models, a topic he has been vocal about in recent weeks. Last month, Karp joined other tech leaders in signing a letter urging the government not to restrict open-weight models. "We need competition if we're going to keep model companies honest, which is the same thing as enterprise software," he said. He added that "The way we win in America is we compete, and our open models are going to have to become as good as Chinese open models."
