PLTR Q2 2026 — The Deceleration Thesis Died; Only the Multiple Is Left

The setup

Palantir walked into this print as the most-argued-about stock in software, and the argument had narrowed to one line item. Shares closed near $143 on August 3, having clawed back from roughly $123 a week earlier but still well off the year's high, and the options market priced an expected move of about ±12% — a wide band that told you the market itself didn't know which way the tail broke. Consensus wanted revenue near $1.81B (+81% year-over-year) and adjusted EPS around $0.33 (unverified estimates). The sell-side bench was split on price, not on facts: Rosenblatt at $225 and Wedbush's Dan Ives at $320 on one end, RBC's Rishi Jaluria at $90 Underperform on the other, with an average target near $182 (unverified — analyst targets, not filing figures). Every one of those numbers rested on the same question — could U.S. commercial hold triple-digit growth, or was the AIP land-grab about to mean-revert into an impossible comp? That was the entire ballgame. It didn't revert; it accelerated.

The numbers

Total revenue landed at $1.935B, up 93% year-over-year — roughly a seven-point beat versus the +81% the Street modeled. The engine was U.S. commercial revenue at $764M, +149%, with U.S. government still compounding hard at $809M, +90%. Profitability scaled with the top line rather than bending to it: GAAP net income of $1.062B (a 55% net margin), GAAP diluted EPS of $0.41 ahead of the ~$0.33 Street adjusted figure, and an adjusted operating margin of 62% that put the Rule of 40 at 155% — a score that essentially does not exist elsewhere in software at this scale. Cash generation matched the story: cash from operations of $1.216B and adjusted free cash flow of $1.220B, both at roughly a 63% margin. Under the hood, the forward book was as strong as the print: total contract value closed of $3.373B (+49%), U.S. commercial TCV of $2.132B (+153%), and U.S. commercial remaining deal value of $6.238B, up 124%. Deal activity thickened at the top — 220 deals worth ≥$1M, of which 98 were ≥$5M and 73 were ≥$10M — while the U.S. commercial customer count rose to 653, up 35% year-over-year and 6% sequentially. The stock added about 12% after hours (unverified — after-hours quote, not a filing figure).