Palantir CEO says he'll 10X revenue in 'crazy efficient revolution' — what investors need to know as Wall Street buys in

Yahoo

3 days ago

Palantir's enigmatic CEO Alex Karp just made a claim that would sound delusional coming from almost any other tech executive: He plans to grow revenue tenfold while shrinking his workforce by 10%.
"We're planning to grow our revenue … while decreasing our number of people," Karp told CNBC's Morgan Brennan on Aug. 5. after the data analytics giant crushed Wall Street expectations with its second-quarter earnings. "This is a crazy, efficient revolution. The goal is to get 10x revenue and have 3,600 people. We have now 4,100."
The assertion came as Palantir's stock soared to all-time highs above $179. With the stock already up 139% this year, even seasoned investors are starting to take Karp's vision seriously.
The numbers that made Wall Street believers
Palantir's second-quarter results weren't just good — they were the kind of numbers that make skeptics eat their words. The company posted revenue of $1.004 billion, marking its first-ever billion-dollar quarter and growing 48% year over year. That crushed analyst expectations of $939 million.
But the real story was hiding in the details. U.S. commercial revenue nearly doubled with 93% growth to $306 million, while the company's "Rule of 40" score — a key metric combining growth rate and profit margin — hit an astronomical 94%. To put that in perspective, most successful software companies are thrilled to hit 40%.
"The skeptics are admittedly fewer now, having been defanged and bent into a kind of submission," Karp wrote in a characteristically fiery letter to shareholders.
The company also generated adjusted free cash flow of $569 million with a 57% margin — the kind of cash generation that makes Karp's efficiency claims seem less like Silicon Valley hype and more like mathematical reality.
Real customers, real results — measured in minutes, not months
While Karp's rhetoric can sound overblown, Palantir's customers are backing up his efficiency revolution with hard numbers that would make any CFO salivate.
Fannie Mae, the mortgage giant, is now using Palantir's AI platform to detect fraud in seconds — a process that previously took months. "This new partnership will combat mortgage fraud, helping to safeguard the U.S. mortgage market for lenders, homebuyers, and taxpayers," said Priscilla Almodovar, Fannie Mae's president and CEO.
At Land O'Frost, a major food manufacturer, production schedules that once took 40 hours to create now take 30 minutes. "This can now be done in 30 minutes," confirmed Kelli Howard, the company's vice president of supply chain, referring to a process that represents an 80-fold improvement in efficiency.
Even the State Department has gotten in on the action, reducing the time to clear foreign service candidates from 60 days to just 12. "We put the first application into production in 3 months," said Alan Lewis, IT director at the Bureau of Medical Services.
Perhaps most tellingly, one healthcare executive has coined a new unit of measurement. "We've been using the term 'a Palantir unit of time' — and that represents when we're driving value in less than an hour," said Dr. Michael Ash, president and COO of Nebraska Medicine.
Wall Street takes notice as commercial momentum explodes
The numbers coming out of Palantir's commercial business are the kind that make Wall Street analysts recalibrate their models. U.S. commercial contract value climbed 222% year over year to $843 million — a figure that suggests Palantir's push beyond government contracts is just getting started.
The remaining deal value for U.S. commercial customers grew 145% year over year and 20% quarter over quarter to $2.8 billion, indicating a robust pipeline of future revenue. These aren't just one-off wins; the company's U.S. commercial customer count jumped 64% year over year to 485 customers.
But perhaps the most eye-popping development is Palantir's recent 10-year contract with the U.S. Army worth up to $10 billion. That's more than three times Palantir's entire 2024 revenue of $2.87 billion, making it one of the company's biggest deals ever.
The combination of exploding commercial growth and massive government contracts has analysts scrambling to update their models. With the company raising full-year guidance to between $4.142 billion and $4.150 billion — up from the previous $3.89 billion to $3.90 billion — Wall Street is beginning to realize that Palantir's transformation from a government contractor to a dual-threat AI powerhouse might be further along than anyone expected.
The CEO who thinks Harvard is overrated
In typical Karp fashion, the CEO used the earnings call to take shots at traditional institutions while touting Palantir's unconventional approach to business.
"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," Karp said during Monday's earnings call. "This is by far the best credential in tech. If you come to Palantir, your career is set."
It's not just talk. Palantir has achieved its explosive growth without a traditional enterprise sales force — a decision that conventional wisdom said would doom the company. Instead, they've focused on building products so compelling that customers essentially sell themselves.
The approach seems to be working. During the second quarter, Palantir closed 157 deals worth at least $1 million, including 66 deals of at least $5 million and 42 deals of at least $10 million.
What investors need to know
Palantir just dramatically raised its financial targets for 2025, and the numbers are staggering. The company now expects to bring in between $4.142 billion and $4.150 billion in revenue this year — that's up from their previous forecast of $3.89 billion to $3.90 billion. To put that in perspective, they just increased their revenue outlook by about $250 million in a single quarter.
The U.S. commercial business is the real rocket ship here. Palantir expects this segment alone to generate more than $1.302 billion in 2025, growing at least 85% year over year. That's the kind of growth rate you typically see from small startups, not companies already doing billions in revenue.
The company expects to generate between $1.8 billion and $2 billion in adjusted free cash flow this year. In plain English, that means the company is throwing off massive amounts of cash — nearly 50 cents for every dollar of revenue. Most software companies would kill for those kinds of margins.
But here's where it gets tricky for investors: Despite the impressive results, Palantir's stock currently trades at 277 times forward earnings. That's a valuation that would make even the frothiest dot-com era stocks blush.
Chief Revenue Officer Ryan Taylor provided some context for why customers are willing to pay premium prices: "LLMs simply don't work in the real world without Palantir. This is the reality fueling our growth."
In other words, while everyone's talking about ChatGPT and other AI tools, Palantir claims to be the crucial bridge that makes these technologies actually useful for businesses — and companies are willing to pay up for that capability.
The bottom line
Is Karp's vision of 10x revenue growth with fewer employees realistic, or is it the kind of hubris that precedes a spectacular fall? The numbers suggest it might actually be achievable. With 57% cash flow margins, exploding commercial adoption, and massive government contracts in hand, Palantir is generating the kind of efficiency gains that make the impossible look inevitable.
As Karp himself put it, "We are still in the earliest stages, the beginning of the first act, of a revolution that will play out over years and decades."
For investors, the question isn't whether Palantir can deliver on its promises — the company is already doing that. The question is whether even these spectacular results can justify a valuation that assumes perfection for years to come.
With analysts suggesting investors buy on pullbacks rather than chase the stock at all-time highs, patience might be the best strategy for those looking to join Karp's "crazy efficient revolution."
This article provides information only and should not be construed as advice. It is provided without warranty of any kind.