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WELCOME TO BETA FINCH, YOUR AI-POWERED EARNINGS BREAKDOWN.

ALEX: Welcome to Beta Finch, your AI-powered earnings breakdown. I'm Alex, joined as always by Jordan, and today we're digging into Palantir's Q2 2026 print — and folks, this one's a doozy. But before we get into it, quick disclaimer: this podcast is AI-generated content for educational and entertainment purposes only. Nothing we discuss should be considered investment advice. Always do your own research and consult a qualified financial advisor before making any investment decisions.

JORDAN: And we need that disclaimer today more than usual, because Alex Karp did not hold back on this call. But let's start with the numbers, because they're genuinely wild. Revenue grew 93% year-over-year — that's Palantir's highest growth rate ever, at this scale.

ALEX: Right, and it's not a small-company effect either. We're talking $1.935 billion in quarterly revenue. The U.S. business specifically grew 115% year-over-year and is now over 81% of total revenue. U.S. commercial — meaning private companies, not government — accelerated to 149% year-over-year growth. That's up from an already huge number last quarter.

JORDAN: The bookings numbers back that up too. They closed $2.132 billion in U.S. commercial TCV — total contract value — in a single quarter. That's nearly $800 million above their previous best quarter ever. And 220 deals worth a million dollars or more, 73 of those over $10 million. Net dollar retention hit 157%, up 700 basis points sequentially — meaning existing customers aren't just staying, they're massively expanding their spend.

ALEX: On profitability, this wasn't a "growth at all costs" story either. Adjusted free cash flow was $1.22 billion, a 63% margin. GAAP net income crossed a billion dollars for the first time. Rule of 40 score — that combines growth plus margin — hit 155. For context, 40 is considered good for software companies. They're at nearly four times that.

JORDAN: And they raised guidance meaningfully. Full-year revenue guidance moved up to around $8.15 billion, which they called their largest-ever guidance raise. U.S. commercial guidance now sits above $3.4 billion for the year, implying at least 134% growth.

ALEX: So let's talk strategy, because CTO Shyam Sankar and CEO Alex Karp spent a lot of time on this idea of "AI sovereignty." The pitch is basically: if you're an enterprise just buying tokens from a frontier AI lab, you're paying to leak your own proprietary data and expertise into that lab's training pipeline — helping them build tools that could eventually compete with you. Palantir's argument is that their platform, AIP, lets companies keep control of their data, their models, and the "weights" — meaning the actual trained intelligence — inside their own security boundary.

JORDAN: There was a great anecdote about this — Shyam described a bake-off at a major tech company between a frontier AI lab's team and Palantir's forward-deployed engineers. Same customer, same timeline, same underlying models. The lab reportedly failed to deliver on a ticketing automation problem, while Palantir's team built something that converted into a $10 million contract. Whether or not you love the framing, it's a concrete data point on why enterprises are choosing them.

ALEX: They also introduced this term "benchmaking" versus "benchmaxing" — basically arguing that generic AI benchmarks don't matter much; what matters is building a benchmark specific to your business and optimizing toward that. They gave an example where an open-weight model, Nemotron Ultra, with no extra tuning, beat frontier models on five actual production tasks within 24 hours of testing.

JORDAN: On the government side — which is still nearly half of total revenue — U.S. government revenue grew 90% year-over-year. Their Maven platform now has over 25,000 builders

This episode includes AI-generated content.

# Beta Finch Podcast Script: Palantir Q1 2026 Earnings

**ALEX:** Welcome to Beta Finch, your AI-powered earnings breakdown! I'm Alex, and joining me as always is Jordan. Today we're diving into Palantir's absolutely explosive Q1 2026 results - and folks, when I say explosive, I mean it. This podcast is AI-generated content for educational and entertainment purposes only. Nothing we discuss should be considered investment advice. Always do your own research and consult a qualified financial advisor before making any investment decisions.

**JORDAN:** Alex, I've been covering earnings for years, and these Palantir numbers are just wild. We're talking about 85% year-over-year revenue growth - their highest as a public company. But what really caught my eye was their U.S. business hitting triple digits for the first time since their direct listing.

**ALEX:** Right, 104% growth in the U.S.! And get this - their U.S. business now represents 79% of total revenue. They pulled in $1.63 billion in revenue for the quarter, up 16% sequentially. But Jordan, what's your take on their "Rule of 40" score hitting 145?

**JORDAN:** For listeners who might not know, the Rule of 40 combines revenue growth rate and profit margins - and anything over 40 is considered excellent. Palantir just scored 145, up from 127 last quarter. That's not just good, that's almost unheard of at this scale.

**ALEX:** And they're not slowing down. They raised their full-year 2026 revenue guidance to $7.656 billion - that's 71% growth year-over-year and a 10% bump from their previous guidance. What's driving all this growth?

**JORDAN:** It's all about their AIP platform - their Artificial Intelligence Platform. CEO Alex Karp was pretty bold on the call, claiming "almost every single highlighted example of AI that actually is producing results in the U.S. is actually Palantir." That's a huge statement, but the numbers seem to back it up.

**ALEX:** Speaking of bold statements, Karp mentioned they're achieving this growth with essentially just seven salespeople who actually sell, compared to what would normally be 7,000 for a company their size. That suggests incredible product-market fit.

**JORDAN:** The enterprise AI story is fascinating here. While everyone's talking about AI "slop" - their term for unreliable AI outputs - Palantir positions their platform as the "no-slop zone." They're saying enterprises need precision and governance when deploying AI, not just flashy demos.

**ALEX:** Let's break down the segments. Their commercial business grew 95% year-over-year to $774 million, with U.S. commercial specifically up 133%. But government wasn't slouch either - up 76% to $858 million.

**JORDAN:** The government wins are particularly interesting. They landed a $300 million USDA contract and their Maven Smart System for defense continues expanding. Ryan Taylor mentioned that Maven usage has doubled in the past four months and is now 4x what it was twelve months ago.

**ALEX:** What struck me was their customer expansion. Net dollar retention hit 150% - that means existing customers are spending 50% more than they were a year ago. And they're now at 1,007 total customers, up 31% year-over-year.

**JORDAN:** The cash generation is incredible too. They generated $899 million in cash from operations and $925 million in adjusted free cash flow. Karp made a great point - their free cash flow this quarter is larger than their total revenue was in the same quarter last year.

**ALEX:** During the Q&A, there were some interesting exchanges about competition from AI labs like OpenAI and Anthropic moving into enterprise. How did management respond to that?

**JORDAN:** Karp was pretty dismissive, honestly. He basically said "go ahead and try the alternatives" - test out what he calls the "slop" and then compare it to what Palantir delivers. He seems confident that enterprises doing real-world testing will come back to Palantir.

**ALEX:** CTO Shyam Sankar made a fascinatin

This episode includes AI-generated content.

**BETA FINCH PODCAST SCRIPT**

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**ALEX**: Welcome to Beta Finch, your AI-powered earnings breakdown where we cut through the noise to bring you what really matters from corporate America's latest results. I'm Alex.

**JORDAN**: And I'm Jordan. Today we're diving into what might be one of the most jaw-dropping earnings reports we've covered - Palantir's Q4 2025 results that just dropped yesterday.

**ALEX**: Before we jump in, I need to mention that this podcast is AI-generated content for educational and entertainment purposes only. Nothing we discuss should be considered investment advice. Always do your own research and consult a qualified financial advisor before making any investment decisions.

**JORDAN**: Absolutely. And Alex, when you say "jaw-dropping," you're not kidding. I mean, where do we even start with these numbers?

**ALEX**: Let's start with the headline figure - 70% revenue growth year-over-year. For a company that's been public for several years now, that's just... unprecedented.

**JORDAN**: Right, and what really caught my attention is that this wasn't just top-line growth. Their "Rule of 40" score - which measures combined revenue growth and profit margins - hit 127. For context, anything above 40 is considered excellent for a SaaS company.

**ALEX**: And the US business is absolutely on fire. US revenue grew 93% year-over-year, now representing 77% of their total revenue. Their US commercial segment specifically grew 137% year-over-year. These aren't typos, folks.

**JORDAN**: What's fascinating is how they're achieving this. It's not just about adding more customers - though they did grow to 954 customers, up 34% year-over-year. It's about existing customers dramatically expanding their usage. Their top 20 customers now generate $94 million each in trailing twelve-month revenue, up 45% year-over-year.

**ALEX**: The deal sizes they're talking about are staggering. They mentioned a healthcare company that went from demos to a $96 million deal by year-end. An engineering services company signed an $80 million contract after just seeing some fall demos.

**JORDAN**: And here's what's really interesting about their guidance for 2026 - they're projecting $7.19 billion in revenue, which represents 61% growth. Remember, at the beginning of 2025, they were guiding for around 30% growth and ended up with 56%.

**ALEX**: Let's talk about what's driving this. Their AIP platform - that's their AI Platform - seems to be the secret sauce here. CEO Alex Karp made some pretty bold claims about how they're different from other AI companies.

**JORDAN**: Yeah, Karp was... characteristically colorful in his commentary. He basically argued that while everyone else is competing on commoditized AI models, Palantir is focused on what he called "scaling the leverage" of AI in real-world production environments.

**ALEX**: The defense business is equally impressive. US government revenue grew 66% year-over-year. They landed a $448 million contract with the Navy for modernizing shipbuilding supply chains, and their "Warp Speed" initiative seems to be expanding beyond just submarines.

**JORDAN**: Speaking of Warp Speed and their "Ship OS" - they shared some incredible efficiency gains. One shipbuilder reduced planning time from 160 hours to 10 minutes. A shipyard cut material review from weeks to less than an hour.

**ALEX**: But here's something that really stood out to me from the Q&A - when asked about international expansion, Karp was pretty blunt. He basically said they don't have the bandwidth to focus on difficult international markets because US demand is so overwhelming.

**JORDAN**: That was a fascinating strategic admission. He specifically called out Europe and Canada as markets where there's "lack of adoption," while praising adoption in places like Israel and Arab countries. It sounds like they're deliberately choosing to focus where they see the most receptive customers.

**ALEX**: The cash generation is also

This episode includes AI-generated content.