Alex Karp, CEO of Palantir, prefers to be loud and unfiltered, which has made him and his company one of the darlings of Wall Street and retail investors galore.
Palantir shares have surged nearly 400% in the last year, juiced by the company’s rapid revenue growth and Karp’s appeal to retail investors.
“I did deep research into their business model, government and commercial applications, and listened closely to Alex Karp — a CEO I would call a rock star,” said Steve Jones, a retail investor who owns many shares of Palantir. “That combination of fundamentals and leadership made me a buyer.”
The Denver-based software company’s recent path to success mirrors a similar playbook Elon Musk used after taking over Tesla and demonstrates their growing influence within the minds of investors and the software-as-a-service industry. Palantir leverages Karp to craft a brand of disruption and allure to spread its software platform throughout governments and enterprises far and wide while amassing huge support and belief for future returns, turbocharging share prices in the process.
For many other CEOs, daydreaming about spraying financial analysts in the face with fentanyl-laced urine would be a death knell, but for Karp, it only amplifies the very aura that attracts retail investors and fosters the cult of personality around him.
“It’s refreshing for people to hear a no filters, no nonsense, ‘this is what I’m thinking,’ perspective when you’re living in a world laced with corporate jargon,” said Mark Giarelli, an equity analyst at Morningstar Inc.
So when Karp makes bombastic jokes about wanting to drone strike venture capitalists onstage, it’s quite on brand.
Moving Palantir, a software-as-a-service company that analyzes, manages and secures data, and its headquarters to Denver from Silicon Valley in early 2020 furthered the idea that it’s ‘not like other software companies.’
Palantir’s even larger move to court retail investors was their decision to change their public listing from the New York Stock Exchange to the Nasdaq in November 2024, forcing funds to buy its shares in the process after immediately qualifying for the Nasdaq 100. Since doing so on November 26, 2024, share prices have soared by more than 200%. The exchange contains the majority of stocks highly popular on trading platforms such as Robinhood and WeBull which many non-institutional investors use.
The listing flip came shortly after its inclusion into the S&P 500 in late September 2024, as it had become a big player in the stock market.
Palantir and Karp’s success matches that of Tesla and Musk, whose personality has long attracted a large group of retail traders that’ve bid up the stock price. Between the two companies, the key difference is the actual solid business underlying them, or rather the lack thereof when it comes to Tesla.
“They’re disruptive and I mean that in a positive sense,“ said CEO of Celero Strategies and former Deputy Undersecretary of Defense Stan Soloway in an interview with the Times Square Investment Journal. “They are now seen as the vanguard of where we’re going in terms of the nature of work generally and how technology’s transforming the nature of work in a significant way.”
Investors’ hope for Tesla to be more than an electric vehicle manufacturer drives a large part of its valuation as it currently trades over 250 times forward looking earnings. Palantir isn’t too far off with a 263.93 forward 12 month P/E ratio as investors keep the same faith with the software company.
Unlike Tesla, Palantir is still at the top of its industry. Palantir was founded in 2003 and funded largely by co-founder and Republican megadonor Peter Thiel and seed money through IQT, an investment arm of the CIA.
“They were fairly visible and beginning to win work up through the latter part of Obama,” said Soloway. “And then in the beginning of the first Trump administration, it was very clear that they were players and here to stay.”
Palantir offers two main products, Gotham and Foundry, which are operating systems for governments and private enterprises respectively to gather and analyze their data as well as a software deployment tool called Apollo. Their Artificial Intelligence Platform bundles AI into its product architectures by using large-language-models to help with decision-making and data analysis.
Consensus estimates among Wall Street analysts for the company’s 2025 yearly revenue figure currently resides at $4.17 billion, which would be a 45% increase from the previous year if met. Yearly net income estimates predict Palantir to rake in $1.14 billion, which would be a 143% increase within the same time period.
Projections for next year’s earnings follow a similar upward trajectory. Wall Street currently expects Palantir’s revenue to surpass $6 billion and reach nearly $2 billion in profits.
Between its products spread between its government and commercial customers, more and more enterprises and government agencies continue to opt into their software. From 2023 to 2024, its customer base grew by 43%.
Although, favorability doesn’t always last forever and constant visibility puts one in many positions where such a thing can dissipate quickly. Musk’s right-wing pivot and subsequent involvement in the second Trump administration didn’t exactly sit well with investors.
“Musk and Alex Karp, they’re really not afraid to speak their mind and they generate this cult-like appreciation of their character,” says Giarelli. “Though usually, you don’t want to be too political…You don’t want to upset either side of the aisle.”
There are other pressures on the company; a group of former employees who signed a letter stating the leadership at Palantir had strayed away from their original mission due to the company’s growing relationship with President Trump. And, even though Wall Street has high estimates for Palantir’s growth, many analysts think the rally has gone too far; the average analyst price target is $156.27, about 20% lower than where shares currently trade.
Still, Karp hasn’t reaped many risks associated with being a loud and visible CEO.
While the stock price has taken a dip following Palantir’s strongest earnings release since going public, investors seem to be spooked by the company’s sticker price, not because of anything Karp has said or done.
Despite the tumbling stock price, shares are still up over 100% year to date. Market enthusiasm also finds Palantir’s utilization of AI to be quite compelling. AIP integrated within the operating systems embedded into customers’ own environments affords capabilities and access not many others have. Private data, according to a recent comment from Oracle CEO Larry Ellison during a keynote address, is vital for AI to reach its “peak value,” which is something Palantir has abundant access to. Many people believe Karp and Palantir are still climbing the summit.
“When the company keeps beating the numbers the way they are and keeps growing the way they are, that’s really what’s driving their valuation,” said Schappel.
Eyes are on Karp and his company as he embraces the labels of disruption and earnestness. Wall Street projections for the final quarter of the year continue to climb up following Palantir’s latest earnings release and the same goes for next year’s expectations which are sky high. .
“The ceiling is nowhere near in sight,” says Jones, the retail investor. “They’re printing money. Five to ten years out, I see today’s revenue as just the foundation.”