Government Contracts – Live Laugh Love Do

4 Words From Palantir CEO Alex Karp That BigBear.ai Investors Can’t Ignore

admin — Sat, 16 Aug 2025 22:01:40 +0000

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Palantir CEO Alex Karp just delivered a curt, straightforward message to the company’s rivals.

Dr. Alex Karp isn’t your typical corporate executive. He doesn’t hold an MBA, and his public remarks often come in the form of unscripted, philosophical musings. Yet as CEO of data analytics powerhouse Palantir Technologies (PLTR -2.14%), Karp has led the company’s transformation from a secretive government contractor into a leading force in artificial intelligence (AI) adoption across the enterprise software landscape.

What many investors once viewed as a niche corridor, the intersection of defense operations and AI has swiftly become fertile ground supporting Palantir’s generational run. The company has secured some of the Department of Defense’s (DOD) most complex, mission-critical contracts, worth billions of dollars, cementing its role as a trusted partner in national security.

Following Palantir’s monster Q2 earnings report earlier this month, Karp’s confidence was on full display. During an interview on financial news program CNBC, he delivered a blunt message to Palantir’s rivals: “read ’em and weep.”

Let’s unpack what Karp really meant and assess why investors in competing platforms such as BigBear.ai (BBAI 5.39%) can no longer afford to ignore Palantir’s commanding lead in the AI defense arena.

Palantir is setting the pace to become the AI backbone for military operations

During the second quarter, Palantir’s revenue surged 48% year over year to $1.0 billion. While that growth is impressive on its own, the finer details reveal just how deeply Palantir has embedded itself in the military operations pocket of the AI landscape.

The company’s government segment grew 49% year over year, slightly outpacing overall growth. Drilling down further, Palantir’s U.S. government revenue rose by an even stronger 53% — reaching $426 million in the quarter. This momentum is supported by a string of high-profile Pentagon deals.

In March, Palantir partnered with defense contractors Northrop Grumman and L3Harris Technologies, along with autonomous systems specialist Anduril, in a $178 million U.S. Army deal to help build the Tactical Intelligence Targeting Access Node (TITAN) ground transportation system.

Just months later, the Army extended its relationship with Palantir, awarding a $795 million extension to continue using the company’s Maven Smart System(MSS) platform — bringing the total deal value above $1.2 billion.

More recently, Palantir further strengthened its public sector footprint with two additional contracts: a multiyear contract with the Army worth up to $10 billion, as well as a separate award to help develop a surveillance system for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

Image source: Getty Images.

Why is this important for BigBear.ai investors?

During BigBear.ai’s second-quarter earnings call, CEO Kevin McAleenan acknowledged that the company has “seen disruptions in federal contracts from efficiency efforts this quarter, most notably in programs that support the U.S. Army, as they seek to consolidate and modernize their data architecture.”

Given the details outlined above, there’s a strong possibility that the “disruptions” McAleenan referenced reflect Palantir winning these contracts. While BigBear.ai operates in some of the same broad fields as Palantir, such as AI analytics and machine learning, I think the comparison between the two companies is increasingly lopsided.

Each new government contract awarded to Palantir deepens its competitive moat. The company’s Foundry and Gotham platforms are evolving into a comprehensive, integrated ecosystem for the public sector — supporting a range of mission-critical needs.

Rather than true “network effects,” Palantir is enjoying a cumulative competitive edge that’s compounding with each deployment of its software — ultimately broadening the company’s footprint, strengthening its relationships, and making the cost of switching to competing platforms more costly.

These dynamics have effectively given Palantir a mini-monopoly on certain pockets of public sector deal flow, beyond the capacities of traditional defense contractors specializing in manufacturing hardware or equipment.

Is BigBear.ai stock a buy?

Karp’s soundbite wasn’t just swagger, nor was it merely aimed at short-sellers who have been betting against Palantir for years. It was a direct shot at every competing platform.

The 2025 stock chart reflecting Palantir and BigBear.ai tells a very different story.

BBAI data by YCharts

Palantir has built steady momentum on the back of rising deal flow, translating directly into accelerating revenue and profitability. BigBear.ai, by contrast, has seen far more volatile price swings, with its moves often driven by hype and the hopeful narrative that it could one day become the “next Palantir.”

That outcome appears increasingly improbable. Each new government contract Palantir secures widens the gap between it and smaller rivals struggling to keep pace.

For investors seeking exposure to AI’s role in military operations, Palantir offers a proven track record over speculative counterparts such as BigBear.ai, whose traction remains more aspirational than tangible.

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Veteran trader boosts Palantir price target on defense-spending outlook

admin — Wed, 25 Jun 2025 18:11:07 +0000

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TheStreet Pro’s Stephen Guilfoyle is thinking of a company.

This group has a large and growing position in defense contracting as well as plenty of corporate clients.

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And the company’s shares were climbing recently even as other names in the Dow Jones U.S. Defense Index, such as Kratos (KTOS) , Northrop Grumman (NOC) , L3Harris (LHX) and Lockheed Martin (LMT) , were falling.

“They don’t sell hardware,” the veteran trader said in his recent column. “They don’t sell things that go ‘boom.’ They don’t sell flying machines, machines that swim or tracked vehicles. They sell intelligence. They sell gig-data driven, AI-supported, game-changing analysis.”

Which company are we talking about here?

“I speak, of course, of Palantir Technologies (PLTR) ,” Guilfoyle said, referring to the data-analytics software producer. “In this environment, it has become possibly America’s most important defense contractor.”

Palantir Technologies CEO Alex Karp’s company has benefited from several government contracts.

Image source: Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images

Wall Street veteran cites NATO summit

Guilfoyle, whose career dates back to the floor of the New York Stock Exchange in the 1980s, noted that at the recent NATO summit, leaders of the security alliance committed to invest 5% of GDP annually on defense and security-related matters by 2035.

Spain reached a deal with NATO to be excluded from the spending target and will spend 2.1% of GDP.

More Palantir

“It was a little less than eight years ago that President Trump could not get the majority of these nations to pay their fair share,” Guilfoyle said. “Whatever actually comes out of this summit, on top of the increase in spending on defense, I am sure there will be some increased orders for the industrial hardware of conventional warfare.”

While those outlays will buy tanks, artillery, aircraft, naval craft, missiles and missile defense technology, he said, “this plays straight into the hands of a firm like Palantir.”

“For nations strapped fiscally, looking for the most bang for their buck, or euro, the purchase of software-driven big-data platforms capable of providing accurate analysis and actionable intelligence may just be the best way to upspend on defense,” Guilfoyle said.

Several tech companies have benefited from the Trump administration’s return, as it has committed to promoting technological advancement, particularly in areas like artificial intelligence and digital assets,

Shares of Palantir have nearly doubled this year and have soared nearly six times from a year ago. The Denver group has been on the receiving end of lucrative defense contracts.

These include a recently expanded $1.3 billion deal with the U.S. Defense Department for the company’s Maven Smart System and a controversial software contract with Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Palantir contracts spark controversy

Palantir, which has been an ICE contractor for more than a decade, was recently awarded $30 million to provide the agency with “near real-time visibility” on people self-deporting from the U.S., Wired reported.

In addition, a report by the Project on Government Oversight said White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller owned between $100,001 and $250,000 of Palantir stock, raising “conflict of interest concerns.”

Meanwhile, a coalition of Democratic Party lawmakers wrote to Palantir CEO Alex Karp after reports said the company was helping the IRS build a searchable, governmentwide megadatabase to house Americans’ sensitive information.

In a response to a New York Times story about its Foundry product being added to four federal agencies, the company said, “Palantir never collects data to unlawfully surveil Americans, and our Foundry platform employs granular security protections.”

Palantir is also expanding its corporate client base, bringing in such diverse names as Heineken (HEINY) , Walgreens Boots Alliance (WBA) and AT&T (T)

“Intelligence is a corporate affair, too,” said Guilfoyle, who raised his price target on Palantir shares to $181 from $156. “The commercial side of what Palantir provides has been growing more quickly than the government side, by a 71% to 45% score.”

He does add that Palantir’s valuation “is absurd unless an actual tsunami of investment growth continues to be made in this kind of analysis and resultant intelligence is made by governments and businesses that consider it a nonnegotiable ‘must-have.'” Guilfoyle said.

Yahoo Finance pegs PLTR’s forward price-to-earnings multiple at 263.

“Then, at what price, survival? The threat — and it will come — to Palantir’s valuation will come from competitive pressure, but that day, in my opinion, is not yet upon us.”

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Political Historian Weighs In On Trump And Musk’s Public Feud

admin — Mon, 09 Jun 2025 19:03:56 +0000

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President Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s public breakup broke the internet this week, sparking several concerns and questions about the two most powerful men in the world, a political historian says.

What began earlier this week as a seemingly slow unraveling of a close relationship between Trump and his billionaire adviser quickly imploded on Thursday into a real-time public spat on social media.

Trump had said earlier in the day that he was “very disappointed” in Musk for harshly criticizing his so-called Big Beautiful Bill, which would add $2.4 trillion to the deficit over 10 years, cut federal spending by nearly $1.3 million with cuts to Medicaid and other social programs, and leave about 10.9 million more people without health insurance, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.

Things took a turn hours later when Trump posted on his Truth Social platform that Musk “went CRAZY.” The Tesla CEO responded by charging on his platform X, formerly Twitter, that the reason the Jeffrey Epstein files haven’t been released is because Trump is in them. “Time to drop the really big bomb,” Musk wrote.

The head-spinning fallout ramped up when Musk went on to suggest that Trump should be impeached. The president then threatened to cancel Musk’s government contracts.

Trump has since reportedly indicated on Friday that he’s not interested in talking to Musk.

What happens next is unclear. But Thursday’s dispute should concern everyone, said Matt Dallek, a political historian and professor at The Graduate School of Political Management at The George Washington University.

Dallek said Thursday’s online debacle was “pretty remarkable” and “especially vicious” considering Musk arguably had “more power in the administration than even the vice president.”

But the incident spurred one crucial question, according to Dallek: Why did both men even have time to engage in such a spectacle?

“Musk has like six major businesses, he’s the richest man in the world, and Trump is president of the United States — and they’re spending pretty much the entire day insulting each other… on social media,” he said.

“I think it’s actually worrying for the country that basically, arguably the two most powerful people in the country are having this public meltdown,” he continued. “What does it say about their ability to govern? Or frankly, for Musk to lead his businesses?”

Elon Musk photographed during a Cabinet meeting at the White House on Wednesday, April 30, 2025, in Washington.

Dallek said that he believes Thursday’s public feud also raises questions about each of their “competence.”

“This is where their energy is going,” he said.

But Dallek didn’t necessarily think their fallout was “totally inevitable” — certainly not the way things played out on Thursday.

“I think what was more likely, in some ways, was a slower, quieter parting of ways,” he said, but “that’s obviously not what happened.”

The massive blowup, which Dallek called “deeply irrational,” can be contributed to the fact that Trump and Musk “each have a lot of power — Trump, I think, has a lot more than Musk — but they each have a lot of power,” he said. “They also have a lot to lose.”

Overall, Thursday’s social media drama between a world leader and the richest man in the world — who has led the so-called Department of Government Efficiency — should be concerning for people across the globe, Dallek said.

“Do you really want the president spending an entire day focused on a highly personal public feud? With the richest man in the world? And that’s where his energies are going, that’s where his mental space is?” he said. “As opposed to staying focused on this legislation that he’s trying to pass, or on peace between Ukraine and Russia… or tariffs, or the economy, or to lower the cost of living?”

“You have a leader — of whether it’s a country or a business — and they’re spending all their time engaged in a feud… I mean [Trump’s] basically acting like a 2-year-old,” Dallek said. “Yet he’s got a finger on the nuclear button… it’s concerning.”

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Government Contracts – Live Laugh Love Do

4 Words From Palantir CEO Alex Karp That BigBear.ai Investors Can’t Ignore

Palantir is setting the pace to become the AI backbone for military operations

Why is this important for BigBear.ai investors?

Is BigBear.ai stock a buy?

Veteran trader boosts Palantir price target on defense-spending outlook

Wall Street veteran cites NATO summit

Palantir contracts spark controversy

Political Historian Weighs In On Trump And Musk’s Public Feud

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