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Palantir Technologies just achieved a milestone that would have seemed outlandish even to its boldest promoters a year ago: a first-ever billion-dollar quarter, propelled by a runaway boom in artificial intelligence that is now fundamentally transforming how the company operates—and how many employees it believes it needs.
The software and data analytics giant reported $1 billion in revenue for its most recent quarter, up 48% year over year, as it dramatically outpaced Wall Street estimates and posted surges in both commercial and government contracts. U.S. revenue alone jumped 68% to $733 million, with domestic commercial sales skyrocketing 93%. Profit, too, soared by 33% to $327 million, and Palantir raised its outlook for the year, projecting full-year revenues of $4.14 billion to $4.15 billion.
The company’s “rule of 40” score—a key measure of growth plus profit margin—hit a near-unprecedented 94%, “once again obliterating the metric,” according to CEO Alex Karp. Palantir’s executives made it clear there is one main source for these new levels of productivity: artificial intelligence, blended into every layer of its business and rapidly automating tasks that once required armies of highly paid coders and IT staff.
Karp was notably exuberant on both the earnings call and in his shareholder letter. “This was a phenomenal quarter,” he wrote in the earnings release. “We continue to see the astonishing impact of AI leverage.”
In a statement provided to Fortune, Karp warned that “America is in the lead in government and commercial, but we could lose the lead. We must have an all-of country, all-in effort to keep America first or we will lose.” He urged the U.S. to double down on its current incumbent status as a beacon for the emerging technology. “It’s not a given that we win just because we’re ahead. In fact, being so far ahead is often a danger zone.”
In a subsequent appearance on CNBC, Karp said, “We’re planning to grow our revenue … while decreasing our number of people,” and described what AI is enabling his company to do. “This is a crazy, efficient revolution. The goal is to get 10x revenue and have 3,600 people. We have now 4,100.” Karp also laid out the company’s goals on the earnings call with analysts, explaining that it won’t conduct mass layoffs, but will freeze hiring and rely on AI to multiply every employee’s productivity. This has already been underway: In March, the company cut its IT workforce from 200 to fewer than 80 full-time employees.
Earnings call victory lap
Karp and other Palantir executives celebrated their astonishing quarter on the analyst call, saying that Palantir’s bespoke models are core to maximizing the impact of large language models. “LLMs simply don’t work in the real world without Palantir,” chief revenue officer Ryan Taylor said. “This is the reality fueling our growth.”
Taylor discussed how Palantir is thriving where other firms are not seeing the return on investment yet from AI. “LLMs, on their own, are at best a jagged intelligence divorced from even basic understanding,” Taylor said in remarks reported by Business Insider. “In one moment, they may appear to outperform humans in some problem-solving task, but in the next, they make catastrophic errors no human would ever make.”
Chief technology officer Shyam Sankar said that “20 years of grinding has built a unique moat and a massive lead.” He also claimed that “AI is giving the American worker superpowers,” citing advances seen at an AI summit in D.C., with examples including an ICU nurse, a factory worker, a hospital administrator, and an electric vehicle battery maintenance technician.
Karp was so bullish on Palantir’s particular employment of AI technology that he issued a challenge to higher education and elite institutions like the Ivy League. All the previous credentials for success are worthless, he suggested. “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. He added that the environment at Palantir is different from what most workers have experienced: “Most of them come from university, where they’ve just been engaged in platitudes.”
Karp told CNBC that he wants to engage with unions as re-industrialization will require AI, arguing that blue-collar workers’ salaries should go up as a result. “This is an America story,” he said. Another statement from Karp: “Just tell the haters: Read ’em and weep.”
“Palantir is clearly benefiting from AI industry momentum across its government and commercial customer bases,” noted William Blair analysts. Meanwhile, Bank of America Research reiterated its buy rating, saying it expects growth to continue as Palantir “remains the best in class for deploying and operationalizing AI into enterprises.”
Written by Nick Lichtenberg for Fortune as “Palantir CEO warns of America’s AI ‘danger zone’ as he plans to bring ‘superpowers’ to blue-collar workers” and republished with permission.
