2 weeks ago
10
Micah Zimmerman, The Motley Fool
Thu, April 16, 2026 astatine 10:47 AM CDT 6 min read
Palantir Technologies (NASDAQ: PLTR) is 1 of the astir costly stocks successful the S&P 500 by astir immoderate modular measure. It trades astatine astir 60 to 80 times guardant expected revenue, depending connected the day, and a fig of credible Wall Street analysts think the banal could suffer much than fractional its worth from here. When an concern slope similar Jefferies says a banal has 51% downside -- its 12-month terms people is $70, and Palantir opened Thursday trading astatine $144.29 -- you shouldn't question it off.
But here's what I deliberation those carnivore cases miss, and wherefore Palantir whitethorn beryllium the uncommon lawsuit wherever a dependency connected authorities contracts is really a diagnostic alternatively than a vulnerability.
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In March, Deputy Secretary of Defense Steve Feinberg signed a memo establishing Palantir's Maven Smart System arsenic an authoritative Pentagon "program of record." That operation sounds bureaucratic, and it is, but successful defence contracting terms, it's astir arsenic imperishable arsenic thing gets.
Program-of-record presumption means Maven enters the military's ceremonial multiyear fund system, with a protected enactment point crossed fund cycles. Experimental programs whitethorn get cut. Programs of grounds don't.
Maven is simply a command-and-control AI level that ingests information from much than 150 sources -- outer imagery, drone video, radar, infrared sensors, signals quality -- and runs machine imaginativeness algorithms to place battlefield targets successful near-real time. The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency has said Maven tin make 1,000 targeting recommendations per hour. During Operation Epic Fury against Iran successful aboriginal 2026, it reportedly processed 1,000 targets successful the archetypal 24 hours of operations. President Donald Trump publically praised Palantir afterward.
Most defence declaration disapproval focuses connected attraction hazard -- 1 company, 1 agency, 1 contract. Palantir has structured its authorities relationships differently. The $10 cardinal endeavor statement the Army signed with the institution successful July 2025 consolidated 75 abstracted progressive Palantir contracts nether a azygous framework. That consolidation means that Palantir is not winning a contract; it is the infrastructure.
The Army specifically cited the request to halt managing "dozens of contracts with varying terms" arsenic the crushed for that consolidation. But arsenic a client, you don't physique that benignant of consolidation astir a vendor you're readying to replace.
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