Palantir earnings came in well above analyst expectations for Q1 2026, with revenue climbing 85% year over year to $1.63 billion. That is the company’s fastest growth rate since going public. The PLTR stock price rose on the news, trading around $146 at the time of writing, with a market cap of roughly $350 billion. An HSBC analyst also cut the Palantir stock target from $205 down to $151, and right now the Palantir stock forecast looks split between two very different camps. The Palantir vs Nvidia stock debate is heating up again too, with valuation multiples getting harder to ignore.
Palantir Earnings Surge As Stock Target And Forecast Clash
Record Numbers Across the Board
The Q1 Palantir earnings report landed as the strongest in the company’s public history across pretty much every metric. U.S. revenue grew 104% year over year to $1.28 billion, the first time that figure cleared 100% growth since the IPO. U.S. commercial revenue surged 133% to $595 million, and U.S. government revenue grew 84% to $687 million. Adjusted EPS came in at $0.33, beating the $0.28 analyst estimate. The company also raised full-year 2026 guidance to $7.65 to $7.66 billion, implying roughly 71% growth and up from the 61% guidance it set just last quarter.
Palantir CEO Alex Karp stated in the Q1 shareholder letter:
“Our financial results now demonstrate a level of strength that dwarfs the performance of essentially every software company in history at this scale.”
Karp also wrote:
“The United States remains the center, the constant core, of our business. And that business is erupting.”
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HSBC Cuts the Palantir Stock Target
Despite the strong Palantir earnings, HSBC analyst Stephen Bersey downgraded PLTR from Buy to Hold. He cut the Palantir stock target from $205 to $151. The call had nothing to do with the financials themselves. Bersey flagged that rivals like OpenAI and Anthropic now use the same “forward-deployed engineer” model that Palantir pioneered, embedding AI specialists directly with enterprise clients. The spread of agentic frameworks and model context protocol servers also lowers the barriers for competitors to offer similar AI orchestration. Right now, the PLTR stock price carries a P/E ratio of around 230, and that kind of multiple looks vulnerable if competition keeps building.
In Palantir’s official earnings release, Karp added:
“Palantir’s Rule of 40 score has soared to 145%. We have shattered the metric, a feat matched only by other fellow AI infrastructure companies: NVIDIA, Micron and SK hynix. Momentum surged as we grew 85% last quarter, our highest-ever year-over-year growth rate, by more than doubling our U.S. business, and now we are raising our full-year revenue guidance to 71% growth, 10 points ahead of our guidance from last quarter.”
Palantir vs Nvidia Stock: The Valuation Gap
The Palantir vs Nvidia stock comparison keeps coming up, and the numbers explain why. Nvidia posted 73% revenue growth in its most recent fiscal quarter and trades at a P/E of roughly 41. The Palantir stock forecast from bulls rests on the idea that high-margin AI software deserves a premium over hardware. Bears point to the Palantir vs Nvidia stock gap in multiples and argue the PLTR stock price already reflects years of perfect execution. The Palantir stock target cut from HSBC lands squarely in the middle of that argument. Right now, neither side looks easy to dismiss.