Palantir Execs Dump Shares Right After Talking Big on Earnings… What Do They Know That You Don’t?

We haven’t talked about Palantir in a while, but maybe we should’ve… because things are starting to get weird in Denver.

The stock is up 63% year-to-date, which sounds like a clean win... until you start poking around and realize it’s acting a lot like one of those cursed Minesweeper boards I used to play on my parents’ Gateway desktop. You remember the feeling, clicking away with confidence, thinking you’ve figured it out, then boom... one wrong move and you're staring at a screen full of exploded pixels. That’s kind of what Palantir’s setup looks like right now.

Because hiding underneath the big green candle are a few flashing red flags. First, you’ve got defense budget cuts, which isn’t ideal when Uncle Sam is your biggest client. Then there’s the valuation, which looks like someone spilled coffee on the keyboard and hit the “6” key 40 times. And now, we’ve got a fresh wave of insiders cashing out like they know how this movie ends.

Let’s start there. Just weeks after getting on an earnings call and practically telling investors, “We’re taking over the world, you’d be nuts not to hold,” CEO Alex Karp turned around and sold $50 million worth of stock. CTO Shyam Sankar joined in with $21 million, and co-founder Stephen Cohen casually offloaded another $43.5 million. That’s $114 million in insider selling, all while the stock hovers near all-time highs and retail investors are still out here shouting “diamond hands” on reddit and Twitter.

To be fair, Karp still owns about 6.43 million shares, worth roughly $787 million, so it’s not like he rage-quit the company. But the timing is suspicious. After months of talking up Palantir’s future, the top brass decided it was time to take a little off the table. Which, depending on your perspective, either means they’re playing it safe... or they know exactly where the landmines are.

And they’re not the only ones watching the terrain get rocky. Back in March, the Trump (and Elon) administration debuted the Department of Government Efficiency and promptly announced that defense spending would be cut by 8% every year through 2030. Considering more than 40% of Palantir’s revenue comes from government contracts, you’d expect the stock to panic. It didn’t. It dropped about 10%… then got right back up like nothing happened. Because when your business model includes “AI for the military-industrial complex,” budget cuts are just a mild inconvenience.

And to be fair, the numbers are holding up. In Q1 2025, Palantir brought in $884 million, up 39% year-over-year… its seventh straight quarter of accelerating growth. Government revenue held steady, but the commercial side was the real story. U.S. commercial revenue jumped 71%, customer count rose 39% to 769, and average customer spend increased 24%. Not bad for a company that used to be known for building software for the CIA’s filing cabinet.

They also inked a new partnership with Divergent Technologies, aiming to embed their “Warp Speed” AI into high-tech manufacturing systems. The goal is to predict and fix supply chain issues before they even happen. So yes, Palantir is now in the business of making sure your next fridge doesn’t get delayed by a broken shipping container somewhere in the Pacific. 

But now comes the uncomfortable part, no one wants to talk about… but I will: valuation. Palantir is trading at 64x forward sales. For context, CrowdStrike (a company that’s profitable and growing fast) is trading at 18x. So yeah, calling Palantir pricey is like calling Tiger Woods a good golfer (huge understatement).

Louie DiPalma over at William Blair doesn’t exactly sound like he’s loading up on shares. His take is that “Palantir could fall 70% and still be tied as the most expensive name in its entire software peer group.” Probably not the pull quote Palantir’s using on its careers page. And yet, Dan Ives from Wedbush (never one to pass up on a braindead take) thinks Palantir is headed to a $1 trillion market cap within 2–3 years. That’s a 245% gain from here. All it would take is flawless execution, runaway commercial growth, no issues with government contracts, and somehow convincing Wall Street that 64x forward sales is a bargain. Easy.

Look, Palantir is doing a lot right. They’re growing, signing deals with NATO, expanding into new sectors, and turning what used to be a defense contractor into a buzzword-heavy AI platform for everything. But this isn’t a misunderstood underdog anymore. It’s a $290 billion company priced like it just invented the future… and the insiders seem to be quietly locking in gains while they can. Buying shares here just feels very naive.

PS: It’s a mess out there.

One day the market’s ripping, the next day it’s Black Monday all over again. Recent earning’s reports have been a total coin flip. One stock beats and explodes 30%… the next misses by a penny and gets sent to the Shadow Realm. And through it all, everyone’s begging for Jerome Powell to finally cave and cut rates.

But underneath all the panic headlines (“Inflation too sticky!” “Recession imminent!” “Tariffs round 4 incoming!”) something wild is happening…

We’re seeing violent price action. Especially in the small-cap space, where low floats and high anxiety are creating the perfect recipe for 100%+ pops before lunchtime. Some of these names are moving 200%+ in under 24 hours… and to our knowledge, NO ONE else is covering them.

Except us.

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Stock.News does not have positions in companies mentioned.