What is PLTR?

What Palantir actually sells

Palantir does not sell dashboards and it does not sell a generic database. The company sells an ontology layer: a piece of software that sits on top of an organisation's existing data warehouses, ERPs, sensor feeds, and case files, then assembles every record into a single semantic graph that an analyst (or, more recently, a large language model) can query as if it were one unified system.

Three product names matter. Gotham is the older platform, originally built for the US intelligence community and now used by the US Army, the UK NHS, and several allied defence ministries. Foundry is the commercial sibling, deployed at oil majors, hospital networks, food manufacturers, and large insurers. AIP, the Artificial Intelligence Platform, is the orchestration layer launched in 2023 that connects external LLM APIs from OpenAI and Anthropic into Foundry's data graph so that operational decisions can be made by a language model with full audit trail.

The founders, Peter Thiel, Alex Karp, Stephen Cohen, Joe Lonsdale and Nathan Gettings, set the company up in 2003 in the wake of 9/11. For nearly two decades the firm operated as a private contractor whose largest customer was the US federal government. The 2020 direct listing on the NYSE was its first taste of public-market scrutiny, and the AIP launch in mid-2023 was the inflection that took the stock from a $7 floor into the upper $80s by late 2025.

The two-segment business and why one segment matters more

Treat PLTR as two companies stapled together. The Government segment, 55% of 2024 revenue, is the legacy business: long procurement cycles, multi-year ceilings, classified work for the US Department of Defense, the Department of Health and Human Services, ICE, and equivalent agencies in the UK and Israel. Growth there is steady but rarely above 30%, governed by federal budget timing and the appropriations calendar.

The Commercial segment, 45% of 2024 revenue, is the one that moves the share price. US commercial revenue grew 64% in 2024, accelerating from the high-20s in 2023. The cause is one product motion: the AIP bootcamp. A bootcamp is a one-to-five-day engagement in which Palantir engineers fly to a prospect's office with the prospect's own data, plug it into AIP, and ship a working agent or workflow before they leave. Deals that previously took twelve to eighteen months of evaluation now close in six to eight weeks. That is the single mechanism behind the multiple expansion.

Because commercial is growing faster off a smaller base, every quarter shifts the segment mix further toward commercial. By 2026, commercial is expected to cross 50% of total revenue. Buy-side analysts watch two numbers: US commercial revenue growth, and the remaining-performance-obligation (RPO) figure that hints at future bookings. Anything that bends either curve produces an outsized share-price reaction.

Earnings cadence and what the prints have looked like

Palantir reports four times a year, usually in the first or second week of February, May, August, and November. Reports land after the New York close, which means the first opportunity to trade the reaction at LHFX is the following session's 14:30 UTC open.

Earnings-night moves on PLTR have ranged from a 24% single-day gain (November 2024, when the company raised full-year commercial guidance) to drops of roughly 10 to 12% (August 2025, when commercial bookings missed whisper expectations despite beating consensus). The pattern is consistent: PLTR trades on the second derivative of growth, not on the print itself. A beat against analyst consensus is not enough if the bookings number disappoints the buy-side whisper.

Three figures dominate the call: US commercial revenue growth, total contract value (TCV) of new bookings, and adjusted operating margin. Margin tends to land between 36% and 41% and rarely surprises. The action is in the first two numbers.

Five things that move PLTR intraday

PLTR is the highest-beta proxy in the index for the enterprise-AI narrative. These are the five inputs that explain most of the day-to-day and quarter-to-quarter moves.

When the PLTR tape is live

PLTR follows US cash-equity hours strictly at LHFX: 14:30 to 21:00 UTC, Monday to Friday. Pre-market and after-hours sessions, where US brokers see plenty of activity on PLTR, are not available. That means earnings reactions, which print after the 21:00 UTC close, are only tradeable from the next morning's 14:30 UTC open. Expect the first ten minutes of post-earnings sessions to print spreads several multiples of the daytime average.

The liquidity profile inside the session is consistent. The opening half hour and the final hour see the heaviest volume. Midday between 17:00 and 19:00 UTC is the lightest, and that is when a single large order can push the stock 1 to 2% without obvious news. If you trade tight stops, that midday window is the hardest to read.

Earnings prints land after the 21:00 UTC close. CFD positions held into the release see the full gap reflected at the next regular-session 14:30 UTC open, with no opportunity to manage in between.

PLTR CFD vs buying the share directly

Both vehicles give you exposure to Palantir's share-price moves. The way they treat margin, shorting, ownership and dividends is different. The table below sketches the core trade-offs.

Palantir has never paid a dividend. Class A shares carry one vote each; Class F shares held by the founders carry the controlling voting block.

The CFD is the right instrument for a directional view with leverage and short selling. Direct share ownership is the right instrument for a multi-year hold with voting rights and any future dividend receipt.

Why traders pick the CFD over the share

The two reasons most LHFX clients give for trading PLTR as a CFD are short selling and margin efficiency. Short selling a US share through a cash-equity broker means finding a borrow, paying the borrow fee, and accepting that the locate can be recalled at any time. PLTR is the kind of name where borrow fees can spike to mid-single-digit annualised rates during a momentum rally, and locates have been thin during prior squeezes. A CFD sidesteps that entire mechanism: there is no stock loan, no recall risk, and the same $3 per side commission applies to a sell-to-open as to a buy-to-open.

The second reason is capital efficiency for short-duration trades. At 1:20 leverage, three CFDs of PLTR at $90 use $13.50 of margin. The same three shares bought outright at a US broker would tie up $270, or $135 if the broker offers 2:1 margin. For traders who hold a thesis for hours or a few days around catalysts (earnings reactions, contract awards, AI-news flows), the CFD frees up cash that would otherwise sit idle.

There are reasons not to use the CFD. If your plan is to hold PLTR for years and collect any future dividend, take the voting rights and avoid swap costs, direct ownership is the right answer. CFDs are a directional tool for time horizons measured in sessions, not years.

Trading PLTR at LHFX in practice

PLTR is offered as a CFD on the NYSE listing with STP/ECN execution on MetaTrader 5. Maximum leverage is 1:20, equivalent to 5% initial margin on the notional position. Commission is $3 per side on raw spreads, so a complete round trip costs $6 plus the natural bid-ask spread, which on PLTR typically averages 4 to 6 cents during the liquid windows of the US session. Account funding minimum is $10. Card and crypto deposits clear in roughly 20 minutes; bank wires settle in one to three business days.

For current spread snapshots, contract size, and dividend treatment, see the PLTR instrument page. For commission detail across all instruments, see spreads and fees, and for the full leverage policy by instrument see leverage.

Risks that are specific to PLTR, not generic equity risks

PLTR is among the most volatile large caps in the index, with a single dominant narrative risk, concentrated government revenue, and a binary earnings-night profile. The mitigations are sizing discipline and a hard plan around earnings.