Why Is Palantir Technologies Stock Surging Thursday?
Palantir Technologies Inc. (NASDAQ:PLTR) stock climbed in Thursday’s premarket session after DA Davidson upgraded the software company to Buy and raised its price forecast to $175.
The upgrade follows a series of operational updates and public commentary from company leadership regarding the enterprise artificial intelligence market.
Karp Critiques Token-Based Pricing Models
During an appearance on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” on Wednesday, Palantir CEO Alex Karp criticized the token-based pricing structures used by frontier AI labs like OpenAI and Anthropic. Karp stated that rising costs are pushing enterprises toward open-weight models to protect their competitive advantages.
“Something has gone completely wrong,” Karp told CNBC, adding that executives fear losing their intellectual property. Karp stated that the prevailing enterprise mindset has become, “I’m going to chillax and waste my time with tokens,” warning, “I’m going to get no value and they’re going to get my IP.”
Context Behind The Industry Friction
The critiques on AI labs follow comments in April from Scion Asset Management founder Michael Burry, who stated that privately held Anthropic is earning Palantir’s lunch in corporate AI deployments.
In an April 8 post on X, Burry cited corporate spending data from tracker Ramp to argue that Anthropic’s scalable API model serves as an easier, more intuitive solution for businesses compared to Palantir’s implementation platform.
NVIDIA Partnership And AI Sovereignty
The market momentum also follows Palantir’s expanded partnership with NVIDIA Corp. (NASDAQ:NVDA) this week to build custom AI models for U.S. government agencies.
Discussing the collaboration, Karp stated, “What aligns me with NVIDIA… is control over their compute, their models, their data stack and their alpha. They want to know they own the means of production.”
On Wednesday, Palantir published a nine-point AI sovereignty manifesto on X, emphasizing that data retention and controlling weights are essential for preserving enterprise value.
Market Analysts Echo Security Concerns
Industry observers noted Karp’s comments regarding data control. Futurum Equities Chief Market Strategist Shay Boloor posted on X on Wednesday that Palantir’s message reflected enterprise demand for ownership, security, and control over their data stacks “instead of handing their edge to frontier labs.”
Meanwhile, Moor Insights & Strategy CEO Patrick Moorhead stated that Karp voiced concerns few will say publicly regarding the risks businesses face when relying entirely on frontier AI models.
PLTR Stock Price Activity: Palantir Technologies shares were up 4.67% at $131.60 during premarket trading on Thursday, according to Benzinga Pro data.
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