Palantir execs like DOGE-related DC disruptions

We’ve recently remarked on the fact that the best-performing stocks in the S&P 500 since the presidential election are Palantir and Tesla, two companies in which right-wing tech oligarchs with close financial ties to and ideological overlap with the Trump administration have significant stakes.

The price surge clearly suggests investors see a high likelihood that business benefits accrue to the two firms under a Trump administration, though, as is always the case, it’s impossible to say precisely what those benefits might be. Favorable policies? Government contracts? Helpful regulatory actions? Who knows.

But in the conference call Palantir held after its strong Q4 earnings sent its stock sharply higher, I was struck by one section that seemed to flick at some of the possibilities that an ambitious defense and data analytics software firm like Palantir with a large government contracting business might see over the next four years.

When asked about some of the disruption and legal issues surrounding Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency — a structurally murky White House task force created by executive order to help the Trump administration with its stated goals of firing federal workers, abolishing government departments, and reducing government spending — Palantir CTO Shyam Sankar saw clear sales opportunities. He said:

“Palantir’s real competition is a lack of accountability in government — these forever software projects that cost an insane amount, that don’t actually deliver results. They’re sacred cows of the deep state... Soldiers in war zones preferred Palantir because it worked, and it happened to only cost millions of dollars. And I think DOGE is going to bring meritocracy and transparency to government, and that’s exactly what our commercial business is. The commercial market is meritocratic and transparent, and you see the results that we have in that sort of environment. And that’s the basis of our optimism around this. I think the work that we’ve done in government, it’s deeply operational, it’s deeply valuable. And we’re pretty excited about exceptional engineers getting in there under the hood and being able to see that for a change.”

Alex Karp, Palantir’s CEO, followed up:

“Disruption, at the end of the day, exposes things that aren’t working. There’ll be ups and downs. This is a revolution. Some people can get their heads cut off. It’s like we’re expecting to see really unexpected things and to win, basically... And we’re planning to do that and we’re pretty optimistic about the US environment.”