Palantir's Q3 Revenue Tops $2 Billion as Commercial Business Overtakes Government
Palantir reported third-quarter 2026 revenue of $2.31 billion on Monday, November 2, up 96% year over year. It was the first quarter in which the company's revenue surpassed $2 billion. Analysts had expected $2.18 billion. In its earnings release, the company described the results as "crushing consensus expectations."
Adjusted earnings per share came in at $0.44, against analyst expectations of $0.41. Revenue rose 20% sequentially, meaning compared with the previous quarter. In the second quarter, reported in August, revenue had grown 93% to $1.94 billion and adjusted earnings were 41 cents per share, against estimates of 35 cents. Reuters reported the second-quarter figures at the time. For the third quarter, Palantir had guided revenue to between $2.160 billion and $2.164 billion, and adjusted income from operations to between $1.292 billion and $1.296 billion. Reported revenue exceeded the top of that range.
The 96% figure is the second consecutive quarter near 90% growth, according to Reuters. By comparison, year-over-year growth in the third quarter of 2025 was 63%, as Fortune noted. The growth rate has therefore accelerated across a base that is now considerably larger.
The sharpest change is in the revenue mix. U.S. commercial revenue surpassed U.S. government revenue for the first time. Commercial revenue reached $984 million, up 148% from the year-ago quarter, while U.S. government revenue was $953 million. For the full year, Palantir raised its FY 2026 revenue guidance to 91% year-over-year growth. It also raised its U.S. commercial revenue guidance to in excess of $3.559 billion, representing growth of at least 143%.
Shares had dipped 3.1% ahead of the report, which was due after the bell on November 2, according to Reuters. On Tuesday, November 3, the stock traded slightly lower.
The number that drew the most scrutiny came from the bookings line. Bookings, measured as total contract value (the full value of contracts signed in a period, including multi-year terms), were $1.46 billion from U.S. enterprises in the quarter, down from $2.13 billion in the previous quarter, as TechCrunch reported. The same TechCrunch piece framed that decline as a foreboding signal within an otherwise strong quarter.
In my view, the two sets of figures measure different things, and the reader should keep them apart. Revenue is recognized against contracts already in hand, so it lags the commercial pipeline. Total contract value is a leading indicator, but a single quarter of bookings is a noisy one, especially for a business with large, lumpy government and enterprise deals. A quarter of softer enterprise bookings does not by itself change the revenue trajectory Palantir has guided to for the rest of 2026. It does mean the next two or three quarters of bookings will carry more weight in judging whether the commercial acceleration can be sustained at this pace.
The broader context here is the shift in who is buying. A company whose revenue was long anchored by government contracts now reports a larger U.S. commercial business than U.S. government business. Reuters tied the quarter's beat to strong demand for AI software. For enterprise technology leaders, the practical question is whether this kind of platform adoption moves from pilot deployments to production workloads across many customers, and whether that adoption holds up in the bookings data. The third-quarter numbers show a large, fast-growing commercial base. They do not yet show how durable the enterprise bookings pace will be.
