Palantir Stock Surges 3.5% Again Today After D.A. Davidson Upgrades to Buy, Cites Most Attractive Valuation

Palantir Technologies shares climbed further Thursday morning, adding to a string of daily gains as a fresh analyst upgrade from D.A. Davidson's Gil Luria amplified momentum already building from a Nvidia partnership announcement, a U.S. government contract win and the partial retreat of one of the stock's most prominent short sellers.

Shares of the Denver-based AI software and data analytics company were trading at $130.19 as of 10:47 a.m. EDT, up $4.46, or 3.55%, on the day, extending what has been a sharp recovery from the 52-week low of $106.37 the stock hit just two weeks ago. The multiple-day winning streak has now pushed the stock roughly 23% off that low, though shares remain approximately 37% below their 52-week high of $207.18 reached in late November 2025.

Thursday's specific catalyst was D.A. Davidson analyst Gil Luria upgrading Palantir from Neutral to Buy and raising his 12-month price target to $175 from $165, implying upside of roughly 39% from Wednesday's closing price. Palantir shares rose more than 3% in the immediate aftermath of the upgrade publication, with the stock continuing to add to those gains as the broader market also strengthened following the weaker-than-expected June nonfarm payrolls report.

Luria's upgrade framing was pointed and specific, centering on both valuation and a newly articulated competitive advantage argument tied to the ongoing friction between AI model providers and the U.S. government. He cited recent tensions between Anthropic and the Trump administration, which had placed restrictions on the company's AI models, as evidence that customers who built their technology stacks on top of underlying AI models directly faced serious business disruption risk when those models became unavailable.

"Anthropic's repeated choice to take a confrontational tact with the US government has resulted in the government placing restrictions on AI models and Anthropic pulling its own model from the market," Luria said in a note to clients, adding that companies that built directly on those models risked catastrophic disruption. He contrasted that risk with Palantir's orchestration model, where the company's platform can swap underlying AI models without disrupting the broader solution it delivers to clients.

On valuation, Luria was equally direct.

"We believe Palantir's valuation is the most attractive it has been in a while, especially in relation to other high growth software companies," he said.

That argument resonates with a growing portion of the investment community that has been watching Palantir's stock decline throughout 2026 while its underlying business has continued to accelerate. The company's first-quarter results, the most recent available, showed revenue surging 85% year over year to $1.63 billion, beating estimates of $1.54 billion, while the company raised its full-year 2026 revenue guidance to approximately $7.65 billion. Operating margin for the first quarter reached 60% on an adjusted basis, and the company now counts more than 1,000 commercial customers, a milestone that underscores how broadly its AI platform has penetrated enterprise markets beyond its traditional government base.

Yet the stock had fallen approximately 29% year to date heading into the current recovery, a decline that reflected persistent investor concerns about competition from OpenAI, Anthropic and other AI tool providers that could eventually allow enterprise customers to replace dedicated data orchestration platforms like Palantir with more commodity-like AI services. Luria's analysis suggests that very threat, and the political and regulatory complications that have accompanied it, may be creating demand for Palantir's model rather than eroding it.

Palantir CEO Alex Karp also added to the week's storyline Wednesday, when he used a public appearance to criticize what he called "tokenmaxxing," a reference to AI providers who charge per token in ways that create what he characterized as a "wealth tax" on enterprise customers using AI tools at scale. Karp's language was direct and provocative, positioning Palantir as a more efficient and accountable alternative to the per-token pricing models that have drawn increasing customer scrutiny as AI usage scales.

"Combining Palantir infrastructure with Nvidia's AI and Nemotron models will allow the U.S. government to unleash the full power of LLMs while removing the underlying security risks," Karp said in a statement accompanying the Nvidia partnership announcement earlier this week.

That Nvidia collaboration, announced Monday, involves embedding Nvidia's Nemotron open-source AI models into Palantir's core product stack, including its AIP, Foundry, Ontology and Apollo platforms, creating what the companies described as a secure, customizable environment for U.S. government agencies and critical infrastructure operators to train, customize and deploy large language models without exposing sensitive data to external model providers.

President Trump's most recent financial disclosure added an unusual political dimension to the recovery. The U.S. Office of Government Ethics released Trump's certified 2025 financial disclosure showing he owns at least $1 million in Palantir shares, a holding he reportedly added to in the period covered by the disclosure. While the filing does not establish any formal commercial relationship between the administration and the company, market observers noted it attracted renewed retail investor attention to the stock in the days immediately following its release.

"Big Short" investor Michael Burry, whose publicly disclosed short position against Palantir had been a recurring negative overhang on the stock throughout the spring, disclosed he had trimmed roughly half of that position, a partial retreat that some investors interpreted as a signal that even a prominent bear had decided the stock's decline had run its course, at least for now.

According to data from 32 analysts tracked by Stock Analysis, the consensus rating on Palantir stands at "Buy," with an average 12-month price target of $182.75, representing potential upside of more than 40% from Thursday's trading levels. With the D.A. Davidson upgrade adding to that bullish chorus, investors now appear to be coalescing around the view that Palantir's prolonged valuation compression has created the most attractive entry point the stock has offered since before its 2025 run to all-time highs, particularly given the acceleration in its underlying business metrics.