“Messi in the AI world” has been sung a lot more! Palantir (PLTR.US) long-term bulls have reintroduced the trillion-dollar valuation logic, and the “big bears” disagree with retail investors

The Zhitong Finance App learned that Dan Ives (Dan Ives), a long-time longtime leader of Palantir (PLTR.US), has once again brought this artificial intelligence data analysis company into the spotlight. He said that as enterprise-grade AI adoption accelerates, Palantir could eventually reach $1 trillion in market capitalization — double its current valuation of $414.6 billion.

According to reports, Ives made this prediction at the Future Proof conference being held in Huntington Beach (Huntington Beach), California; the prediction currently comes from a paraphrase rather than an official release from the company or Ives himself. This statement is the latest in a series of bullish remarks by Ives. He has repeatedly listed Palantir as one of his top targets for participating in the wave of AI construction.

“Macy in the AI world”: Ives's shouting list for this year

Earlier this week, Ives was a guest on the Global Money Talk podcast, calling Palantir, NVDA.US (NVDA.US), and Microsoft (MSFT.US) “the backbone of the AI revolution” (the “Messi of AI”) for its execution and ability to transform AI technology into enterprise-level applications.

According to the records of this podcast, Ives also gave his judgment on the scale of AI construction: every dollar spent on Nvidia chips will generate a “10-fold multiplier” in other parts of the technology sector; he just came back from a rural data center in Nebraska and said that the 1,500 data centers under construction across the US are the “heart and lungs” of this revolution; he also said that this is the first time in 30 years that the US is leading China in technology development. He clearly refuted the AI bubble theory, arguing that the industry is in the third year of the “8-10 year construction cycle” — “The AI party started at 9:30 and now it's almost 11:30, and this party will be held until 4 a.m.”

Earlier, on August 27, he called Palantir the “gold standard” for AI use cases, and said his agency's research showed that Palantir could eventually participate in 70% to 80% of AI use cases; he expects the company to become a trillion-dollar company within the next two to three years. He specifically named the US commercial business as a key driving force. He believes that this business is likely to maintain an 80% to 100% growth rate, and the scale is expected to impact 1 billion US dollars from about 250 million to 500 million US dollars in the next 12 months; he also said that the company's free cash flow may rise from about 2 billion to 3 billion US dollars to 7 billion to 8 billion US dollars in the next few years, thus supporting the current valuation.

It's important to note that Ives's status has changed this year: he reportedly left Wedbush after eight years on July 1 and is currently a partner and senior managing director at Yorkville Ives. Another notable detail: 247wallst pointed out in an August 27 report that all six AI stocks named by Ives in the interview that day had already appeared on the ETF (IVES) holding list named after them, and there were no relevant disclosures on the day's program.

The stock price is waiting for a catalyst

The background to this round of shouting is that Palantir's stock price is lacking a new story. Since the jump since the earnings report at the beginning of last month, the stock has been fluctuating within a narrow range, and investors are waiting for a catalyst that can push the stock price to a new round of breakthroughs.

The earnings report itself does provide sufficient fuel to the AI growth narrative. Second-quarter revenue jumped 93% to US$1.94 billion, with US commercial revenue surging 149%; the company also raised its 2026 full-year revenue guidance to US$8.15 billion to US$8.16 billion, implying an 82% growth rate. The agency believes that the “enterprise autonomous AI” (Sovereign AI) concept proposed by the company — the enterprise independently schedules and fine-tunes the large model within its own security environment, and fully controls data and model weight — plus the customized model of AIP plus pre-deployment engineer (FDE), forms a barrier that distinguishes it from general SaaS.

In terms of price and valuation, as of Tuesday's close, Palantir reported $173.31, with a market capitalization of around $416.5 billion, and a 52-week range of $106.37 to $207.52. The stock has a cumulative decline of nearly 3% this year, after several consecutive years of sharp gains — up 340% in 2024 and 135% in 2025. The valuation is still at a very high level: its price-earnings ratio (TTM) is about 148 times, while the stock's five-year median is 270 times; the price-sales ratio is about 45 times, and the PEG is about 3.42 times.

UBS echoes: Compared to AI software peers, it's “cheap”

Wall Street is also stressing the continuity of demand. On Tuesday, UBS reaffirmed Palantir's “buy” rating and raised its price target from $220 to $250. UBS analyst Karl Keirstead made this judgment. The trigger was his participation in Palantir's AIPCon customer and executive event last week.

“In our opinion — Palantir is the best AI enabler on the market (making cutting-edge models useful in large enterprises) — demand momentum seems strong after communicating with executives and customers, if changed and further strengthened,” he wrote in the report.

The key argument he gave was valuation: Palantir's current transaction price is about 51 times the expected free cash flow in 2027 (about 46 times previously), which is less expensive than the equivalent of Snowflake (SNOW.US) and CrowdStrike (CRWD.US), and the growth rate is over 90%; he expects the company's compound growth rate to reach 63% over the next three years, so 53 times the estimated free cash flow estimate for 2028 is a “reasonable premium.”

Keirstead also pointed out two investor concerns that are suppressing valuations—near-end growth may be close to peaking, and basic model makers may be directly entering the data software layer — and refuted both: “Palantir is leading the way in the three key growth areas of AI, data, and modern defense technology, and should receive significant premiums, so it's a relatively cheap stock.” He also mentioned that the possible deepening partnership with Nvidia is another catalyst, but at the same time, he bluntly stated that Palantir's main “autonomous AI narrative is slightly self-beneficial,” and that customer resistance to cutting-edge model manufacturers is not as strong as the company claims.

Divergence: Wall Street analysts are mostly singing, “big bears” and retail investors are bearish

According to Koyfin's statistics, out of 32 analysts covering Palantir, 21 gave a “buy” or higher rating, 9 “hold”, and 2 “sell” or lower; their average target price was $196.84. Another set of calibers comes from LSEG: As of Tuesday, 23 out of 33 analysts had given either a buy or a strong buy.

On the retail side, sentiment is almost opposite to that of sellers. On the Stockwits platform, Palantir's retail sentiment remains “bearish”, and there has been no change in the past week. One trader wrote, “Palantir is very interesting. Big money is desperately trying to hold it up, but it's still falling. A pullback is taking shape; it's only a matter of time.”

Institutional funding movements are also cautious. According to GuruFocus, Palantir's insiders sold a total of about US$124 million in the past three months; another set of net-based statistics showed that in the 90 days up to September 9, insiders had net sales of about US$34.5 million, with no meaningful insider purchases during that time.

The bear camp is represented by well-known investor Michael Burry (Michael Burry): he believes that the market values Palantir as a high-growth software company, but the essence of its business is closer to consulting, and questions the company's extensive use of equity incentives, the rise in US federal net operating loss (NOL) from $5.5 billion in 2025 to $9 billion, and the rise in CEO jet spending from $7.7 million in 2024 to $17.2 million in 2025. “For Palantir, in many ways, the stock price itself is a business model,” he wrote. He determined that its market value might eventually fall below $100 billion, that revenue would shrink over time, and the company would be bought at a far undervalued price.

On the one hand is the “$1 trillion” end story, and on the other is the slight decline in stock prices during the year and the bearish retail sentiment — Palantir's current disagreement is not about whether growth is real, but about how much fault tolerance has been reserved for this growth curve.