NASA Taps Palantir for Sole-Source Foundry Deal

NASA has quietly awarded Palantir a sole-source contract for its Foundry software, a move that bypassed the usual competitive bidding process. The decision underscores the space agency’s conclusion that no rival platform could match Palantir’s offering. Foundry is one of Palantir’s flagship platforms, designed to integrate and analyze vast amounts of data, while its sibling platform, Gotham, caters more directly to government intelligence needs.

The company has also been pushing its Artificial Intelligence Platform (AIP), which lets organizations embed large language models and generative AI tools into their workflows.

The NASA deal reinforces Palantir’s reputation for locking down major government contracts. Earlier this year, the company secured a ten-year, $10 billion agreement with the U.S. Army, consolidating dozens of contracts into a single enterprise arrangement. Despite its relatively small customer base of around 800 clients compared to Databricks’ 15,000, Palantir has managed to go toe-to-toe in revenue terms thanks to these high-value deals.

Financially, the company remains a paradox. Shares have dropped about 20 percent recently, pressured by momentum stock volatility and a short-seller attack from Citron Research. Yet Palantir’s growth story is hard to ignore. Its latest earnings delivered the first billion-dollar quarter in company history, clocking $1.004 billion in revenue versus Wall Street’s $939.7 million expectation. Contract wins were a major driver: 157 deals worth at least $1 million, including 42 worth over $10 million, pushed total contract value to a record $2.27 billion, marking a 140 percent year-over-year increase.

The company’s commercial business has become the unexpected star, projected to generate more than $1.3 billion in fiscal 2025, up 85 percent from last year. CEO Alex Karp has set an ambitious goal: expanding that run-rate tenfold within five years, implying a staggering compound annual growth rate of 58 percent. Guidance for the near term is equally bullish, with Palantir projecting $1.083–$1.087 billion in Q3 revenue and raising its full-year outlook to roughly $4.15 billion, alongside $1.8–$2.0 billion in free cash flow.

NASA’s endorsement through this contract sends a strong signal about the role Palantir is playing in U.S. government infrastructure. But it also sparks familiar debates – whether these no-bid awards reflect unique capability or simply entrenched networks of influence. Either way, Palantir continues to thrive at the intersection of technology, politics, and power.