To The Moon

Palantir Technologies Inc. (NASDAQ:PLTR) CEO Alex Karp did not ease into his third-quarter letter to shareholders.

"It would be an understatement to say that our results this past quarter were extraordinary," he wrote in the opening lines. "There has seldom been another enterprise in postwar America that has grown at the scale and speed of our own."

The numbers backed him up. Palantir posted third-quarter revenue of $2.31 billion, up 96% from a year earlier and 20% from the second quarter. Quarterly sales crossed $2 billion for the first time in company history.

"We have now essentially doubled our entire business since the same quarter last year," Karp wrote.

Adjusted earnings came in at 44 cents per share, ahead of the 41-cent analyst estimate, according to Benzinga Pro data.

A Goal Few CEOs Would Put in Writing

Karp then laid out an ambition almost no public company chief would commit to paper, let alone mail to shareholders. Palantir intends to own its market outright.

"It is our firm and unwavering intent to take the entire market, the whole thing," he wrote.

The vow echoes Palantir co-founder Peter Thiel. In a 2014 Wall Street Journal essay titled "Competition Is for Losers," Thiel argued monopoly is the condition of every successful business and warned that monopolists lie to protect themselves.

Karp, it seems, sees no reason to hide it.

Commercial Overtakes Government

The quarter also marked a symbolic shift for a company long defined by its work with the Pentagon and intelligence agencies. U.S. commercial revenue climbed 148% year over year to $984 million, topping U.S. government revenue of $953 million for the first time. Government revenue still grew 96%.

Karp credited a far faster path from first conversation to signed contract.

"A sales cycle that once had been more akin to a long, unproductive, and unsatisfying flirtation has been condensed," he wrote. "What may have taken months and years—a slow, coy, and theatrical dance towards a contract—can now take days and weeks. Consummation happens quickly."

The Profit Question, Answered

For years, skeptics questioned whether heavy spending on its software foundation would ever pay off. Karp addressed those doubts head-on.

"There was a time not too long ago when many would ask us, with an inquiring and searching tone, whether our business, as compelling and consequential as it seemed, would ever turn a profit," Karp wrote. "The subtext was that our decision to invest for years in building a foundational architecture, while noble perhaps, represented an idiosyncratic diversion at best and foolish misadventure at worst."

"And yet the verdict has now come in," he continued. "We generated another record quarterly profit—$1.13 billion—an amount that dwarfs what we delivered in revenue not long ago."

Operating cash flow reached $1.21 billion, a 52% margin.

Winners, Losers and a ‘Lonely Middle’

Karp used much of the letter to sketch a stark view of where artificial intelligence is taking corporate America.

"Every industry in the world—from banks to insurers to hospitals and even once-storied law firms—will either be remade or set briskly aside," he wrote. "The outcomes will increasingly be binary, with winners and losers, and nothing in between."

He saved his sharpest language for companies slow to adapt.

"The lonely middle will be little more than a barren wasteland filled with those who were once legacy players who failed to heed the word and paid the ultimate price," Karp wrote.

"The crowded bottom will be occupied by those who long ago lost their chance to build on what might once have been an insight or an edge, now marching inexorably toward irrelevance, their fate sealed, the envelope unopened," he added.

PLTR Stock Price Activity: Palantir stock was down 1.72% at $175.27 at the time of publication Tuesday, according to Benzinga Pro market data.

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