Topline
The stock market has broadly stumbled during the first 100 days of President Donald Trump’s second term, but one notable exception has been Palantir, the artificial intelligence and government contractor extraordinaire chaired by Peter Thiel, Trump’s longest big-time Silicon Valley backer and a mentor to Vice President JD Vance and many others in prominent roles in the new administration.
Palantir is the only major stock up at least 50% since the inauguration.
Key Facts
Palantir stock is up 54% since Jan. 17, the last day markets were open prior to Trump’s second inauguration.
That’s by far the strongest return of any company listed on the benchmark S&P 500 index tracking 500 of the largest publicly traded American companies, according to FactSet.
The S&P is down 8% during the same time frame, making this the weakest start to a presidency since Gerald Ford took office following Richard Nixon’s resignation in 1974, according to Bloomberg, as Wall Street winced at the prospect of a recession set off by Trump’s tariffs.
Palantir stock’s blistering start to the Trump presidency is a continuation of the stock’s red hot run amid the broader AI gold rush – it was 2024’s top returner on the S&P as its share price nearly quadrupled – and as it emerged as the “clear winner” as the most prominent “enabler of efficiency” amid the reimagining of the federal government overseen by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, explained Bank of America analysts led by Mariana Perez Mora in a note to clients earlier this year.
“Palantir is on the right side of” the Department of Defense and federal government’s “spending mix shift” toward AI, according to UBS analyst Karl Keirstead.
Numerous People Close To Thiel Have Prominent Trump White House Roles
Thiel, despite not vocally supporting Trump in the 2024 election, hosted a star-studded January party ahead of Trump’s inauguration and came to prominence in recent months for his decade-long relationship with Vance, who described Thiel as a “pretty good mentor” after working for Thiel’s venture capital firm. Others close to Thiel high-ranking in the Trump administration include fellow “PayPal Mafia” members in Musk, Trump’s “AI & Crypto Czar” David Sacks, and Trump’s Denmark ambassador presumptive nominee Ken Howery. Former Thiel employees Jim O’Neill and Michael Kratsios are Trump’s nominee for deputy secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services and director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, respectively.
Contra
Some 55% of Palantir’s 2024 revenues come from government customers, but its fate on the market has been far rosier than other public companies that rely heavily on government revenues. Shares of defense contracting giants General Dynamics, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and RTX have essentially been flat during Trump’s second presidency, with Lockheed Martin’s 3% drop and RTX’s 3% advance leading the bunch. The stocks of federal government consultancies Accenture and Booz Allen Hamilton are down more than 10% apiece since Trump took office.
Key Background
Palantir makes AI-powered software solutions used in predictive analytics for large data sets, ranging from public health surveillance to military drone intelligence. Four of Palantir’s five cofounders are billionaires in Stephen Cohen, Alexander Karp, Joe Lonsdale and Thiel. Lonsdale left the company in 2009, while Cohen, Karp and Thiel are all still intimately involved in Palantir’s operations, taking up three positions on the company’s seven-person board of directors, with Cohen serving as the company’s president, Karp as CEO and Thiel as chairman of the board. Cohen retains a relatively low public profile and has not made a political donation since 2017, according to OpenSecrets, and Karp supported Democrat Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election, but Lonsdale and Thiel are among the big tech titans most vocal in Silicon Valley’s shift to the political right. Lonsdale celebrated Trump’s November win by posting to social media “Daddy’s home.”
Palantir Under Fire For New Ice Contract
No stranger to controversy, Palantir came under fire this month for a new $30 million contract with Immigration and Customs Enforcement on a program known as “ImmigrationOS” assisting the agency in deportations, according to Wired. Palantir is “the company building the infrastructure of the police state,” Y Combinator cofounder Paul Graham wrote this month in response to the contract.
These Are The Best Performing S&p Stocks During Trump’s First 100 Days
- Palantir
- Philip Morris
- Dollar General
- VeriSign
- Newmont
- Netflix
- CVS Health
- AT&T
- Kroger
- Take-Two Interactive
These Are The Worst Performing Stocks During Trump’s First 100 Days
- Deckers Outdoor
- Teradyne
- Zebra Technologies
- Albemarle
- Delta Air Lines
- United Airlines
- Norwegian Cruise Line
- West Pharmaceuticals
- Tesla
- Arista Networks
Further Reading
Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/dereksaul/2025/04/28/the-top-stock-of-trumps-first-100-days-peter-thiels-palantir/