Inside the lovefest between Palantir and its army of retail investors

• Retail investors have been enamored with Palantir stock since it went public in September 2020.
• Palantir leadership has eschewed the traditional ways of Wall Street and has embraced its retail investor base.
• “It’s not cookie-cutter Wall Street, but Palantir’s changing the technology space, and retail understood that,” Dan Ives told BI.

For Katherine H., a 60-year-old personal chef, the recent surge in Palantir stock has been a “godsend.”

Katherine had lost her Tampa, Florida home, car, and many sentimental possessions to the flooding sparked by Hurricane Helene just a few months ago.

But after this week’s boom in Palantir stock, her fortunes are starting to turn around.

“It came at such a time, for me personally, that it gives me much needed encouragement,” Katherine told Business Insider.

She had been dollar cost averaging—essentially investing at regular intervals—into Palantir since she first purchased the stock in October 2020, eventually building up a position of just over 1,000 shares at an average cost basis of about $14.

She’s now sitting on a $100,000 profit, brokerage records viewed by Business Insider show.

Katherine is among the many retail investors who have piled into shares of the AI-powered data analytics company since it went public in September 2020.

The stock had a bumpy start, to be sure, trading between about $5 and $30 for its first three-and-a-half years as a public company. But after a 341% rise in 2024 and a 52% rise already in 2025, Palantir is trading at around $115 per share.

With few bulls among Wall Street analysts, Palantir may owe much of its success to its devoted base of retail investors.

One of the reasons the tech firm has such a massive following among individual investors—with the r/PLTR subreddit amassing nearly 100,000 members—is due to its lively CEO, Alex Karp.

Karp co-founded Palantir in 2004 and has become known as a firebrand who embraces disruption and is quick to offer up spicy quotes on company earnings calls.

He’s also pretty meme-able. During the middle of a podcast interview last year, Karp popped a Zynn pouch and spun a book on his finger while being asked a question.

“I can’t believe im saying this but alex karp might be the coolest thing about palantir,” Alex Tseng, CEO of Ares Industries, said in a post to X last year, referencing the video.

For Katherine, Karp was one of the reasons she had confidence in the stock.

“He’s a maverick, and I think he deserves to be. He’s doing things his way, and it certainly has benefited the stockholders,” Katherine said.

Karp has long eschewed the “rules” of running a public company.

He sidestepped the traditional IPO route, which relies on investment banks to market the stock to institutional investors and then gives those investors priority to buy the stock at an attractive price before retail can jump in.

Instead, Palantir opted for a direct listing, which allowed retail investors to buy the stock at the same price as institutional investors when it went public.

In continuing to lean into his retail fanbase, Karp often answers questions from retail investors before he addresses sell-side analysts during earnings calls. In its latest call, just two analysts—Wedbush analyst Dan Ives and Bank of America analyst Mariana Perez Mora—were given the opportunity to pitch inquiries about the business.

Ives told BI that he thinks retail understood the Palantir story before traditional Wall Street institutions.

“It’s not cookie-cutter Wall Street, but Palantir’s changing the technology space, and retail understood that, and I think the Palantir team embraced that as well.”

“I held because it’s a solid business that was misunderstood for years and I knew it would recover and thrive,” Nick F., a 39-year-old technology consultant from Washington, D.C., told BI.

Nick had thrown his future retirement into doubt after he got burned by the SPAC craze a few years ago, but he decided to hold onto his nearly 1,000 shares of Palantir, in part because of Karp.

“He’s a genius. Eccentric but a genius. Laser-focused on the mission and growth,” Nick said.

For Frank F., a 28-year-old business lending consultant living in New York City, the surge in Palantir stock has been life-changing.

Frank started dipping his toes in the investing world during the meme stock craze of 2020, and discovered Palantir in November 2021, purchasing 1,000 shares at about $23 each.

“I held, and I was down a significant amount of money for me at that time. But as the business progressed and as I followed the deals that they were closing, I just became more and more convinced that the stock was one day going to go crazy,” Frank told BI.

Fast-forward to November 2023, and Frank bet big on the stock, liquidating his entire Roth IRA account and investing about $180,000 in Palantir stock.

“I went crazy. I put everything I had. I YOLO’d into Palantir at $19,” Frank said. “The rest is kind of history.”

Frank’s account value is now about $940,000, account statements show. He trimmed some stock at about $80 in December to take out his initial investment and is now playing with “house money,” letting the rest ride.

Karp also played a big role in Frank’s confidence in Palantir stock.

“I love the guy. I think he’s awesome,” Frank said. “He kind of has always been the underdog in Wall Street, and he’s been shit on by Wall Street for so long, and he’s kind of always just taken retail investors like myself under his wing.”

As to what he plans to do with his Palantir profits, Frank said buying a condo in New York City would be nice, but for now, he plans to “kind of just hold on it and chill.”

Katherine also plans to hold onto her Palantir stock.

“I’m not selling anything,” she said. “I’m hanging on. I like it a lot, and I really think they have a really good outlook for what they’re doing. They just keep getting contracts, all of these military contracts.”

Nick said he trimmed some of his Palantir stock along the way, but is still holding onto about half of his initial position and doesn’t plan to sell any more shares—and now his retirement plan is back on track.

“I’ve recovered most of my losses and back to being on track for a retirement,” Nick said.

For Palantir and its retail investors, the admiration is mutual.

“Alex, as always, we have a lot of individual investors on the line. Is there anything you’d like to say before we end the call,” Palantir’s Ana Soro asked Karp during the company’s earnings call this week.

“Let’s not talk to analysts about the burden of being right,” Karp responded. “I’m very happy to have you along for the journey and you are partners for us. Every Palantirian, we are crushing it.”