Palantir Explodes 525%--CTO Becomes Billionaire, Insiders Dump Billions

Palantir Technologies PLTR has been on an absolute tearup 525% over the past yearmaking it the top gainer in the S&P 500 by percentage. That rally just turned Chief Technology Officer Shyam Sankar into a billionaire, joining co-founders Alex Karp, Peter Thiel, and Stephen Cohen at the top of the leaderboard. Shares recently hit an all-time high of $158.80 after the company locked in a massive 10-year U.S. Army agreement worth up to $10 billion. The AI and defense software specialist is also riding a tidal wave of retail investor demandranking third in net retail buying activity behind only Tesla TSLA and Nvidia NVDA, per June data from Vanda Research.

Sankar's journey is a classic tech underdog story. He joined Palantir as employee #13 after stints at Xoom Corp. and Stanford, helping build out the firm's on-the-ground engineer deployment model. Since becoming CTO in early 2023, his public profile has grownand so has his influence in the national security space. In June, Sankar was tapped to join the U.S. Army Reserve's Executive Innovation Corps, a new initiative aimed at modernizing defense through private-sector expertise. About two-thirds of his Palantir holdings are in Class B shares, giving him 10x the voting rightsbut still well below the control retained by Karp, Thiel, and Cohen via Palantir's controversial three-class structure.

But not everything is blue skies. Sankar offloaded nearly $370 million worth of shares in late 2024his largest sale evercontributing to a $4 billion insider selling spree across Palantir leadership last year. While he still holds options that could be worth over $210 million, those moves have raised fresh questions about timing and long-term confidence. With Q2 earnings due soon, investors are watching whether Palantir's operational momentum can keep pace with its soaring stockand whether the next leg up is powered by fundamentals or just hype.