Goldman Sachs' $230 Palantir call leans on Nvidia, the first customer of their AI platform
Goldman Sachs slapped a Buy on Palantir hours after Nvidia became the first customer of the pair's sovereign AI platform. The proof point is real, live, and entirely inside the partner financing the ecosystem.
Vincent Jiang · 2 min read
Goldman Sachs+0.66% — Goldman Sachs, up 0.66 percent today upgraded Palantir to Buy on Thursday with a $230 price target, an 18% bet on sovereign AI as the software maker's next growth leg 5. The proof point arrived almost simultaneously: Nvidia−0.36% — Nvidia, down 0.36 percent today has begun running its own supply chain on Palantir+3.49% — Palantir, up 3.49 percent today software, the first customer of the "sovereign intelligence" platform the two companies plan to sell across industry and government 1. Palantir shares rose 2.4% on the upgrade, closing in on a stock that has already run 340% in 2024 and 135% in 2025 2.
The reference customer is also the financier
Palantir's gains have decelerated even as the sovereign AI story builds
Data
| Palantir share price gain | |
|---|---|
| 2024 | 340% |
| 2025 | 135% |
| 2026 YTD | 12% |
But read the two events together and the structure, not the thesis, is the story. The reference customer is also the ecosystem's financier. Nvidia, at $5.6 trillion the most valuable company in history, has seeded labs, neoclouds and partners whose demand loops back to its chips, a strategy SemiAnalysis founder Dylan Patel calls insurance against being squeezed 1. Now the flagship deployment of Palantir's sovereign stack lives inside that same partner's factory floor.
The evidence is four weeks old
Fast Company's reporting concedes what the announcement omits: neither company disclosed financial terms, and no new joint customers were named 1. The platform builds on a partnership begun last October at Lowe's, covering 1,700 stores and 7,500 vendors, and Palantir's team only arrived at Nvidia four weeks ago 1. The Sept. 10 press release does confirm the deployment is real: Nvidia's Nemotron open models inside Palantir Foundry and AIP, grounded in Palantir's Ontology, coordinating the 1.3 million components in each Vera Rubin rack 4. Real, live, and entirely circular so far.
What $230 a share has to assume
Goldman's Gabriela Borges is pricing a market of more than 180 government-backed sovereign AI projects worldwide, per the Center for a New American Security, on a stock trading at roughly 91 times forward earnings against about 20 for the S&P 500 12. Her note cites Nvidia as a "critical benchmark" to penetrate Asia, plus a Nebius+0.43% — Nebius, up 0.43 percent today partnership opening 20 to 80 neocloud providers 5. The counterweight sits in Europe: Germany's Bundeswehr is testing alternatives to Palantir's Maven, and even Karp's own executives have told him to stop hyping Foundry 13. Sovereignty, for now, is marketed more than sold. Buyers carry that gap.
Deepdive
AI-generated from this story and its cited sources. Not investment advice.
