For years, Palantir has been the stock that AI believers loved and skeptics mocked. The believers just got a very expensive victory lap.

The company reported Q1 revenue of $1.63 billion, up 85% year-over-year. That's not a typo. Eighty-five percent growth from a company that's been public since 2020 and already does over $6 billion in annual revenue. Even in the AI boom, that's rare.

The majority of that revenue, $1.28 billion, came from the United States alone. And it wasn't just government contracts, which Palantir has always dominated. Commercial revenue is exploding too, driven by companies that want to use AI but have no idea how to deploy it on their own data.

That's the thing Wall Street is finally starting to understand about Palantir: they're not selling AI hype. They're selling AI implementation. And there's a huge difference.

Every company wants to say they're using AI. Very few actually know how to build the infrastructure, train the models on proprietary data, and deploy it in a way that doesn't break everything else. Palantir has spent 20 years building software that does exactly that, originally for the Pentagon and intelligence agencies, and now for anyone willing to pay.

The company beat analyst estimates of $1.53 billion, and profit margins are holding up. That's critical, because a lot of AI companies are burning cash to grow. Palantir is growing and printing money.

So is this stock still a buy at current levels?

Here's the uncomfortable truth: Palantir is expensive. The stock has run hard, and the valuation multiples are not cheap by any traditional measure. You're paying for growth, and you're paying for the belief that this growth continues.

The bull case is simple: AI is real, and Palantir is one of the few companies actually monetizing it at scale. The 85% growth suggests they're still in the early innings. If they can keep this up for even two more years, the current valuation starts to look reasonable.

The bear case is that the growth rate has to slow eventually. No company sustains 85% growth forever. And when it does slow, the stock could get hit hard because so much of the current price assumes this pace continues.