With the U.S. defense budget topping $1 trillion in fiscal year 2026—and a 2027 target of $1.5 trillion on the table—Silicon Valley firms, both public and private, are positioned to make further inroads in a sector still dominated by legacy prime contractors. To be sure, four primes—Boeing (BA), Lockheed Martin (LMT), RTX (RTX), and Northrop Grumman (NOC)—remain dominant, holding 92% of Pentagon contracts as of Q4 2026. But the budget’s growth, along with the rapid adoption of AI applications in defense and continuing global conflicts, promises to further boost tech firms’ presence and their influence on sector valuations and performance.Palantir (PLTR) and Anduril, part of a cohort insiders have increasingly been calling “neoprimes,” are the most advanced in terms of contract wins. But AI players like Google, a unit of Alphabet (GOOGL), OpenAI, and Anthropic are in the mix as well. Anduril and Palantir recently signed separate 10-year enterprise agreements with the Department of War. Anduril’s consolidates 120 separate contracts under a $20 billion ceiling, while Palantir’s rolls up 75 contracts up to $10 billion. And Google, after exiting a defense department deal in 2018 amid employee pressure, returned to Pentagon work in 2025 with contracts for AI and cloud services, and in March won another contract to deploy AI agents across the department’s unclassified networks.Perhaps most importantly, these firms, which by most measures market the world’s leading AI platforms, are infiltrating and driving change across the broader defense industry ecosystem, as Pentagon contractors large and small require competency in their technologies.As such, they’re creating an opportunity for investors to rethink their sector allocations, especially with Anduril, OpenAI, and Anthropic all expected to go public in the near future. Hiring patterns for security-cleared professionals tracked by ClearanceJobs.com add a further, forward-looking dimension to the picture. The data captures direct hiring by these companies, as well as mentions of each company or its systems in job postings by others within their partner and client ecosystems—offering perspective on where momentum is building.Palantir (PLTR) DoD hiring spikes in 2026The Pentagon already accounts for a significant share of Palantir’s revenue, which means the company stands to benefit disproportionately as defense spending accelerates. Palantir derived 41.5% of its total revenue last year from Washington, $1.885 billion, with overall federal government revenue surging 55%. If the increases in funds flowing from the Department of War continue at that pace, its shares could climb meaningfully.Notably, Palantir’s Maven system, which won a groundbreaking contract for broad use across U.S. armed forces, incorporates Anthropic’s AI technology. (The implications of the Pentagon’s decision to declare Anthropic “a supply chain risk,” and the judicial rulings that followed, remain unclear.) Palantir has been a strong presence in the ClearanceJobs.com database. After growing modestly in 2024 to 4,351, job postings that mention the company and its systems declined 10% in 2025, to 3,926. Looking ahead, data for the first three months of 2026 put the company on pace for 20% year-over-year growth of such mentions but the company’s ecosystem presence has plateaued relative to faster-moving rivals.Google (GOOGL) defense business solid, with growth potentialAlthough defense is not a significant portion of Google’s business, the company has been making steady inroads since restarting its efforts in the defense space last year. And large increases in the conglomerate’s revenue from the Department of War may positively move the needle for GOOG stock in the long term.Last year, however, Google did land a $200 million contract to furnish the Pentagon with “AI and cloud capabilities.” And in March, Google said it was “leaning more” into obtaining deals related to national security. Also that month, the Department of War agreed to employ the tech giant’s AI agents in its “unclassified networks.” Google’s defense and intelligence footprint, as measured by mentions in ClearanceJobs postings, has grown steadily—from 6,933 in 2023 to 9,004 in 2025—though the pace of growth so far in 2026 has slowed sharply to just 1% year-over-year. The company’s Q1 run rate puts it on pace for roughly 9,600 mentions in job postings in full year 2026, suggesting a mature but durable presence in the cleared community.OpenAI hiring growth follows DoD winThe Pentagon in February decided to utilize OpenAI’s offerings within its “classified networks.” In a statement at that time, the company said its technology would not be used “for mass domestic surveillance,” or “to direct autonomous weapons systems.” The firm later widened its restrictions, asserting that its “AI system shall not be intentionally used for domestic surveillance of U.S. persons and nationals.” To some extent, these restrictions may limit the attractiveness of OpenAI’s technology to the Department of War and other U.S. agencies whose work relates to national security. Indeed, CEO Sam Altmanstated that “intelligence agencies such as the NSA” would not utilize its offerings, according to CNBC. It’s important to note that OpenAI exceeded $25 billion of annualized revenue as of the end of February, while its deal with the Pentagon is relatively limited and likely will not account for a significant percentage of its sales anytime soon. Japanese investment bank SoftBank recently received a one-year, unsecured, $40 billion loan that it will use to finance its $30 billion investment in OpenAI. The terms of the loan fueled speculation that the company would launch an IPO in 2026. Job postings mentioning OpenAI have grown rapidly, rising from 41 in 2023 to 359 in 2025—a more than eightfold increase in two years. Momentum shows no signs of slowing, with Q1 2026 actuals on pace to exceed 580 job postings by year-end, roughly a 63% gain over last year.Anduril hiring surges amid battlefield AI push Under Anduril’s enterprise agreement with the Pentagon, the company will continue to provide the Army with its AI-powered operating system Lattice, an “AI-powered battle management platform” that analyzes data and enables fast decision making. Further, the service branch announced a new $87 million deal with Anduril on March 16. Anduril’s total revenue reportedly reached about $1 billion in 2024, and management expects the company to generate sales of roughly $2 billion by 2026. And Palmer Luckey, a company founder, said the firm “definitely” is looking to launch an IPO, potentially in 2026. Job postings that mention Anduril have outpaced the others doubling from 2023 to 2024 and nearly doubling again by 2025 to 6,501. Q1 2026 actuals are already at 2,179 with a 2026 full-year projection of 8,716.Anthropic DoD upside hits skids, but its not out of the game entirely yetThe company’s large language model (LLM), Claude, is the only one certified for use in classified U.S. military contexts, according to The Financial Times. But the primary concern for defense-sector investors is the company’s status with respect to the U.S. government’s determination that it is a supply chain risk—a status typically reserved for companies in non-aligned countries.The U.S. took this step after the firm tried to prevent its offerings from being incorporated into autonomous systems and surveillance tools. Subsequent litigation has left the outcome unclear: A federal judge overturned the Defense Department’s order in March, calling it “Orwellian,” while another, in April, denied Anthropic’s motion for a stay. Anthropic is considering an IPO “as soon as October.” Starting from essentially zero mentions in the ClearanceJobs.com database in 2023, mentions of Anthropic and its systems appeared in 89 job postings in 2025 and are on pace to nearly quadruple to 352 this year. The numbers remain small in absolute terms, but this early trajectory signals accelerated adoption across cleared programs.Related: Boeing lands another huge military deal