BUSINESS

The competition to develop artificial intelligence models is intensifying.

Palantir Technologies (PLTR) seems to be getting more and more comfortable with that.

Instead of betting the firm on a single large language model, Palantir is building its artificial intelligence platform, or AIP, to work with models from competing AI companies while also connecting them to corporate data, permissions and real-world workflows.

That strategy became more obvious on Sept. 24.

Palantir has made xAI’s Grok 4.7 available to eligible AIP commercial customers. It also added on the same day, OpenAI’s GPT-6 Sol, GPT-6 Luna and GPT-6 Astra, and DeepSeek V4.1 Flash in some environments. In September, Palantir also added open-weight models from Z.ai and Moonshot AI, along with Google’s Gemini 3.8 Flash.

The collection is significant because Palantir doesn’t have to guess which AI lab will ultimately produce the most powerful model.

Its opportunity might be a layer higher: becoming the software companies use to work out which models can access their data, what they are allowed to do with it, and how AI gets dropped into real business operations.

This capability could become increasingly important as enterprises move from testing chatbots to deploying autonomous artificial intelligence systems.

Palantir wants AIP to sit above the AI model wars

Palantir has demonstrated how methodically it is growing the number of models that can run inside AIP with the September releases.

Grok 4.7 was added for eligible commercial environments with xAI enabled. OpenAI’s newest models are now available through OpenAI and Azure OpenAI integrations. Palantir also opened access to models from Google, Anthropic, DeepSeek, Z.ai, and Moonshot AI in several security environments.

This is a big deal.

A bank, manufacturer, or government agency may not want to rebuild its AI architecture each time a different model gets better at coding, reasoning, document analysis, or autonomous tasks.

Palantir is trying to make the model more replaceable while maintaining the customer’s underlying data, permissions, and operational structure.

Another September release builds on that idea.

Palantir announced general availability of AIP Evolve on Sept. 8. It orchestrates AI agents that can try to improve existing artificial intelligence systems. Goals can be reducing cost, reducing latency, improving evaluation scores, migrating workloads to different models etc. Then proposals can be reviewed before changes are merged into production, says Palantir.

Related: UBS resets Palantir stock price target for the rest of 2026

That means Palantir isn’t merely giving customers access to multiple AI models. It is also building software that helps decide when to change those models. CEO Alex Karp has made data control a central part of that pitch.

“Demand for AI sovereignty has now been unleashed,” Karp said when Palantir reported second-quarter results.

For Palantir, “sovereign AI” is only about clients preserving control of their unique data, models, infrastructure, and operational choices, instead of giving those benefits to an outside model supplier.

Now the approach is stretching well beyond Palantir’s own product.

Nvidia and Nebius deepen Palantir’s AI strategy

Palantir’s partnerships with Nvidia and Nebius are a glimpse into how the company wants this model-agnostic approach to work in practice.

Nvidia and Palantir announced a sovereign AI system for complex supply chains on Sept. 10, with an initial deployment inside Nvidia. By combining Nvidia’s open Nemotron models with Palantir Foundry, AIP and Palantir’s Ontology, supply chain information will be analyzed to help guide operational decisions.

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The Nvidia deployment is notable because one of the companies at the heart of the AI infrastructure boom is using Palantir’s software.

Nvidia said it has built a digital supply-chain command center using Palantir Foundry. The chip giant is also training Nemotron models on operational decisions and the reasoning behind them in an effort to codify expertise that previously lived with human planners.

Palantir named Nebius (NBIS) as its preferred sovereign-AI infrastructure partner just two days ago.

Palantir says that once integrated, eligible commercial customers will be able to access Nebius compute and inference infrastructure from within Palantir’s enterprise perimeter, which could give customers more control over their compute, data, and AI models.

The companies are also looking to speed up the deployment of AI compute capacity, including modular data centers in areas that already have power.

Palantir’s smartest AI bet may be avoiding one big betJohn Lamparski / Getty Images

Palantir’s business growth gives the AI strategy more weight

Palantir’s AI strategy would be much easier to dismiss if it wasn’t showing up in the company’s financial results.

Second-quarter revenue surged 93% from a year earlier to $1.94 billion.

U.S. commercial revenue climbed 149% to $764 million, while U.S. government revenue increased 90% to $809 million. Total U.S. revenue reached $1.57 billion, up 115%.

Palantir also closed 220 deals worth at least $1 million during the quarter.

Of those, 98 were worth at least $5 million and 73 were worth at least $10 million.

U.S. commercial remaining deal value increased 124% to $6.24 billion, while U.S. commercial total contract value reached a record $2.13 billion, up 153%.

Profitability expanded alongside the growth.

Palantir generated $912 million of GAAP operating income, representing a 47% margin. Adjusted operating income was $1.19 billion, for a 62% margin.

The company subsequently raised its 2026 revenue forecast to between $8.15 billion and $8.158 billion and said U.S. commercial revenue should exceed $3.424 billion, representing growth of at least 134%.

Another major engine of growth is government spending.

On Sept. 17, the U.S. Army awarded Palantir USG a $48.1 million delivery order for software to replace nine legacy ammunition-management systems.

The initial term is 12 months and up to five optional additional years. The Army said the platform is intended to offer a single view of ammunition across planning, production, procurement, storage, distribution, and ultimate disposition.

That came just weeks after an Army milestone.

The Army has advanced the Tactical Intelligence Targeting Access Node, or TITAN, into production, with Palantir awarded $127 million in an initial eight-system production order.

Those awards together point to an unusual aspect of Palantir’s business.

Its rapidly growing commercial AI operation isn’t replacing its government business. Both are expanding at the same time.

Palantir’s biggest opportunity could depend on staying model-neutral

Valuation remains the big question for investors.

Palantir closed at $189.67 a share on Sept. 25. Wall Street remains broadly split on the value of the company’s unusually fast growth. Rosenblatt has a recent Buy and $225 target, while UBS reiterated a Buy and upped its target to $250 earlier this month. Other analysts are much more wary.

That disagreement shouldn’t be surprising.

Investors are trying to determine how much future AI adoption is priced into Palantir’s valuation, as the company posts revenue-growth rates rarely seen at its scale.

But do Palantir’s September product releases give investors another way to think about the company?

The best AI model might change again and again.

OpenAI might lead one category. Another category leader might be xAI, Google or Anthropic. Open-weight models could get a lot cheaper or a lot more powerful.

Palantir’s strategy seems increasingly constructed so that it does not necessarily have to know the winner beforehand.

If enterprises continue to adopt multiple models and want to maintain control of sensitive information and operational workflows, Palantir can try to sell the software layer that connects those pieces.

That may be the larger ambition behind what looked like a fairly simple product update on Sept. 24.

Palantir is not merely adding more AI models.

It is trying to make the identity of the winning AI model matter less to Palantir.

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While some chains have opted for locked shelves, Dollar General has taken a bolder approach to cutting down on shoplifting.

Essentially, the chain has made the decision that you can’t steal something if it’s not in the store.

Of course, that comes with a second clear caveat. You also can’t buy merchandise that’s not in the store.

“As we go forward, the team is looking at continued SKU rationalization, albeit probably more surgical in nature as we move forward. We’re already implementing some tests and learns even in the back half of this year around lower-volume store-type planograms, taking a substantial amount of SKUs out of the mix where it may not be as productive,” CEO Todd Vasos said during the chain’s second-quarter earnings call.

Removing lower-volume items to focus on faster-selling products makes sense, but that’s not the only reason Dollar General is removing items from its shelves.

“And also, again, in some high-shrink locations where shrink is still a bit of a headwind in some of these stores, and looking at SKU rationalization a little bit differently there,” he added.

Dollar General has fought a shrink problem

Shrink has been a Dollar General problem for years.

Vasos addressed it during the company’s fourth-quarter 2023 earnings call and shared some clear steps the company was taking to address the problem.

“Our second course of action will apply to all remaining stores with self-checkout, where we have begun limiting self-checkout to transactions consisting of five items or less. And finally, over the first half of the year, we plan to completely remove self-checkout from more than 300 of our highest shrink stores,” he said.

He framed the change as a positive.

“Collectively, we believe these steps are in line with where the customer wants us to be, which includes increasing personal engagement with them at the store. Additionally, we believe these actions have the potential to have a material and positive impact on shrink as we move into the back half of the year and into 2025,” he added.

Dollar General has removed self-checkout from thousands of stores.Shutterstock

Dollar General made aggressive shrink changes

One quarter later, Vasos addressed shrink again.

“Shrink continues to be the most significant headwind in our business, and we are deploying an end-to-end approach to shrink reduction across the organization, including efforts in our supply chain, merchandising, and within our stores,” he said during Dollar General’s Q1 2024 earnings call.

Dollar General’s shrink definition includes theft, but also damages and operational/administrative losses. The company’s own current results show that shrink and damages are being discussed separately.

“To help combat issues around shrink, our supply chain teams are primarily focused on ensuring deliveries are on time and in full and our merchants on reducing the amount of inventory we carry. Within our stores, we are focusing on delivering a more consistent front-end presence, broaden the reach of our high shrink planograms, which include the removal of high shrink SKUs and the elimination of self-checkout in the vast majority of stores,” he said.

That included a massive reduction in self-checkout.

“As we discussed on last quarter’s call, we converted approximately 9,000 stores away from self-checkout during the quarter. Following the quick and successful conversion of these stores in Q1 and given the ongoing challenge from shrink, we converted approximately 3,000 additional stores away from self-checkout in May, bringing us to approximately 12,000 conversions completed in total,” he added.

Dollar General has roughly 21,000 U.S. stores.

Shrink remains a major retail problem

While Dollar General is still making changes to fight shrink, Vasos did acknowledge that some of the chain’s efforts have worked.

“We were also pleased with the continued improvement in damages and shrink in Q2, which reflects strong in-store execution by the team,” he said during the Q2 2027 call.

Shrink, it should be noted, includes more than just shoplifting.

“Shrink (or shrinkage) is a measurement of inventory loss as a percentage of sales during a specific inventory period. It is used to forecast or account for losses in a retail balance sheet,” according to rhe National Retail Federation (NRF).

It’s a broad category that covers a number of different ways inventory disappears.

“Shrink calculations include losses stemming from theft (by employees and non-employees), administrative or operational errors, mistakes and other identified inventory loss. It is the most common form of measurement and benchmarking regarding retail loss. It also has its flaws,” the NRF added.

Still, shoplifting is an important part of the equation, and Capital One shared some 2025 data on that problem.

About half of retailers reported more shoplifting incidents in 2025 than in 2024.

In 2026, retailers are expected to lose $49.8 billion to retail theft. 

Projections indicate shoplifting could cost retailers more than $59 billion in 2029.

48% of retailers reported more shoplifting events involving individuals in 2025 than in 2024.

53% of retailers reported more incidents of team shoplifting (that is, multiple individuals stealing multiple items).

40% of retailers also reported fewer smash-and-grab events in 2025 compared to 2024.

Juveniles aged 12-16 are most likely to shoplift compared to other age groups.

Dollar General remains confident that it can continue to, well, shrink its shrink problem.

“We expect continued improvement in shrink and damages,” CFO Donny Lau said during the Q2 2027 call.

Vasos is confident in the future of the company.

“We feel we’re doing the exact right thing for the customer at the right time from a position of strength and on the offense. And we have the ability to flex up and flex down and have enough dry powder in the back half to be there for the customer every day,” he added.

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America is heading toward a nursing home crisis: as the 80+ population surges, the number of nursing homes keeps shrinking—driven by staffing shortages, low wages, high turnover, immigration pressures, and looming Medicaid cuts. In this conversation, we sit down with Dr. Mark Aaron Unruh, Associate Professor of Population Health Sciences at Weill Cornell Medicine and a leading expert on the economics and policy of long-term care, whose research has informed the Senate Finance Committee, the Senate Special Committee on Aging, and the White House.

Transcript:

Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network

Well, Dr. Unruh, it’s so great to see you. Thanks for joining us on the program this morning.

Dr. Mark Aaron Unruh, Weill Cornell Medicine

Thank you very much for having me.

Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network

You know, this, it’s no, the audience members who watch the show on a regular basis and presumably read a lot in the national press, it should come as no surprise that we have an aging America. You know, there are more people now over 65 than at any time and like other countries, we have some challenges there. And I love that you and your colleagues wrote a piece about the potential shortages of nursing homes.

Give us the top line here. Are we, do we need to do some work here in America to account for these older Americans?

Dr. Mark Aaron Unruh, Weill Cornell Medicine

Yes, absolutely. So there are basically two concurrent trends happening which really weren’t put together until recently. We’ve known for a long time about the projections of our aging population.

Just as an example, the population age 80 and older is projected to increase by about 45% over the next decade. That’s an age that’s associated with increased risk of disabilities, increased need for assistance with activities, daily living and onset of dementia. At the same time, we’ve had a decrease in the supply of nursing home beds.

Just as an example of that, if you go back about a decade, there were about 900 more nursing homes in the US. There are currently about 14 and a half thousand now and there used to be about 15,400, 500 a decade ago. On top of that, we have additional challenges that are not just contributing to a decline in the number of nursing homes but the number of available beds.

So you can imagine with the COVID-19 pandemic, we heard a lot about this. There have been staffing challenges and those continue. So working in a nursing home, for example, as a certified nursing assistant is a very difficult job, both physically and emotionally.

The wages tend to be low. There’s a high occupational injury rate. It’s not surprising that turnover rates among those positions can be 100% annually or even higher in some facilities.

So when you put those two trends together, aging population and contracting nursing home supply, that leads to a very big problem. So as I mentioned earlier, with the aging population, there’s gonna be a greater prevalence of dementia, for example, and with the onset, with an increased prevalence of people with severe dementia, that’s going to increase the need for nursing home beds. There really isn’t an alternative for many people who need 24-hour care associated with the needs of cognitive decline once they do have severe dementia.

So that’s sort of what we’re looking at in the upcoming years.

Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network

And so it sounds to me as a lay person here, it sounds like we need to start building, not we, but as a society, we need to maybe help prioritize building of these facilities to help for this growth in population. I mean, that seems like a necessary next step, or am I missing something?

Dr. Mark Aaron Unruh, Weill Cornell Medicine

That’s correct. But also we need to be able to staff those facilities. So right now, occupancy, as I mentioned earlier, there are challenges with staffing these facilities.

And about half of all nursing homes have limited their entries for new patients. Just, you know, you may, if you look up the number of nursing home beds in the U.S., that can be misleading. Those numbers represent the number of nursing home beds certified by states.

But let’s say if a nursing home has 150 certified beds, they may only actually be able to staff 100 of those beds. So there can be bottlenecks there. And this, so there are, the first place to start is staffing.

So, and there are some things working against the industry at this time. A large portion of direct care workers in nursing homes are immigrants. And the U.S.-born population that works in nursing homes has been declining pretty rapidly since the onset of the pandemic. However, the immigrant workforce in nursing homes has remained pretty steady. However, again, it’s difficult to attract enough workers to fully staff these nursing homes. Again, there are wage challenges.

So the average wage, I believe, is around $20 or so across the U.S. for a certified nursing assistant. And some of the bigger competitors for those workers are industries like fast food, for example. There’s, again, it’s very physically, emotionally demanding work.

And there’s little room for promotion and career advancement. There’s not a lot, tends to not be a lot of training opportunities for those workers. And all this leads to high turnover rates, difficulty recruiting, retaining individuals for those positions.

So that’s really where we need to start. But that leads into other issues. It leads, as I noted, into immigration policy.

So with the recent trends under the current administration, it’s going to mean fewer workers in these facilities, smaller pool of available workers in these facilities. Likewise, with looming Medicaid cuts. So the Big Beautiful Bill Act is projected to decrease Medicaid funding by about $1 trillion over the next decade.

The Medicaid tends to be the primary payer for people receiving long-term care in nursing homes. And Medicaid payments, on average, only cover about 80, 85% of the cost. So if you’re having cuts to Medicaid, that makes it difficult to increase wages and create other programs to recruit and retain workers in these facilities.

And all this too, oh, I’m sorry, go ahead.

Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network

No, no, finish your thought. But I do have a follow-up question to that. Go ahead and finish your thoughts, sir.

Dr. Mark Aaron Unruh, Weill Cornell Medicine

Sure. And one thing we haven’t brought up, though, is with limited access to nursing home care for people who need it, this really increases the caregiving burden on families. That’s already a huge problem in the U.S. and creates not just physical challenges, logistical challenges, but also financial challenges and emotional challenges. Anyone who’s had someone in their family they’ve had to probably care to in these types of situations knows what I’m talking about.

Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network

Yeah, that was gonna be my follow-up question. So who handles the spillover? So if we don’t have enough staff for the reasons you outlined, we can’t attract workers for those reasons.

So we can’t support all those beds. We’re gonna need more beds. So then it falls to the families.

That means those family members are gonna be taking care of loved ones. They may not be trained to do that, doctor. And also they may have jobs.

They may be professionals. They may have their own children or their spouse to care for.

Dr. Mark Aaron Unruh, Weill Cornell Medicine

Exactly, yes, yes. And they may not be able to provide adequate care. For example, people with complex medical needs or advanced dementia who need 24-hour care families typically aren’t able to provide that.

And it’s very expensive to try and bring in workers into your home to provide that additional care that they need. Many families just can’t afford that. So what this does is on top of increasing the burden on families it affects the whole healthcare system.

I think this is something people don’t realize. So if someone is hospitalized and they’re in need, so let me back up one moment. Nursing homes provide care to two populations.

The first population are those who are say recently hospitalized but they’re not quite well enough to go home and they need a few weeks of post-acute care. Basically this involves three or four weeks say of physical therapy, occupational therapy and maybe even speech therapy. And those days are typically covered by Medicare.

And Medicare has pretty generous payments that are profitable for nursing homes for post-acute care. The other population are those receiving long-term care. And that’s sort of the population we’ve been focusing on so far.

And individuals in need of long-term care the majority of those stays are paid by Medicaid. Maybe two-thirds of those days are covered by Medicaid. And that gets into the issues I was talking about before with payments and so on and covering the cost of care.

But when there’s a shortage of nursing home beds there may be a patient in the hospital who’s in need of post-acute care and they can’t find a bed or maybe someone whose condition has declined and they’re in need of placement for long-term care in a nursing home and you can’t find a bed for that individual either. This means that they have longer hospital stays, for example. And that’s taking up a bed that someone else may need for other care.

And this also affects hospital revenue and so on. So you can see where it really sort of creates a bottleneck.

Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network

Yeah, I think it does. And I would have to imagine you mentioned I don’t want to get into the politics of it but immigration, I’m sure that you could refine the immigration policy in the country to be an incentive or incentivize people to come here to do this work, right? I mean, that’s, if they would look at their current situation and say, oh, well, I can come to the United States on some, again, I don’t know all the details about the different types of visas that are available but they can come here and participate in our system while contributing in terms of caring for loved ones.

Do you think this is something that, obviously you write about this, you work with your colleagues, are local state leaders and federal leaders aware of these challenges? And is this a high priority, I guess, is my question for them.

Dr. Mark Aaron Unruh, Weill Cornell Medicine

Many are aware of it. I don’t know how high of a priority it is, but also it affects different regions differently. So many areas have severe shortages, others less so, but eventually it’s going to affect almost all of us.

But your comment about a visa pathway would be very helpful. Other countries have tried that and there has been research showing that increased immigration helps increase the labor pull for these types of positions. And it’s also been associated with increased quality of care at nursing homes because they’re able to increase staffing levels with higher immigration.

So that is one potential pathway. That’s something that could be implemented with training programs and employer accountability to potentially mitigate some of these staffing shortages.

Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network

Yeah, it’s a big challenge. And look, candidly, doctor, we’re all going to need long-term care at some point. I mean, you don’t get off this planet.

As we age, we’re going to need more healthcare and the healthcare expenses go up in the last five to 10 years of your life. We’re all going to need this. No one gets to escape this, right?

I mean, unless you have some kind of catastrophic illness or your life is shortened. But for the most part, we’re all going to face this circumstance.

Dr. Mark Aaron Unruh, Weill Cornell Medicine

Yeah, well, maybe as much as half of us are going to need post-acute or long-term care in a nursing home at some point in our life. So it’s an important topic. And as the population continues to age and the number of older adults increases, even if the number of nursing home beds remain constant where it is now, the supply won’t be anywhere near enough to meet demand.

Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network

Yeah, it’s, look, I think this is, and we didn’t even talk about longevity because people are living longer. And the comment, the conversation about healthspan, you want to live longer, but you don’t want to live better. I think this is, I don’t pretend to prioritize things for the US Congress or anybody.

But I mean, I think to me, when I’m thinking about my own life, I want to make sure that I’m taken care of. Doctor, we’re going to have to leave it there. It’s a great piece.

Thanks for bringing it to our attention. And we look forward to having you back on the program again very soon, sir.

Dr. Mark Aaron Unruh, Weill Cornell Medicine

Great, and thank you again for having me.

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