Palantir Technologies was having its best day in more than a year on Friday as a rebound in software stocks lifted shares of the beleaguered company.
The stock advanced 9.21% to $156.54, its largest single-day jump since April 2025. The Nasdaq Composite ticked up 0.3%.
The driver behind those gains was easy to identify: Palantir, like many other software stocks, got a lift from Snowflake's earnings report on Wednesday, which sparked a sector-wide rally that has lasted for two straight sessions.
Palantir itself has gained nearly 18% over the span, its best performance since the two days ended April 9, 2025, according to Dow Jones Market Data.
Snowflake's first-quarter report was dominated by a guidance hike and a new, $6 billion agreement with Amazon to use its chips and cloud services. But the star of the show was Snowflake's Cortex Code, affectionately referred to as CoCo, which management credited as the driving force behind the earnings beat.
HSBC analyst Stephen Bersey upgraded Snowflake to Buy from Hold on Friday, calling CoCo the clearest evidence of Snowflake's AI monetization opportunity. The coding agent is in use across more than 7,100 accounts and has contributed meaningful AI revenue.
Deutsche Bank analysts were similarly constructive in a research note titled "Cuckoo for CoCo." The firm lifted its price target on the shares to $250 from $230 on Thursday while maintaining a Buy rating.
"While we were cautiously optimistic heading into the print despite what appeared to be a more challenging setup for the remainder of the year, results and commentary point to an even more meaningful underlying inflection in customer consumption patterns," the analysts wrote.
The AI growth narrative was reaffirmed by first-quarter earnings from Dell Technologies late Thursday. Dell, a key infrastructure provider, teamed up with Palantir earlier this month to offer an on-premises "AI operating system" for healthcare, defense, and other industries.
For Palantir, the results are an affirmation of the technology at the heart of its business. As one of the most notable beneficiaries of the AI boom, the data-analytics giant saw its shares more than double in 2025, easily eclipsing the Nasdaq's 20% gain.
But the momentum has since ground to a halt. Even counting this week's surge, Palantir shares remain solidly in the red this year, down nearly 12%. The tech-heavy Nasdaq, by comparison, has gained 16%.
Software stocks were battered earlier in the year as investors fretted that AI would take market share from software-as-a-service providers. Even Palantir, an AI-native tech player, wasn't immune.
Strategists at 22V Research noted in a client email Friday that the latest round of earnings reinforce the view that software, excluding hyperscalers, "is still no longer an obvious short."
Still, the firm was cautious. "Software has not yet proven it won't be disrupted, so it's not an obvious long either," it asserted.
Where does Palantir fit in? 22V Research included it in a list of software names with high earnings-per-share revisions and positive earnings sentiment, describing the latter as "an objective score of how optimistic management teams sounded during their earnings calls." Mara Holdings, Palantir, and Guidewire lead the list, in that order.
For a beaten-down software sector, and a humbled Palantir, the race is now on to prove the software rally is the start of a genuine second act rather than a temporary reprieve.
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