A Tale of Two Valuations: Palantir, OpenAI, and the Alchemy of Multiples

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In the kingdom of Wall Street, where dragons hoard ticker symbols and goblins trade futures on the breath of unicorns1, the shares of Palantir (PLTR) have taken a tumble this week. Down 9.5% as of the third bell on Friday’s trading hour, while the S&P 500 gained a fractional foothold and the Nasdaq-100 slipped like a greased weasel through a tax auditor’s fingers.

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The Guild of Data Weavers Meets the Illuminated Codex Foundry

The Guild of Retail Traders, custodians of the sacred Robinhood platform, found their crystal ball clouded this week when Citron Research-a name whispered in the same breath as “black cat crossing your path”2-released a parchment comparing Palantir’s valuation to the mythical OpenAI, freshly anointed with a $500 billion blessing after its latest funding round.

Citron, the same alchemist who once turned GameStop into a phoenix of speculative frenzy, noted that OpenAI’s implied price-to-sales (P/S) ratio sits at 17. This, they claim, makes it “the most expensive SaaS grimoire in the annals of the Software-as-a-Service Enchanted Forest.” Yet Palantir’s P/S ratio of 115 looms like a spectral giant-nearly seven times that of OpenAI’s, despite the latter’s warlocks conjuring revenue at a pace that makes Palantir’s ledger scribblers look like apprentices still learning to count their fingers.

If Palantir were priced at OpenAI’s modest 17x sales multiple, its shares would trade at $40-a sum still sufficient to buy you a seat at the SaaS Round Table, though perhaps not the High Table3. Citron deems this disparity irrational. As a seasoned investor who once shorted a company solely because its CEO wore socks with sandals, I find myself nodding in grim agreement.

Palantir, for all its merits-a fortress of algorithms guarded by the Three Lenses of Data Alchemy4-remains a stock priced for perfection in a world where even dragons occasionally catch cold. The market, that ficklest of mistresses, seems to have noticed the emperor’s new multiple. I’d suggest watching from the sidelines, preferably with a cup of cocoa and a sturdy umbrella.

1 Disclosure: The author has never seen an actual Wall Street dragon but once met a man who claimed to trade in “volatility phoenixes.” He was later arrested.
2 Citron Research is neither a citrus fruit nor a medieval curse, but it does rhyme suspiciously well with “siren.”
3 Analogy approved by the Royal Society of Financial Metaphors, pending revocation if overused.
4 No actual alchemy was harmed in the making of this analysis. Or was it? 🐉

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2025-08-22 22:31