Palantir Technology's (PLTR -5.17%) stock has been nearly unstoppable over the past year. It has risen around 600% since the start of 2024 and nearly 35% in 2025 alone.

That shows that both the underlying company and the market opportunity are strong. Although Palantir attained a $236 billion market cap as of this writing, Wedbush analyst Dan Ives thinks that it could rise to be a $1 trillion company. That's an incredible projection, and he believes it could happen in a few years.

So, could Palantir be a $1 trillion company by 2030? Let's take a look.

Palantir is seeing strong growth from its AI software

Palantir has become a popular stock due to its focus on artificial intelligence (AI) software. Its data analytics software helps companies take in all of their data, process it, and then provide actionable insights to those with decision-making authority. Originally, Palantir designed its software for government use but eventually expanded to the commercial side of things to capture an even larger market.

Still, government revenue makes up more than half of its total (government revenue came to $455 million in the fourth quarter versus commercial's $372 million). It also grew faster, with government revenue rising 40% year over year versus commercial's increase of 31%. This one-two punch of commercial and government business has been a strong point for Palantir's stock, as commercial and government spending aren't always correlated to an economic cycle.

Palantir also has another hit product in its lineup that caused its commercial customer acquisition to spike, especially in the U.S. Its Artificial Intelligence Platform (AIP) allows users to integrate AI throughout a business' inner workings rather than use it as a tool on the side. It also allows users to deploy AI agents, which can automate tasks that used to be done manually.

This combines into a strong growth story that's far from over. But does it translate into a $1 trillion market cap?

$1 trillion by 2030 is a bit outlandish

As mentioned above, Palantir has a market cap of around $236 billion. For it to rise to $1 trillion by the end of 2030, the stock would need to return 29% every year on top of its current performance. Considering that Wall Street is calling for 32% revenue growth in 2025 and 26% in 2026, this goal seems possible, at least in the first few years.

However, not everything is tied to revenue growth, as valuation is also important.

Because Palantir hasn't posted a consistent profit margin, its price-to-earnings ratio (P/E) is a bit skewed. However, its price-to-sales ratio (P/S) is also a good metric to consider.

PLTR PE Ratio data by YCharts.

If these metrics look incredibly high, that's because they are. Regardless of your chosen valuation metric, Palantir's stock is unbelievably expensive. Compared to another AI giant, Nvidia -- which never had a forward P/E of more than 51 and a P/S of 46 during its run since 2023, despite growing sales more than 200% year over year -- this seems a bit odd.

Keep in mind that Palantir is currently growing in the mid-30% range year over year, so its valuation is becoming tough to justify. But let's just throw logic and reason out the window and presume that its revenue growth accelerates to 50% year over year, and it sustains it for the next six years (until the end of 2030). Alongside that, we'll assume that the company can achieve a 30% profit margin (the best it has achieved to date is 20%). Lastly, we'll ignore the effects of a rising share count -- which is a terrible assumption, since Palantir's share count rose nearly 8% in this past quarter.

If you do that, you would have a company that generates $32.6 billion in revenue and $9.79 billion in profits. Sounds impressive, right? But we already have a company that posts numbers similar to that: Salesforce. Over the past 12 months, the company generated $37.2 billion in revenue and $5.9 billion in profits. The stock has a market cap of $312 billion, nearly where Palantir is today.

Some entry-level $1 trillion companies posted the following results over the past 12 months:

Data source: YCharts.

Palantir isn't even close to reaching any of these figures, even with a ridiculous sustained 50% revenue growth rate, something that not even management is projecting.

The bottom line is that Palantir is an incredibly overvalued stock that is rising based on hype alone. However, I wouldn't bet against it because hype is a powerful force in the market.

To reach a $1 trillion market cap by the end of 2030 based on traditional valuation metrics is practically impossible unless something massive changes (like revenue doubling year over year for five years). I think Palantir as a business will certainly succeed over the next few years, but the stock price has already baked in that rise and then some.