Back to News
investment

Investors Are Piling Into Palantir, but This AI Competitor Might Outperform It in 2026

The Motley Fool
Loading...
5 min read
1 views
0 likes
Investors Are Piling Into Palantir, but This AI Competitor Might Outperform It in 2026

Summarize this article with:

By Geoffrey Seiler – Dec 11, 2025 at 11:43AMKey PointsPalantir's stock rise has been driven by its AI platform, which acts as an AI operating system.UiPath's Maestro platform, which acts as an orchestration platform for AI agents, could be a similar growth driver. These 10 Stocks Could Mint the Next Wave of Millionaires ›NYSE: PATHUiPathMarket Cap$9.9BToday's Changeangle-down(-1.93%) $0.36Current Price$18.33Price as of December 11, 2025 at 12:14 PM ETUiPath's stock is cheap, and it should have huge upside if its revenue growth keeps accelerating.For three years in a row, Palantir Technologies (PLTR 1.54%) has seen its stock soar by triple-digit percentages. It rose 167% in 2023, 340% in 2024, and has more than doubled so far in 2025. Those gains have come on the back of its strong and accelerating revenue growth, which hit 63% last quarter. The key to the company's success has been its Artificial Intelligence (AI) Platform, which U.S. commercial customers have been increasingly adopting. AIP is designed to act as an AI operating system, helping customers apply third-party large language models (LLMs) to more easily solve their real-world problems. It does this first by gathering an organization's data from a variety of sources and then organizing it into an ontology, creating a clean, structured source of data for AI models to use. It then links that data to physical assets and concepts, such as customer orders. ExpandNASDAQ: PLTRPalantir TechnologiesToday's Change(-1.54%) $-2.89Current Price$185.02Key Data PointsMarket Cap$448BDay's Range$180.21 - $185.4252wk Range$63.40 - $207.52Volume784KAvg Vol52MGross Margin80.81%Dividend YieldN/A AIP is now being used by clients across industries to provide managers with insights and help them solve a wide array of problems. Palantir's revenue growth has accelerated for the past nine quarters as new commercial customers join its roster and established customers expand their spending with the company. However, the stock trades at a high price-to-sales (P/S) multiple of nearly 70 times analysts' 2026 estimates, which could limit its upside from here. However, there is one company that has some similar characteristics to Palantir just before it broke out. That company is UiPath (PATH 1.93%), and it still trades at a fraction of the valuation of Palantir despite a strong run-up following its most recent earnings report. AI orchestration leader While Palantir has become an AI operating system company, UiPath is looking to become the leader in AI agent orchestration. AI agents are software tools that can autonomously perform tasks within guidelines and almost act as virtual employees, and the opportunity in the space is massive. Numerous companies are pursuing it or building their own internal AI agents. While UiPath's Maestro platform provides no-code and low-code tools that let users easily build their own AI agents, that's not its main purpose. Advertisement The beauty of the platform is that it helps organizations orchestrate both AI agents created using one of the many other third-party systems and those built using Maestro. This will become an increasingly important AI software layer. However, UiPath takes it a step further. Image source: Getty Images. Before AI went mainstream, UiPath was a leader in robotic process automation (RPA), which uses rules-based software bots to perform basic everyday work functions such as data entry. Even in a world where AI agents are common, software bots will still have a place, as they are cheaper to run than AI agents, which can handle much more complex duties. UiPath has also recently introduced a new solution called ScreenPlay, which combines RPA with large language models (LLMs) to deliver more reliable automation. UiPath's orchestration platform can also determine whether specific tasks would be better handled by a bot or an AI agent, and assign them accordingly. This can help companies save money, which is always a big selling point. UiPath also recently teamed up with several AI leaders, including Nvidia, OpenAI, and Alphabet. One of its more interesting collaborations is with data warehousing company Snowflake, which will let its customers use Maestro to get real-time insights based on their stored data. By using Snowflake's clean, structured data, UiPath's platform can deliver data-driven insights similar to those provided by Palantir's AIP. ExpandNYSE: PATHUiPathToday's Change(-1.93%) $-0.36Current Price$18.33Key Data PointsMarket Cap$10BDay's Range$18.21 - $18.9552wk Range$9.38 - $19.84Volume488KAvg Vol25MGross Margin83.16%Dividend YieldN/A Time to buy UiPath From a valuation perspective, UiPath's stock is not expensive, trading at just under 6 times analysts' 2026 sales estimates. The company is just at the beginning of its transformation into an AI orchestration platform, but it is making progress, with revenue accelerating from 14% growth in fiscal Q2 to 16% growth last quarter, which ended Oct. 31. It's easy to forget that at the start of its AI journey, Palantir saw its revenue growth accelerate from 13% in Q2 2023 to 17% in Q3 2023. If UiPath can continue to accelerate its revenue growth, the stock will have huge upside in 2026 and beyond.About the AuthorGeoffrey Seiler is a contributing Motley Fool stock market analyst covering technology, consumer goods, healthcare, energy, and materials stocks. Prior to The Motley Fool, Geoffrey was a senior equity analyst at Raging Capital Management, a $600 million long-short hedge fund. He holds a bachelor’s degree in history from Haverford College.TMFFindProfitRead NextDec 11, 2025 •By Parkev Tatevosian, CFAShould Investors Buy UiPath Stock Before 2026?Dec 7, 2025 •By Geoffrey SeilerUiPath Shares Surge.

Is It Too Late to Buy the Stock?Dec 4, 2025 •By Joe TenebrusoWhy UiPath Stock Surged TodayDec 3, 2025 •By Scott LevineWhy UiPath Stock Is Soaring in After-Hours TradingDec 2, 2025 •By Leo SunCould This Quiet AI Company Become the Next Big Winner?Dec 1, 2025 •By Parkev Tatevosian, CFAShould You Buy UiPath Stock Before the Huge Investor Update?

Read Original

Source Information

Source: The Motley Fool