Tag: PLTR

July was a month of making the portfolio more honest about where my conviction actually sits.

This review uses my IBKR ISA only. It is the account represented by the main Portfolio page. My Trading 212 holdings are part of a separate £15k High Growth Challenge and are not included in the figures or commentary below.

The figures are from my IBKR prior-business-day-close snapshot for 31 July 2026. They are a dated record, not live prices or a recommendation for anyone to copy my allocation.

Portfolio snapshot

At the 31 July close, the IBKR ISA was worth £194,538.84, including £49.84 of cash. The invested value was £194,489.00.

The separate Trading 212 challenge was worth £12,132.13 at its 31 July snapshot, including £136.74 cash. I am keeping it separate because the two accounts use different reporting timings and serve different purposes.

The main portfolio remains deliberately growth-oriented and concentrated. That is not a claim that concentration is safe. It is an acknowledgement that my returns, good or bad, will be shaped heavily by a relatively small number of positions.

Biggest changes in July

The biggest decision was increasing my Rocket Lab position from 1,000 to 2,000 shares. To fund that change, I sold Apple, Alphabet, NVIDIA and SoFi, and reduced Uber in the IBKR ISA. I wrote separately about why I made Rocket Lab roughly 50% of my portfolio, including the concentration, financing and execution risks I am accepting.

I also increased Micron from eight to 10 shares and Surf Air Mobility from 10,000 to 13,800 shares. These are material changes to a concentrated portfolio, so I want them recorded rather than quietly absorbed into an evergreen holdings page.

No quantity changes were identified in the Trading 212 challenge between its late-July reporting snapshots. Its three holdings at month-end were Uber, Amkor and AST SpaceMobile.

Current main holdings at month-end

At the 31 July IBKR close, the core positions included:

• Rocket Lab: 2,000 shares at $64.95.
• Palantir: 250 shares at $123.06.
• AbCellera: 3,001 shares at $5.71.
• BETA Technologies: 1,000 shares at $18.93.
• ServiceNow: 150 shares at $111.23.
• Surf Air Mobility: 13,800 shares at $0.76.

Those prices are the values in the dated broker snapshot. The live Portfolio page is the better place for the latest IBKR ISA holdings and indicative GBP values.

What I am watching

Rocket Lab remains the central position to watch, partly because of its size and partly because the investment case depends on execution continuing across several moving parts. The opportunity is why I own it. The concentration is why I need to keep looking for evidence that could challenge my view.

I am also watching whether the smaller positions continue to earn their place. Owning a company is not a permanent vote of confidence. I need to be able to explain what I am underwriting, what has changed and what would cause me to reassess.

For AbCellera in particular, the clinical proof points remain important. My latest AbCellera investment update sets out why the next programme milestones matter to the thesis.

Where I could be wrong

The obvious risk is concentration. A few disappointing outcomes at the same time would hurt this portfolio materially. That is especially true when growth companies can be volatile, funding needs can change and expectations move faster than the underlying businesses.

Another risk is confusing familiarity with understanding. Spending time researching a company can improve a thesis, but it can also make a view feel more comfortable than it deserves. The job is to keep testing the assumptions, not just to keep repeating them.

Finally, a positive month-end snapshot does not settle anything. I want the monthly record to show the decisions, the uncertainty and the areas where I could be wrong, rather than turn every portfolio move into a victory lap.

Final thoughts

July made the main portfolio simpler in one sense and riskier in another. I have fewer positions that matter, and more exposure to the ideas I believe in most. The trade-off is that I need to be more disciplined about reassessment when the screen is red as well as when it is green.

This is a personal portfolio record, not financial advice. The positions, prices and weights can change after the reporting date.

This is my current investment thesis, not financial advice. I own Palantir in my main portfolio and the position can change.

My interest in Palantir is not simply that it is an AI company. There are plenty of companies that can claim that label. The question I find more interesting is whether Palantir’s Artificial Intelligence Platform, or AIP, can become durable commercial infrastructure inside large organisations.

That is the part of the bull case I care about most. If AIP is helping customers move from experimentation into real workflows, it has a chance to become more than an AI feature or a short-lived spending cycle. It could become a platform that sits underneath important decisions, operations and automation.

The commercial adoption question

Palantir’s latest filed quarterly results give the thesis some substance. For the three months ended 31 March 2026, the company reported total revenue of $1.63 billion, compared with $884 million in the comparable period a year earlier. Commercial revenue was $774 million, up from $397 million.

Those numbers alone do not prove a long-term moat. Fast growth can attract a lot of attention, and it can make any valuation look more forgiving than it really is. But they do suggest that the commercial story is no longer just an aspirational slide in an investor presentation.

For me, the key question is what customers are actually buying. If they are mainly paying for short pilots and AI enthusiasm, the revenue can fade when budgets tighten. If they are using AIP to connect data, people and workflows in ways that are difficult to remove, the economics could be very different.

Why AIP could matter

Palantir describes AIP as a platform that connects large language models to an organisation’s data, permissions, workflows, agents and governance. That matters because most companies do not need another chatbot. They need a way to use AI in real operating environments without losing control of their data or creating unmanageable risk.

The potential appeal is that Palantir already has the components around the model layer. Foundry helps organisations map and work with data, the Ontology gives that data operational context, and Apollo supports deployment across complex environments. If those pieces work together in practice, AIP can be more useful than a standalone model interface.

The bull case is not that every company will buy more AI software. It is that a smaller number of important customers will build Palantir into workflows they do not want to unwind.

What I would watch from here

• Commercial growth quality: whether growth remains strong as deployments mature, rather than relying on a small number of highly visible wins.
• Customer depth: whether customers expand from pilots into repeatable, material programmes.
• Operating leverage: whether revenue growth continues to translate into disciplined profitability and cash generation.
• Remaining performance obligations: the company reported $4.5 billion at the end of Q1 2026, which is useful context, but not the same thing as recognised revenue.

The risks I do not want to ignore

The valuation risk is obvious. A business priced for exceptional execution leaves little room for disappointment. Commercial growth slowing, customers choosing cheaper or more open alternatives, or the market deciding that AI budgets were pulled forward would all challenge the thesis.

I also keep an eye on stock-based compensation. Palantir recorded $202 million in stock-based compensation in Q1 2026. That does not invalidate the business, but it matters when judging how much of the reported progress ultimately belongs to shareholders.

There is also a genuine execution question. Palantir operates in competitive markets and has to prove that its platform can scale commercially without becoming too dependent on a narrow group of customers or on an unusually favourable AI spending environment.

My current view

I own PLTR because I think AIP has a credible path to becoming operational software rather than a superficial AI add-on. The commercial growth is encouraging, but the enduring thesis depends on adoption becoming deeper and stickier over time.

This is therefore a thesis I want to revisit through customer expansion, commercial durability, margins and the valuation the market is asking me to pay. I am not assuming the outcome. I am watching for evidence that the platform is becoming harder to replace as it becomes more embedded.

For context on how this fits into the wider picture, see my current portfolio. The financial figures cited above come from Palantir’s Q1 2026 Form 10-Q.