Defense AI has been perhaps the hottest corner of the market this year, and though Palantir (PLTR) dominates proceedings in the space, another tiny player has been notching eye-popping gains.

BigBear.ai (BBAI) isn’t your usual headline-maker, but the defense analytics company has seen its stock skyrocket 50% in six months.

And despite the insatiable demand for military-grade AI sending its stock parabolic, the stock’s still priced like a Big Mac, even as its national-security footprint gets bigger.

Also, by taking a page from Palantir’s playbook, BigBear continues to land major Army contracts, build its backlog, and post a surprise quarterly profit to boot.

For a business that was once written off as a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) casualty, its momentum is mighty impressive, to say the least.

BigBear.ai is up more than 53% in six months as demand for defense-focused AI tools accelerates.Photo by Bloomberg on Getty Images” loading=”eager” height=”640″ width=”960″>

Before getting into the specifics of what BigBear builds, let’s dig into why this relatively small defense-AI outfit is on investors’ radars.

For perspective, the stock has jumped from about $4.14 in late May to roughly $6.34 by November (nearly a 53% gain). Stretch that over a year, and those gains are even mightier at 200%.

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Put simply, BigBear.ai runs a potent decision-intelligence business that fell out of favor with investors shortly after going public via a 2021 SPAC merger (valued at $1.57 billion), MarketWatch reported.

The scrappier analytics shop, though, is now back with a bang after spending a few years rebuilding its core engine off to the side.

Both BigBear.ai and its big brother, Palantir, live in the same world.

Their collective goal is to ensure agencies can make sense of often chaotic data and turn it into actionable decisions.

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However, they tackle their missions differently.

BigBear bills itself as a more “decision intelligence” player, spearheading modular tools that plug into existing systems. On the flip side, Palantir pushes full-blown, end-to-end platforms running at a massive scale.

• BigBear’s core products: Boasts the “Observe, Orient, Dominate” suite of AI tools that pull in enormous amounts of raw data and turn it into usable insights for planners and analysts on the battlefield.

• BigBear’s core clientele and contracts:
  Primarily public-sector focused, with core clientele including the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency, Department of Defense, and federal agencies, as well as some contribution from logistics and aerospace.  Major contract wins include a slew of small- to mid-sized contracts, including a 3.5-year, $13.2 million award to expand the Pentagon’s ORION force-management analytics system.

• Palantir’s core products:
  Gotham for government intelligence and defense analytics, Foundry for data integration and analytics for commercial and industrial clients, and the newer Artificial Intelligence Platform (AIP) for deploying large language models and AI agents inside secure environments.  Collectively, they form an end-to-end stack, covering everything from data preparation to advanced AI/ML and automated decision-making.

• Palantir’s core clientele and contracts: Major government customers (CIA, DoD, law-enforcement agencies), along with allied governments. Additionally, its roster of clients includes the who’s who of Fortune 500 companies, including Morgan Stanley and Airbus.

• Scale and positioning: Both companies serve similar purposes, but Palantir is clearly the more entrenched behemoth. It continues to land the sector’s biggest deals, including an extended Army Project Maven, which, according to InsideDefense, pushes its market share of the program above $1 billion.