BigBear.ai Holdings (NYSE: $BBAI) Stock Hub: Q2 2026 Results, the New 100 Million Share ATM, Backlog Quality and the Dilution Arithmetic

Market snapshot as of the August 3, 2026 close

Share price, market capitalization, float, short interest, ownership and the consensus target price are from Finviz Elite, cross-checked against an independent quote provider for the same session. All revenue, margin, cash, share count, backlog, debt and guidance figures come from BigBear.ai’s own SEC filings and press releases, not from data aggregators. Enterprise value and per-share figures above are recomputed from those primary inputs.

The numbers in charts

Every bar below is drawn from a figure disclosed in a Form 10-Q, a Form 10-K or a company press release. Bar widths are proportional to the largest value in each chart.

What BigBear.ai actually sells

The company reports as a single operating and reportable segment, a point stated explicitly in the segment note of the Form 10-Q: the chief operating decision maker, who is the chief executive, reviews financial information on a consolidated basis. There is therefore no published revenue or margin breakdown by product line. What the filings do describe is a set of capabilities, most of which arrived through acquisitions and retain the name of the company that built them.

Generative AI for defense and intelligence

The largest single change to the business in the last two years is Ask Sage, acquired on December 31, 2025 for total consideration of $271.6 million, of which $267.6 million was cash. The 2025 Form 10-K describes it as a platform-agnostic generative AI solution for defense and intelligence customers, and states that it was the first platform of its kind to receive FedRAMP authorization, certified for government data up to Department of Defense Impact Levels 5 and 6 and Top Secret use. As of January 2026 the company said it was used by more than 16,000 government teams, 100,000 Department of War users and 2,500 companies. Annual recurring revenue was disclosed at approximately $25 million for 2025 when the deal was announced.

On July 15, 2026 the company launched an air-gapped hardware version of the platform and a Bring-Your-Own-Model licensing option, and stated that the Ask Sage brand would be phased out for Department of War customers in favor of a redesigned BigBear.ai platform. Nicolas Chaillan, who founded Ask Sage and became chief technology officer of BigBear.ai on completion, left the company on February 28, 2026, eight weeks after the deal closed.

Edge orchestration and autonomy

ConductorOS is the company’s platform for orchestrating artificial intelligence models, data and sensors in distributed or disconnected tactical environments. The 2025 Form 10-K states it was central to the Talisman Sabre joint exercise involving United States, Australian and more than two dozen other nations’ forces. In December 2025 the company announced a partnership integrating ConductorOS with C Speed’s software-defined LightWave Radar, described in that release as already deployed across Department of Homeland Security, Department of War and international partner missions. No value was disclosed for that partnership.

Digital identity and biometrics

This is the Pangiam heritage, acquired on February 29, 2024, together with the entities that came with it, including Trueface, veriScan, Linkware and Pangiam Labs, all of which still appear as subsidiary guarantors in the company’s indenture exhibits. The consumer-facing product is veriScan, the facial-comparison software used by U.S. Customs and Border Protection for its Enhanced Passenger Processing program. Named deployments in company releases include Charlotte, Chicago O’Hare, Dallas Fort Worth, Denver, John F. Kennedy Terminals 4 and 8, Los Angeles Terminal 7 and the Tom Bradley International Terminal, Nashville, Cross Border Xpress, Montreal Trudeau, the Port of Seattle and the Vancouver Fraser Port Authority. In its October 2024 Denver release the company stated that veriScan had processed more than 28 million passengers since 2018, and cited a CBP figure showing Enhanced Passenger Processing cutting average processing time from about 60 seconds to about 10 seconds per traveler.

The second biometric line is threat detection for baggage and cargo screening, which received Dutch national approval on July 9, 2026 in a configuration with SureScan’s DETECT 1000 scanner. The company’s own wording describes this as the first of a series of certifications, and no order followed from it.

Digital twin, modeling and simulation

ProModel, still a subsidiary guarantor under the indentures, supplies the modeling and simulation capability the 10-K describes under “Digital Twin”: tools that capture the behavior of interdependent processes and run rapid course-of-action analysis for capital planning, facility layouts, logistics and business processes. This capability underlies the operational-readiness work for the Army and for shipyards, including the Shipyard AI deployment at Austal USA announced in April 2025.

Logistics, trade and supply chain

In January 2026 the company acquired the assets of CargoSeer, an AI shipment inspection platform for non-intrusive cargo inspection at ports of entry, for an undisclosed amount. This sits alongside the International Shipping Compliance application built with Narval Holding Corp. and first deployed commercially in Panama in May 2026, and the exploratory work with AD Ports Group in the United Arab Emirates.

Financial position at June 30, 2026

The half-year cash flow statement accounts for most of that $51.7 million decline: $40.208 million of cash used in operating activities, $10.183 million for acquisitions net of cash acquired, $4.523 million of deferred purchase consideration and $0.635 million of capital expenditure, partly offset by $1.590 million from the employee stock purchase plan and $1.347 million absorbed by tax withholding on share issuance, with the balance explained by mark-to-market moves on the investment portfolio. Free cash flow, as the company itself computes it, was negative $40.843 million for the six months against negative $13.316 million a year earlier. The burn roughly tripled.

At that rate of operating cash consumption, and setting aside acquisitions, the $409.8 million of cash and investments would fund several years of losses. That is the substance of the balance-sheet argument, and it is real. What it does not do is generate a return: the company’s stated intention is to spend part of that balance on “accretive, catalytic M&A,” so the runway calculation is a floor rather than a plan.

What to watch in the next print

• Shares sold under the Jefferies program. The July 31 agreement covers up to 100 million shares. The number actually sold, and the average price, will appear in the equity note of the next Form 10-Q. This is the single most consequential number for existing holders.
• Funded backlog. $79.415 million at June 30 is about 2.2 quarters of revenue at the Q2 run rate. The third quarter ends on September 30, which is also the U.S. federal fiscal year end, historically the company’s strongest awards period.
• Revenue against the guidance arithmetic. First-half revenue of $71.184 million is 47.5% of the $150 million guidance mid-point. Reaching that mid-point requires $78.8 million in the second half, against $60.4 million in the second half of 2025, a 30.4% year-on-year increase. The top of the range, $165 million, would need $93.8 million.
• U.S. government revenue. It was flat to slightly down in the first half. Growth to date is coming from commercial and international work and from the acquired platform.
• Operating expense. SG&A rose from $21.487 million to $31.848 million year on year. Some of that increase, specifically the legal and proxy costs of the special stockholder meeting, should not repeat.
• The 2026 Convertible Notes. $17.668 million matures on December 15, 2026 at a conversion price of $10.61, far above the current share price, so it will almost certainly be repaid in cash rather than converted.

Management and governance

Kevin McAleenan has been chief executive since January 15, 2025, succeeding Mandy Long, who stepped down from the role and the board and moved to an advisory position. McAleenan was president of BigBear.ai before that, and before that co-founder, chief executive and board chair of Pangiam until its acquisition. His public-sector record is the reason the border and travel business exists in its current form: he was the first career civil servant confirmed as Commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection in 2018, and subsequently Acting Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, overseeing CBP, the Transportation Security Administration, the Coast Guard, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and the Secret Service.

Sean Ricker became interim chief financial officer on June 6, 2025, succeeding Julie Peffer, who had held the role since June 2022. Ricker was previously chief accounting officer and corporate controller. He has been titled chief financial officer without qualification since the third quarter 2025 release, and there is no separate press release confirming a permanent appointment on the investor relations site. Carl Napoletano has been chief operating officer since October 2024. Two senior hires arrived in April 2026: Jo Ann Bjornson as chief human resources officer, from V2X, SAIC and Leidos, and Alex Thompson as chief corporate affairs officer, from Edelman and Thomson Reuters. In March 2026 Troy Miller, former acting Commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, joined as senior vice president for Department of Homeland Security solutions.

The chief technology officer position has been unfilled publicly since February 28, 2026, when Nicolas Chaillan left for stated personal reasons eight weeks after the Ask Sage acquisition that brought him in. For a company whose growth and margin expansion are both attributed to that platform, the departure of its founder within two months of the closing is a governance fact worth carrying forward, even though the company stated he would support the transition and provide technical advice.

The board and the private-equity thread

The chairman is Peter Cannito, who is simultaneously chairman and chief executive of Redwire ($RDW) and an operating partner at AE Industrial Partners. Kirk Konert is a partner at AE Industrial and sits on the boards of several of its portfolio companies including Redwire. Paul Fulchino is also an AE Industrial operating partner and a director of Spirit AeroSystems. The AE Industrial connection runs through the board’s leadership, and it is the same sponsor network that shaped Redwire.

Other directors include Sean Battle, a co-founder of PCI and former vice-chairman and chief strategy officer of BigBear.ai; Pamela Braden, founder and chief executive of Gryphon Technologies; Dorothy D. Hayes, former corporate controller and chief accounting officer at Intuit and Agilent, who chairs the audit committee of Intevac; and Anthony Evangelista, appointed in August 2025, a retired PricewaterhouseCoopers financial services partner and former Assistant Chief Accountant in the SEC’s Division of Investment Management. Carolyn Blankenship is general counsel and secretary.

Catalysts on the calendar

The constructive case and the sceptical case

Bottom line

Two accurate statements about BigBear.ai sit uncomfortably together, and both are supported by the same filings.

The first is that the operating business is in better shape than it has been at any point since 2024. Revenue grew 13.2% in the second quarter, gross margin expanded 781 basis points to 32.8%, funded backlog rose 44.8% in six months, commercial and international revenue grew 78.2%, debt fell 87.6% to $17.7 million, and there was no impairment charge for the first time in several reporting periods. The generative AI platform accredited to Impact Level 6 and Top Secret use is a genuinely scarce asset, and the company employs the former Commissioner of Customs and Border Protection as chief executive and the former acting Commissioner as its senior Department of Homeland Security executive.

The second is that shareholders have paid for all of it, repeatedly, through the share count. From 127.0 million shares at the end of 2022 to 479.5 million at June 30, 2026, with a new program for up to 100 million more opened one day after the results. The 2025 programs sold 142.3 million shares at an average of about $4.48; the same money raised at today’s price would take about 225 million shares. Revenue per share fell from $0.99 in 2023 to $0.29 in 2025. Adjusted EBITDA moved further into loss year on year, and operating cash burn tripled in the first half.

The reconciliation between the two runs through one line item: whether the second half delivers the $78.8 million of revenue that the guidance mid-point implies, and how many shares are sold to bridge the gap while it does. Everything else in the release archive, the vehicles with no ceiling, the memoranda of understanding, the certifications described by the company as first milestones, the twenty-plus unnamed contract wins, belongs in the second and third columns until a funded number appears against it in the backlog table.

Related research on Merlintrader

• Space, Defense & AI Stock Hubs 2026: the new infrastructure race — the full index of company hubs in this sector.
• Redwire ($RDW) Stock Hub — the other AE Industrial-linked company, chaired by the same person who chairs BigBear.ai.
• Palladyne AI ($PDYN) Stock Hub — another small-cap defense AI name with a comparable funding profile.
• Dilution, ATMs and PIPEs: how equity funding actually works — background for the capital-structure section above.
• Top small and mid-cap AI stocks — where BigBear.ai sits against its listed peers.
• The 2026 AI valuation reset — the sector-wide de-rating behind the year-to-date price action.
• Weekly Market Pulse — the week ahead across catalysts and earnings.

Join the Merlintrader community

Real-time reports on Telegram: @merlintraderpub_com. Discussion and questions on Reddit: r/MerlintraderPub.

Educational disclaimer

This article is for informational and educational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice, financial advice, legal advice, tax advice, a solicitation, or a recommendation to buy, sell or hold any security. It has been prepared in line with U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission guidance on financial publishing and does not create any adviser relationship. Small and mid-cap equities, defense technology companies, artificial intelligence companies and issuers with negative earnings, heavy equity issuance or complex capital structures can be highly volatile and risky. Readers should conduct their own due diligence, review official company filings and consult a qualified financial adviser where appropriate. The author and Merlintrader are not acting as registered investment advisers or broker-dealers. All scenarios are analytical frameworks, not predictions or guarantees. Market prices, filings, ownership data, analyst views and company fundamentals can change quickly, and figures quoted here are accurate as of August 4, 2026.

Additional site information is available at Merlintrader Disclaimer and Terms of use and privacy information.