BigBear.ai (BBAI) Stock Today – November 17, 2025: Price Action, Fresh Analyst Calls and What Comes Next

BigBear.ai Holdings Inc. (NYSE: BBAI) spent Monday, November 17, 2025, digesting a huge post‑earnings rally as profit‑taking, heavy options activity and a flurry of analyst commentary pulled the stock sharply lower into the close.

Below is a full rundown of BBAI stock performance today, the latest November 17 news, and what it could mean for BigBear.ai’s outlook in AI‑driven defense and government tech.

Key Takeaways for BBAI on November 17, 2025

Price and volume: BigBear.ai closed at $5.57, down 8.09% on the day, after trading between $5.38 and $6.04 on extremely heavy volume of about 84.2 million shares. ^[1]
Post‑rally hangover: The pullback comes after a multi‑day surge following better‑than‑expected Q3 2025 resultsand the announced $250 million acquisition of defense‑focused AI platform Ask Sage. ^[2]
Fresh research note: HC Wainwright raised its Q4 2025 EPS estimate and reiterated a Buy rating with an $8 price target, even as it acknowledged mixed Q3 metrics and persistent losses. ^[3]
Institutional interest: Thoroughbred Financial Services LLC boosted its BigBear.ai position by 328.1%, now holding 137,000 shares valued at about $930,000, while several other small institutions also added exposure. ^[4]
On AI watchlists: MarketBeat highlighted BigBear.ai as one of five “Best Artificial Intelligence Stocks To Add to Your Watchlist – November 17th,” alongside peers like Tempus AI and SoundHound. ^[5]
Debate on upside: Multiple Motley Fool pieces published today ask whether BigBear.ai can become the “next Palantir” and whether the stock is still worth buying around the $7 level in light of the Ask Sage deal. ^[6]
Options and volatility: Options flow in BBAI was intense, with one report flagging over 125,000 contracts traded on November 17 and open interest around 1.3 million contracts, while TipRanks notes investors are using options to hedge downside after a 40%+ year‑to‑date gain. ^[7]

BBAI Stock Price Today: Sharp Pullback After a Huge Run

For U.S. markets, Monday, November 17, 2025 marked a classic “cool‑down” session in BigBear.ai after a spectacular week.

According to StockAnalysis, BBAI closed at $5.57, down 8.09% from Friday’s close of $6.06. The stock: ^[8]

Opened: $5.96
Intraday high: $6.04
Intraday low: $5.38
Close: $5.57
Volume: ~84.2 million shares

After‑hours trading as of 7:22 p.m. EST showed the price unchanged at $5.57, suggesting the market had largely finished repricing the name for the day. ^[9]

Despite today’s drop, BBAI remains a big winner in 2025, with TipRanks putting its year‑to‑date performance at roughly +47% and highlighting an average daily volume of around 111 million shares, underscoring how popular — and volatile — the stock has become. ^[10]

Q3 2025 Earnings and the $250 Million Ask Sage Deal: The Core Story

Today’s trading cannot be separated from what happened last week, when BigBear.ai reported Q3 results and unveiled its largest acquisition to date.

Q3 2025 results at a glance

Across its Q3 update and follow‑up coverage from Barron’s, Invezz and others, a few numbers stand out: ^[11]

Revenue: ~$33.1 million, down about 20% year on year, but ahead of Wall Street estimates (around $31.8 million).
EPS (adjusted / non‑GAAP): a small loss per share that came in better than expected, with some outlets noting a loss of about $0.03 vs. a forecasted loss near $0.05.
GAAP net income: roughly $2.5 million, only the company’s second profitable quarter ever, helped by non‑cash derivative adjustments.
Gross margin: compressed vs. last year as high‑margin contracts from 2024 didn’t repeat and some U.S. Army program volumes declined.
Cash position: about $456.6 million in cash on the balance sheet, giving BigBear.ai significant flexibility to keep investing and acquiring.
Full‑year 2025 guidance: revenue still expected in the $125–$140 million range, implying management sees Q3 headwinds as more timing than structural.

The headline message: growth slowed, profitability remains fragile, but liquidity is strong and guidance held — a setup that can fuel big moves either way as sentiment shifts.

Ask Sage: a big swing at defense‑grade generative AI

Alongside results, BigBear.ai announced a $250 million deal to acquire Ask Sage, a generative AI platform built specifically for defense and other highly regulated environments. ^[12]

Key points from Invezz and other analyses:

Ask Sage reportedly serves over 100,000 users across thousands of government and enterprise teams and is expected to generate roughly $25 million in annual recurring revenue in 2025. ^[13]
The acquisition is framed as a way to push BigBear.ai from a project‑driven contractor to a more platform‑based, recurring‑revenue model in secure AI. ^[14]
Management argues the Ask Sage deal positions the company squarely at the intersection of AI, defense, border security and national security, where U.S. and allied budgets are expanding. ^[15]

This is the narrative driving much of today’s commentary: BBAI is no longer just another small AI vendor; it’s trying to become a full‑stack defense AI platform — but must still prove it can scale profitably.

New Analyst Commentary on November 17: HC Wainwright, MarketBeat and Zacks

HC Wainwright nudges estimates higher, keeps Buy rating

In an after‑hours note dated November 17, HC Wainwright made several key adjustments: ^[16]

Q4 2025 EPS estimate raised from a loss of $0.06 to a loss of $0.05 per share.
Full‑year 2026 EPS projected at a loss of $0.19, better than a consensus loss near $0.28.
Rating reiterated at “Buy” with a 12‑month price target of $8.00.

The firm acknowledges Q3’s EPS miss of $‑0.07 vs. a $‑0.06 estimate and the 20.1% revenue decline, but it points to: ^[17]

BigBear.ai’s cash pile,
The strategic importance of Ask Sage, and
Ongoing 2025 revenue guidance of $125–$140 million

as reasons to remain constructive even while the company stays unprofitable on an operating basis.

MarketBeat: BBAI on AI watchlists and in institutional portfolios

Two separate MarketBeat pieces out today highlight how BBAI is being positioned:

“Best Artificial Intelligence Stocks To Add to Your Watchlist – November 17th” lists BigBear.ai, Tempus AI, SoundHound AI, Hut 8, and Upstart as five AI names with high recent dollar trading volumes. BigBear.ai is profiled as a provider of decision‑intelligence software for national security, supply chains and digital identity, offering data ingestion, enrichment, analytics and visualization. ^[18]
“Thoroughbred Financial Services LLC Has $930,000 Holdings in BigBear.ai” details that the firm raised its BBAI stake by 328.1% in Q2, ending with 137,000 shares worth about $930,000. The article notes: ^[19]
- A consensus analyst rating of “Hold” on BBAI with an average price target around $6.33 (2 Buys, 2 Holds, 1 Sell).
- Recent buy/overweight ratings from HC Wainwright ($8 target) and Cantor Fitzgerald ($7 target).
- Additional small institutional buyers, suggesting growing but still limited institutional ownership (roughly 7–8% of the float).

Zacks: Big upside, but treat it as a speculative play

A Zacks analyst blog out today, which also features BigBear.ai alongside Palantir (PLTR) and C3.ai (AI), frames BBAI as a higher‑risk AI defense stock that may still be undervalued relative to peers: ^[20]

BigBear.ai’s forward price‑to‑sales (P/S) ratio is cited around 11.8x, below the broader AI/IT services industry average near 17x.
The piece contrasts BBAI with Palantir’s much richer ~79x forward sales multiple and C3.ai’s roughly 7x, reinforcing that BigBear sits between a high‑flying peer and a cheaper one.
Zacks assigns BBAI a Rank #3 (Hold), suggesting patience and an appetite for volatility rather than a “core holding” mindset.

Motley Fool: Is BigBear.ai the Next Palantir – or Already Overhyped?

Three Motley Fool articles syndicated across outlets like Finviz, AOL and Yahoo Finance hit feeds today, each tackling a slightly different angle on BBAI’s rally: ^[21]

“BigBear.ai Share Prices Surge. Is It Too Late to Buy the Stock?”
- Discusses how the stock “climbed higher” on the back of Q3 results and the Ask Sage acquisition.
- Raises the question of whether recent gains have already priced in much of the good news, especially given still‑negative earnings and lumpy government demand.
“Is BigBear.ai Worth Buying at $7? The Answer Is Hidden in the Ask Sage Deal.”
- Digs into the $250 million price tag and the roughly $25M ARR Ask Sage is expected to contribute.
- Argues that if management executes, the deal could justify a valuation near or above $7 per share over time, but warns that integration and execution risks remain significant.
“Could BigBear.ai Become the Next Palantir Technologies?”
- Compares BBAI directly to Palantir, noting both focus heavily on government contracts and mission‑critical analytics.
- Emphasizes that BigBear.ai is much smaller, less diversified, and earlier in its journey, making it riskierbut also offering higher theoretical upside if it can secure large, recurring contracts.

Taken together, the tone from these pieces is cautiously optimistic but far from unanimous cheerleading. They highlight the massive potential of defense‑grade AI platforms while repeatedly reminding readers that BigBear.ai is still a speculative growth story with unproven long‑term profitability.

Options and Volatility: What Today’s Flows Tell Us

Underlying today’s price action was a surge in derivatives activity:

A Moomoo note flagged that on November 17, about 125,940 options contracts tied to BBAI changed hands, with open interest near 1.3 million contracts — an unusually large figure for a mid‑cap stock. ^[22]
TipRanks added that BBAI’s recent drop was associated with “mixed options sentiment,” as some traders sought more downside protection via puts even after Q3 earnings beat expectations. ^[23]

At the same time, TipRanks’ automated note points out that: ^[24]

BigBear.ai’s year‑to‑date gain sits near 47%,
The stock carries a “Buy” technical sentiment, and
Market cap is roughly $2.6–$2.7 billion, underscoring that this is no longer a tiny penny stock, even if volatility feels that way.

The combined message is that both bulls and bears are active, with options being used aggressively to magnify exposure or hedge risk around each headline.

How to Read Today’s BBAI Move

For followers of BigBear.ai (BBAI), November 17 was less about new fundamental shocks and more about the market re‑balancing a very crowded trade:

Fundamentals: Q3 numbers and guidance haven’t changed since last week; the core fundamentals are the same— modestly better than feared, but still negative on earnings and dependent on large defense and government contracts. ^[25]
Narrative: The narrative around Ask Sage and defense AI remains powerful, with multiple outlets framing BigBear.ai as a potential “mini‑Palantir” or at least a core beneficiary of rising AI‑enabled defense and border‑security budgets. ^[26]
Sentiment: Today’s analyst note from HC Wainwright, MarketBeat’s AI watchlist inclusion, and growing institutional interest show that professional investors are paying attention, even as consensus ratings still cluster around “Hold”. ^[27]
Risk: Zacks, Motley Fool and TipRanks all stress that BBAI is best understood as a high‑risk, high‑volatility AI stock whose valuation hinges on future contract wins, execution of the Ask Sage integration and eventual path to sustainable margins. ^[28]

For traders, today’s 8% pullback on heavy volume may look like routine mean‑reversion after a parabolic move. Longer‑term investors will likely focus less on the daily tape and more on:

How quickly Ask Sage is integrated and monetized,
Whether BigBear.ai can stabilize revenue growth while protecting margins, and
The company’s ability to convert its large cash balance into durable, high‑return projects instead of simply funding losses.

Bottom Line

BBAI stock today (November 17, 2025) delivered a reminder that hyper‑growth AI names can fall just as quickly as they rise. The fundamental story — Q3 beat, a bold $250M Ask Sage deal, strong cash reserves and rising analyst/institutional interest — is still intact. But with the stock already having sprinted higher in recent weeks, the market is now demanding proof that BigBear.ai can translate hype into repeatable revenue and real earnings power.

As always, this article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice, investment recommendation, or a solicitation to buy or sell any security. Investors should do their own research and consider their risk tolerance before making any decisions about BigBear.ai or other highly volatile AI stocks.

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