Which U.S. companies depend most on federal money? At least 84 cents of every Lockheed dollar comes from Washington
FACTANKER crossed every U.S. federal contract with every SEC revenue filing for 251 public companies. The result is a lower-bound map of who really lives on government money — from defense primes to private prisons.
Questions this record answers
- Which US public companies depend most on federal government money?
- Crossing every federal contract with SEC revenue filings for 251 public companies gives a lower-bound ranking led by defense primes; at least 84 cents of every Lockheed Martin revenue dollar comes from Washington.
- What share of Lockheed Martin's revenue comes from the U.S. government?
- At least 83.6 percent in fiscal year 2025: $62.7 billion of federal prime-contract obligations against $75.0 billion of reported revenue (USAspending and SEC filings).
- How dependent is Palantir on U.S. government contracts?
- At least 6.2 percent of fiscal 2025 revenue came from federal prime awards ($0.3 billion of $4.5 billion); subcontracts and classified work are not in the public record.
- How much of CoreCivic's revenue comes from the federal government?
- At least 26.8 percent in fiscal year 2025 ($0.6 billion of $2.2 billion) from federal obligations alone, before any state or local contracts.
- Why are federal revenue shares of contractors lower bounds?
- USAspending records only prime awards; subcontracts, classified programs and foreign military sales are not visible, so the published share is the floor the public record can prove.
Cite as: FACTANKER, https://factanker.com/record/most-government-dependent-companies
How can you measure how much a U.S. public company depends on federal government money?
Ask who depends on the U.S. government and you get folklore. Ask the filings and you get numbers: FACTANKER consolidates every federal prime-contract obligation from USAspending with the revenue each company reported to the SEC — matched across all registrations of a corporate group, fiscal year by fiscal year, for 251 public companies. Nobody files this cross-walk anywhere; it only exists because both registers are public and machine-readable.
Which U.S. public companies depend most on federal contract money (latest fiscal year, revenue at least $1 billion)?
| Company | FY | Revenue | Federal obligations | Government share |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lockheed Martin | 2025 | $75.0B | $62.7B | at least 83.6% |
| Science Applications International (SAIC) | 2026 | $7.3B | $2.7B | at least 37.5% |
| CoreCivic | 2025 | $2.2B | $0.6B | at least 26.8% |
| AeroVironment | 2026 | $2.0B | $0.5B | at least 25.5% |
| Boeing | 2025 | $89.5B | $22.2B | at least 24.8% |
| L3Harris | 2025 | $21.3B | $2.1B | at least 9.6% |
| RTX | 2025 | $88.6B | $7.3B | at least 8.2% |
| Tetra Tech | 2025 | $5.4B | $0.4B | at least 8.1% |
| Palantir | 2025 | $4.5B | $0.3B | at least 6.2% |
| Oceaneering International | 2025 | $2.6B | $0.1B | at least 4.7% |
Why are the federal revenue shares of U.S. contractors such as RTX only lower bounds?
These shares are deliberate lower bounds. USAspending records prime awards — money the government obligates directly to a company. What it cannot show: subcontracts flowing through other primes, classified programs, and foreign government sales. RTX at “at least 8.2%” illustrates the point — its true government exposure is far higher via subcontracting and foreign military sales; what we publish is the floor that the public record can prove, not an estimate of the ceiling. We do not estimate. Where a company’s group structure files under multiple registrations, we consolidate them before computing the share.
How dependent are Lockheed Martin, CoreCivic and Palantir on U.S. federal contracts (fiscal year 2025)?
Even as a floor, the picture is stark. Lockheed Martin is, on the public record, a state-funded enterprise with a stock ticker: $62.7 billion of provable federal obligations against $75.0 billion of reported revenue. CoreCivic — a private prison operator — proves more than a quarter of its revenue from federal obligations alone, before any state or local contracts. And Palantir, often described as a government-first company, proves only 6.2% from federal prime awards — a reminder that reputation and the provable record are different things.
How did FACTANKER match USAspending contracts with SEC revenue for 251 U.S. companies (through fiscal year 2026)?
Sources: USAspending bulk award data (obligations, by recipient UEI and parent structure) and SEC EDGAR revenue as filed (XBRL), consolidated across each group’s registrations; 251 companies, 497 company-years, through FY2026. Every figure above links to a page where each underlying obligation and revenue fact resolves to its official record. The full ranking and per-company time series are at factanker.com/government-dependency.