Palantir Technologies Inc. heads into its first-quarter earnings with something to prove to investors: That it’s been wrongly caught up in the selloff that has gripped software stocks for months.

Shares of the data-analytics software firm are down about 9% from the day after its last quarterly report, and have shed 19% so far this year. The decline is part of a rough few months for software stocks as investors, concerned that artificial intelligence tools could chip away at earnings growth, dumped shares across the sector, often indiscriminately.