Palantir's original clients were federal agencies of the USIC. It has since expanded its customer base to serve both international, state, and local governments, and also private companies.[17]
The company has been criticized for its role in expanding government surveillance using artificial intelligence and facial recognition software.[18][19] Some former employees and critics say the company's contracts under the second Trump Administration, which enable deportations and the aggregation of sensitive data on Americans across administrative agencies, are problematic.[20][21] Others observe that Palantir does not collect or store data, but only helps analyze data that customers have already collected and provides services and platforms where customers retain the rights. But it is generally accepted that abuses by governments and data management failures can happen.[22][23][24][25][26]Encyclopædia Britannica writes, "Palantir stands as one of the most consequential and controversial data analytics firms of the early 21st century. Straddling the worlds of enterprise software, national security, and AI, its rise highlights a broader tension within the industry: The same tools enabling unprecedented insight and efficiency can also enable digital surveillance and profiling. Palantir's legacy is one of polarization—celebrated for its technical power, yet persistently questioned for how that power is used."[27]
Palantir was founded in 2003.[28][29][30] Thiel named the startup after the "seeing stone" in Tolkien's legendarium. Likewise, Palantir's office locations have names from Tolkien: The Shire (Palo Alto, California), Rivendell (McLean, Virginia), and Minas Tirith (Washington, D.C.).[31] In 2013, Thiel said Palantir was a "mission-oriented company" that could apply software similar to PayPal's fraud recognition systems to "reduce terrorism while preserving civil liberties".[32] Asked what the secret of its success was, Karp said that he and Thiel pursued a "classic German approach" when founding the company, influenced by the idea of overcoming opposites via the Hegeliandialectic.[33]
There are several versions of the story of the company's founding. According to Gilman Louie, head of In-Q-Tel (a venture capital corporation associated with the CIA and the intelligence community[35][36]), after Thiel recruited Karp, the two founders came to him with some ideas but no clear problem to solve. After hearing his suggestions, they did a mock-up in two weeks.[37] According to Anthony King, the FBI first recognized the success of PayPal's fraud detection system (named "Igor", after a Russian who was one of the company's most consistent abusers) and requested it for the agency's work in detecting financial crime. Palantir evolved from that software when Thiel proposed the company to Karp and Cohen.[38] According to Wired, in 2004, Thiel and Karp met John Poindexter, a Department of Defense official who recognized their "interesting idea" and helped them gather "a legion of advocates from the most influential strata of government". They then tried to recruit investors, but no one in Silicon Valley wanted to back an "expensive software platform for large organizations", and "The government was unpopular in Silicon Valley". But an investor who turned them down recommended them to In-Q-Tel, which decided to invest the relatively small sum of £1.3 million but helped them get in touch with prospective users. The contact with In-Q-Tel also incidentally led to interest from another backer, Reed Elsevier (later REV).[39]
According to the Wall Street Journal, when Palantir was launched in 2004, other than Thiel and Karp, there were three investors, but little interest from venture capital firms, so Thiel and his venture fund largely bankrolled the initial $30 million cost. Later In-Q-Tel invested about $2 million.[12] According to Techcrunch, Palantir's $7.5 million Series A (June 2006) was led by Oakhouse Partners and its $10.5 million Series B (November 2006) was led by REV.[42]
According to the Journal, for two years the company continuously revised its technology based on the demands of analysts from the intelligence agencies, introduced to them by In-Q-Tel.[12] A 2009 VentureBeat article says that most of the intelligence community knew about the company by word of mouth. In its early years its work included a subprime lender study for Center for Public Integrity and analyses of Somali piracy, Hezbollah, and the platform used to detect the Chinese GhostNet.[43] Palantir said computers alone using artificial intelligence could not defeat an adaptive adversary. Instead, it proposed using human analysts to explore data from many sources, called intelligence augmentation.[44]
Journalist Whitney Webb, who is noted for her investigative work on Jeffrey Epstein,[45] has written that Palantir's origin was the Pentagon's "Total Awareness Program" and that Palantir is a CIA front. She also links Palantir and Thiel to the CIA, Mossad, and the Epstein network's alleged plan to create "an Orwellian nightmare". She has published these theories on the Chinese version of the MintPress News, a far-left site known for being part of the "Russian web of disinformation",[46][47][48] and through Trineday, a publisher found by the conspiracy theorist[49] Kris Millegan.[50][51][52] The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs describes Webb as a MintPress journalist.[53]
Estimates were $250 million in revenues in 2011.[60]
2013–2016: Additional funding
"[As of 2013] the U.S. spy agencies also employed Palantir to connect databases across departments. Before this, most of the databases used by the CIA and FBI were siloed, forcing users to search each database individually. Now everything is linked together using Palantir."
In September 2013, Palantir disclosed over $196 million in funding, according to a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filing.[62][63] It was estimated that the company would likely sign almost $1 billion in contracts in 2014.[64] CEO Alex Karp announced in 2013 that the company would not pursue an IPO, as going public would make "running a company like ours very difficult."[65] In December 2013, the company began a round of financing, raising around $450 million from private funders. This raised the company's value to $9 billion, according to Forbes, with the magazine reporting that the valuation made Palantir "among Silicon Valley's most valuable private technology companies."[65]
In December 2014, Forbes reported that Palantir was looking to raise $400 million in an additional round of financing, after the company filed paperwork with the Securities and Exchange Commission the month before. The report was based on research by VC Experts. If completed, Forbes said Palantir's funding could reach $1.2 billion.[65] As of December 2014, the company continued to have diverse private funders, Ken Langone and Stanley Druckenmiller, In-Q-Tel of the CIA,[66]Tiger Global Management, and Founders Fund, a venture firm operated by Thiel.[65]
Palantir was valued at $15 billion in November 2014.[67] In June 2015, BuzzFeed reported the company was raising up to $500 million in new capital at a valuation of $20 billion.[68] By December, it had raised a further $880 million, while the company was still valued at $20 billion.[69] In February 2016, Palantir bought Kimono Labs, a startup that makes it easy to collect information from public-facing websites.[70]
In 2017, BuzzFeed News reported that despite the reputation that connected Palantir to U.S. intelligence agencies (which Palantir deliberately crafted to help it win business), including the CIA, NSA, and FBI, the actual relationship was rocky for various reasons, with episodes of friction and recalcitrance. The NSA, in particular, had been resistant because it had plenty of its own talent and focused more on SIGINT while Palantir's software worked better for HUMINT. Meanwhile, the CIA had been so frustrated by the publicity associating Palantir with it that it tried to cancel the Palantir contract. But, according to Karp, Palantir had a firm hold at the FBI, because "They'll have no choice".[72]
2020–present
Palantir was one of four large technology firms[73] to start working with the NHS on supporting COVID-19 efforts through the provision of software from Palantir Foundry,[74] and by April 2020, several countries had used Palantir's technology to track and contain the contagion.[75] Palantir also developed Tiberius, a software for vaccine allocation used in the United States.[76]
In August 2020, Palantir Technologies moved its headquarters to Denver, Colorado, distancing itself from the "engineering elite of Silicon Valley [...] they do not know more about how society should be organized or what justice requires".[77] In September it had its IPO on the NYSE,[78] advertising a goal of becoming the "default operating system across the US".[79] In December 2020, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration awarded Palantir a $44.4 million contract, boosting its shares by about 21%.[80]
In November 2024, the Navy awarded Palantir a nearly $1 billion software contract.[81]
The company was valued at $9 billion in December 2013 after raising an additional $107.5 million in funding.[82]Forbes wrote that the valuation made Palantir "among Silicon Valley's most valuable private technology companies".[65] Palantir's valuation rose to $15 billion after a $50 million round of funding in November 2014,[83] and to $20 billion in late 2015 as the company closed an $880 million round of funding.[84] In 2018, Morgan Stanley valued the company at $6 billion.[85]
On October 18, 2018, The Wall Street Journal reported that Palantir considered an IPO in the first half of 2019 following a $41 billion valuation.[86]
Before its IPO, Palantir had not made a profit. In July 2020, it filed for an IPO,[87] and on September 30, 2020, it went public on the New York Stock Exchange through a direct public offering under the ticker symbol "PLTR".[88]
On September 6, 2024, S&P Global announced that Palantir would be added to the S&P 500 index. Its share price rose 14% the next trading day.[89]
On November 14, 2024, Palantir announced transfer of its stock listing from the New York Stock Exchange to the Nasdaq Global Select Market, effective November 26. The company's Class A Common Stock continued to trade under the symbol PLTR.[90]
In 2025, The Economist called Palantir possibly the most overvalued firm of all time, with a market value of $430 billion—over 600 times its 2024 earnings.[91]
Investments
As of 2021, the company had invested over $400 million into nearly two dozen special-purpose acquisition company (SPAC) targets according to investment bank RBC Capital Markets, while bringing alongside those companies as customers.[92]
Products
Palantir Gotham
Released in 2008, Palantir Gotham is Palantir's defense and intelligence software. It is an evolution of Palantir's longstanding work in the United States Intelligence Community, and is used by intelligence and defense agencies. Among other things, the software supports alerts, geospatial analysis, and prediction. Foreign customers include the Ukrainian military.[93] Palantir Gotham has also been used as a predictive policing system, which has elicited some controversy over racism in their AI analytics.[94]
Palantir Foundry
Palantir Foundry is a software platform offered for use in commercial and civil government sectors. It was popularized for use in the health sector by its use within the National Covid Cohort Collaborative, a secure enclave of Electronic Health Records from across the United States that produced hundreds of scientific manuscripts and won the NIH/FASEB Dataworks Grand Prize. NHS England also used Foundry in dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic to analyze the operation of the vaccination program. In June 2021, Foxglove, a tech-justice nonprofit, started a campaign against the company because "Their background has generally been in contracts where people are harmed, not healed." Supporting the campaign, Clive Lewis MP said Palantir had an "appalling track record".[95]
In November 2023, NHS England awarded Palantir a 7-year contract for a federated data platform to access data from different systems through a single system, worth £330 million, criticized by the British Medical Association, Doctors Association UK and cybersecurity professionals.[97][98][99] In 2024, medical professionals picketed outside NHS England HQ, demanding cancellation of the deal.[100]
The company has been involved in a number of business and consumer products, designing in part or in whole. For example, in 2014, it premiered Insightics, which according to the Wall Street Journal "extracts customer spending and demographic information from merchants' credit-card records". It was created in tandem with credit processing company First Data.[101]
Artificial Intelligence Platform (AIP)
In April 2023, the company launched Artificial Intelligence Platform (AIP), which integrates large language models into privately operated networks. The company demonstrated its use in war, where a military operator could deploy operations and receive responses via an AI chatbot.[102][103] Citing potential risks of generative artificial intelligence, Karp said the product would not let the AI independently carry out targeting operations, but would require human oversight.[104][105] Commercial companies have also used AIP across many domains. Applications include infrastructure planning, network analysis, and resource allocation.[106][107]
AIP lets users create LLMs called "agents" through a graphical user interface. Agents can interact with a digital representation of a company's business known as an ontology. This lets the models access an organization's documents and other external resources. Users can define output schemas and test cases to validate AI-generated responses. AIP comes with a library of templates that can be extended by clients.[108] Palantir also offers five-day boot camps to onboard prospective customers.[109] Palantir hosts an annual AIPCon conference featuring demos from existing customers.[107]
TITAN
Palantir's TITAN (Tactical Intelligence Targeting Access Node) is a truck that is advertised as a mobile ground station for AI applications. After being prototyped with IRAD funds, the project is now developed in partnership with Anduril Industries, Northrop Grumman, and other contractors. The company claims that TITAN can improve customers' ability to conduct long-range precision strikes.[110] Palantir is under contract to deliver 10 units to the U.S. Army.[111]
MetaConstellation
MetaConstellation is a satellite network that supports the deployment of AI models. Users can request information about specific locations, prompting the service to dispatch the necessary resources. MetaConstellation has been used by customers including the United States Northern Command.[112]
Skykit
Skykit is a portable toolbox that supports intelligence operations in adverse environments. Palantir offers "Skykit Backpack" and "Skykit Maritime" to be transported by individuals and boats respectively. Contents include battery packs, a ruggedized laptop with company software, and a quadcopter supporting computer vision applications. Skykit can also connect to the MetaConstellation satellite network.[113] In 2023, various sources reported that the Ukrainian military had begun receiving Skykit units.[114][115]
Palantir Metropolis
Palantir Metropolis (formerly known as Palantir Finance) was[116] software for data integration, information management, and quantitative analytics. The software connects to commercial, proprietary, and public data sets and discovers trends, relationships, and anomalies, including predictive analytics.[117] Aided by 120 "forward-deployed engineers" of Palantir in 2009, Peter Cavicchia III of JPMorgan used Metropolis to monitor employee communications[118] and alert the insider threat team when an employee showed signs of potential disgruntlement: the insider alert team would further scrutinize the employee and possibly conduct physical surveillance after hours with bank security personnel.[117][118] The Metropolis team used emails, download activity, browser histories, and GPS locations from JPMorgan-owned smartphones and their transcripts of digitally recorded phone conversations to search, aggregate, sort, and analyze this information for specific keywords, phrases, and patterns of behavior.[117][118] In 2013, Cavicchia may have shared this information with Frank Bisignano, who had become CEO of First Data Corporation.[117] Palantir Metropolis was succeeded by Palantir Foundry.[119]
Founded as a defense contractor, Palantir has since expanded to the private sector. These activities now provide a large proportion of the company's revenue. Palantir had 55% year-over-year growth in the U.S. commercial market in Q2 2024, although it also serves foreign customers. Applications include telecommunications and infrastructure planning.[120]
In October 2020, Palantir began helping the federal government set up a system that will track the manufacture, distribution and administration of COVID-19 vaccines across the country.[133]
Palantir has also been reported to be working with various U.S. police departments, for example accepting a contract in 2013 to help the Northern California Regional Intelligence Center build a controversial license plates database for California.[135] In 2012 New Orleans Police Department partnered with Palantir to create a predictive policing program.[136]
In 2014, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) awarded Palantir a $41 million contract to build and maintain a new intelligence system called Investigative Case Management (ICM) to track personal and criminal records of legal and illegal immigrants. This application was originally conceived by ICE's office of Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), allowing its users access to intelligence platforms maintained by other federal and private law enforcement entities. The system reached its "final operation capacity" under the Trump administration in September 2017.[137]
Palantir took over the Pentagon's Project Maven contract in 2019 after Google decided not to continue developing AI unmanned drones used for bombings and intelligence.[138]
In 2024, Palantir emerged as a "Trump trade" for further enforcing the law on illegal immigrants and profiting on federal spending for national security and immigration.[139] Palantir has a $30 million contract with ICE to track the movement of migrants. The Department of Government Efficiency has asked Palantir to help it speed up deportation by creating a master database.[140]
National Health Service (England)
Palantir has contracts relating to patient data from England's National Health Service. In 2020, it was awarded an emergency non-competitive contract to mine COVID-19 patient data and consolidate government databases to help ministers and officials respond to the pandemic. The contract was valued at more than £23.5 million and extended for two more years. The awarding of the contract without competition was heavily criticised, prompting the NHS to pledge an open and transparent procurement process for any future data contract.[141][142][143]
Liam Fox encouraged the firm "to expand their software business" in Britain.[144] It was said to be "critical to the success of the vaccination and PPE programmes", but its involvement with the NHS was controversial among civil liberties groups.[145] Conservative MP David Davis called for a judicial review into the sharing of patient data with Palantir.[146]
The procurement of a £480m Federated Data Platform by NHS England, launched in January 2023, has been called a "must win" for Palantir.[147] The procurement has been called a "farce" by civil liberties campaigners who allege that Palantir has a competitive advantage as it "already has its feet under the table in NHS England" and benefits from a short procurement window.[148] In April 2023 it was revealed that a consortium of UK companies had unsuccessfully bid for the contract.[149]
In April 2023, Davis publicly expressed his concern over the procurement process, saying it could become a "battle royale". He was one of a dozen MPs pressing the government over privacy concerns with the use of data. Labour peer and former Health Minister Philip Hunt voiced his concern about Palantir's use of data, saying, "The current NHS and current government doesn't have a good track record of getting the details right, and the procurement shows no sign of going better."[150]
Also in April 2023, it was reported that eleven NHS trusts had paused or suspended use of Palantir Foundry software. A spokesperson for the Department of Health and Social Care said this was due to "operational issues".[150]
In January 2023, Thiel called Britain's affection for the NHS "Stockholm Syndrome" during a speech to the Oxford Union, adding that the NHS "makes people sick". A Palantir spokesman said that Thiel was "speaking as a private individual" and his comments "do not in any way reflect the views of Palantir".[151]
In March 2023, it was revealed that NHS hospitals had been ordered to share patient data with Palantir, prompting renewed criticism from civil liberties groups, including for supporting genocide, privacy and security practices, and "buying way in".[98][152] Groups including the Doctors' Association UK, National Pensioners' Convention, and Just Treatment subsequently threatened legal action over NHS England's procurement of the FDP contract, citing concerns over the use of patient data.[153]
In 2022, Palantir recruited NHS England's former artificial intelligence chief, Indra Joshi. It said it was planning to increase its team in the UK by 250.[154] Palantir's UK head, Louis Mosley, grandson of the late British Union of Fascists leader Oswald Mosley,[155] was quoted internally as saying that Palantir's strategy for entry into the British health industry was to "Buy our way in" by acquiring smaller rival companies with existing relationships with the NHS in order to "take a lot of ground and take down a lot of political resistance".[156]
In November 2023, NHS England awarded Palantir a £330 million contract to create and manage the Federated Data Platform.[157]
In April 2024, medical professionals picketed at NHS England headquarters, demanding that it end its contract with Palantir over contracts with the IDF.[100]
The Danish POL-INTEL predictive policing project has been operational since 2017 and is based on the Gotham system. According to the AP, the Danish system "uses a mapping system to build a so-called heat map identifying areas with higher crime rates."[94]
In 2025, when the Danish government was integrating Palantir into the country's military, police and intelligence services, a major argument put forth by opponents was that the Praxis project (backed by Thiel through Pronomos) was a threat to Greenland. Other arguments were concerned with Thiel's politics in the U.S., Palantir's association with American and other European intelligence services (Jacob Kaarsbo, a former chief analyst at Danish Defence Intelligence Service, could not name these intelligence services for reasons of confidentiality), and the security risk posed by giving Palantir citizens' data. The Danish National Police answered with a reference to a 2021 response to the Folketing, but otherwise, the Police, the Danish Security and Intelligence Service, and Minister of Justice Peter Hummelgaard refused to comment on the matter.[158][159][160]
Norway
The Norwegian Customs is using Palantir Gotham to screen passengers and vehicles for control. Known inputs are prefiled freight documents, passenger lists, the national Currency Exchange database (tracks all cross-border currency exchanges), the Norwegian Labour and Welfare Administrations employer- and employee-registry, the Norwegian stock holder registry and 30 public databases from InfoTorg. InfoTorg provides access to more than 30 databases, including the Norwegian National Citizen registry, European Business Register, the Norwegian DMV vehicle registry, various credit databases etc. These databases are supplemented by the Norwegian Customs Departments own intelligence reports, including results of previous controls. The system is also augmented by data from public sources such as social media.[161]
Germany
In 2023, German interior minister Nancy Faeser stopped the federal use of Palantir.[162] As of July 2025, German police departments in three of its 16 states—Bavaria, Hesse, and Nordrhein-Westfalen—have used Palantir for data mining. In March, Baden-Württemberg entered a $25 million contract without a legal basis to use the software.[163]
France
In France, after the November 2015 Paris attacks, the Directorate-General for Internal Security signed a contract with Palantir, which was extended in 2019.[164] President Emmanuel Macron said Palantir would retain its role in the French intelligence sector until the end of his term in office, but a replacement program was launched in May 2017.[165]
In 2025, Justice minister David van Weel confirmed that Dutch police had used Palantir since 2011. Director-general of police (and later prime minister) Dick Schoof participated in the purchase of the software. Since then, researchers have requested transparency on the matter many times but the government repeatedly refused to accede. Documents were released only after lawsuits, but with 99% of the content redacted. They show that many contracts with Palantir were signed.[171]
Palantir's London office was the target of demonstrations by pro-Palestine protesters in December 2023 after it was awarded a large contract to manage NHS data. The protesters accused Palantir of being "complicit" in Israeli war crimes in the Gaza war because it provides the Israel Defence Force (IDF) with intelligence and surveillance services, including a form of predictive policing.[105] In January 2024, Palantir agreed to a strategic partnership with the IDF under which it would provide the IDF with services to assist its "war-related missions".[172] Karp has been emphatic in his public support for Israel. He has frequently criticized what he calls the inaction of other tech leaders. His position has prompted several employees to leave Palantir.[173]
In 2024, Irish politician and former Palantir employee Eoin Hayes was suspended by his party, the Social Democrats, for saying at a press conference that he had sold shares in Palantir before he entered politics, when he had sold the shares a month after being elected as a city councillor. Later that day, Hayes corrected the date in a statement.[174] He issued a further clarifying statement after his suspension that evening.[175] Hayes worked for Palantir between 2015 and 2017 but denied having any role relating to military contracts.[176] The Social Democrats have been some of the most vocal critics of the Israeli invasion of the Gaza Strip and Hayes has been accused by a rival politician of "profiting from genocide".[177]
In May 2025, a pro-Palestinian protest was held in Denver against Congressman Jason Crow for repeatedly accepting campaign donations from Palantir.[178]
Palantir's partnership with Anduril Industries extends to many areas. In later 2024, there were reportedly building and leading a consortium with another dozen contractors, including SpaceX, Open AI, and Saronic, to challenge the domination of the traditional "primes".[182][183] They also partner with EVTOL company Archer Aviation.[184]
Alongside 8VC and General Catalyst, Palantir also helped to create and is a member of the New American Industrial Alliance.[185][186] The other members are other defense contractors and hardtech companies, such as Anduril, Andreessen Horowitz, Hadrian, Oklo Inc., Narya Capital, Booz Allen, Joby Aviation, Regent Craft, Atomic Industries, Impulse Space, and Dirac, which hope to reduce government regulations.[187][188]
Palantir is known to disrupt the traditional consulting business model.[193][194] But it also partners with traditional companies (and rivals in government contract) like Deloitte, Booz Allen, and Accenture.[195][196][197]
On February 8, 2021, Palantir and IBM announced a partnership that would use IBM's hybrid cloud data platform alongside Palantir's operations platform for building applications. The product, Palantir for IBM Cloud Pak for Data, is expected to simplify the process of building and deploying AI-integrated applications with IBM Watson.[198]
On March 5, 2021, Palantir announced its partnership with Amazon AWS. Palantir's ERP Suite was optimized to run on Amazon Web Services. The ERP suite was used by BP.[199]
On August 8, 2024, Palantir and Microsoft announced a partnership whereby Palantir will deploy its suite of products on Microsoft Azure Government clouds.[200][201]
Korea
In Korea, Palantir has strategic relationships with HD Huyndai and KT.
Palantir has a data alliance with HD Huyndai and also partners with HD Huyndai and Siemens to automate shipbuilding for both Korea and the U.S.[202][203]
KT cooperates with Palantir to scale Foundry and AIP across Korean industries.[204][205]
In 2025, Samsung partnered with Palantir to increase the yield and quality of its chips.[206]
Germany
SAP has strategic partnerships with Palantir and Perplexity, aiming to enhance SAP's business AI offerings.[207] Palantir also partners with SAP's U.S.-based branch, SAP National Security Services, to offer AI systems to the U.S. public sector.[208]
Palantir has a partnership with Axel Springer SE,[209][210] a publisher known to have a close relationship with Karp, who sat on its board,[211] and Thiel, who employed Springer's Mathias Döpfner's son Moritz as his chief of staff and business associate. German media have alleged that Thiel intends for Moritz Döpfner to become "the German JD Vance".[212]
Palantir partners with Merck KGaA through joint ventures Syntrophy, which focuses on cancer data analytics, and Athinia, which focuses on the semiconductor sector.[213][214]
Palantir is strategic partners with Helsing.[215]Espreso TV has linked the unusual number of defense CEOs (Brian Schimpf of Anduril Industries, Gundbert Scherf of Helsing, and Karp) at the 2025 Bilderberg Conference to Thiel's influence.[216]
Controversies
Algorithm development
i2 Inc sued Palantir in Federal Court, alleging fraud, conspiracy, and copyright infringement over Palantir's algorithm. Shyam Sankar, Palantir's director of business development, used a private eye company known as the cutout for obtaining i2's code. i2 settled out of court for $10 million in 2011.[117]
WikiLeaks proposals (2010)
In 2010, Hunton & Williams LLP allegedly asked Berico Technologies, Palantir, and HBGary Federal to draft a response plan to "the WikiLeaks Threat." In early 2011 Anonymous publicly released HBGary-internal documents, including the plan. The plan proposed that Palantir software would "serve as the foundation for all the data collection, integration, analysis, and production efforts."[217] The plan also included slides, allegedly authored by HBGary CEO Aaron Barr, which suggested "[spreading] disinformation" and "disrupting" Glenn Greenwald's support for WikiLeaks.[218]
Palantir CEO Alex Karp ended all ties to HBGary and issued a statement apologizing to "progressive organizations ... and Greenwald ... for any involvement that we may have had in these matters." Palantir placed an employee on leave pending a review by a third-party law firm. The employee was later reinstated.[217]
Racial discrimination lawsuit (2016)
On September 26, 2016, the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs of the U.S. Department of Labor filed a lawsuit against Palantir alleging that the company discriminated against Asian job applicants on the basis of their race.[219] According to the lawsuit, the company "routinely eliminated" Asian applicants during the hiring process, even when they were "as qualified as white applicants" for the same jobs.[220] Palantir settled the suit in April 2017 for $1.7 million while not admitting wrongdoing.[221]
British Parliament inquiry (2018)
During questioning in front of the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee, Christopher Wylie, the former research director of Cambridge Analytica, said that several meetings had taken place between Palantir and Cambridge Analytica, and that Alexander Nix, the chief executive of SCL, had facilitated their use of Aleksandr Kogan's data which had been obtained from his app "thisisyourdigitallife" by mining personal surveys. Kogan later established Global Science Research to share the data with Cambridge Analytica and others. Wylie confirmed that both employees from Cambridge Analytica and Palantir used Kogan's Global Science Research and harvested Facebook data together in the same offices.[222][223]
ICE partnership (since 2014)
Palantir has come under criticism due to its partnership developing software for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Palantir responded in 2018 that its software is not used to facilitate deportations. In a statement provided to the New York Times,[224] the firm implied that because its contract was with HSI, a division of ICE focused on investigating criminal activities, it played no role in deportations. But documents obtained in 2017 by The Intercept[137] show that this is not true. According to these documents, Palantir's ICM software is considered 'mission critical' to ICE. Other groups critical of Palantir include the Brennan Center for Justice,[225] National Immigration Project,[226] the Immigrant Defense Project,[227] the Tech Workers Coalition, and Mijente.[228] In one internal ICE report Mijente acquired, it was revealed that Palantir's software was critical in an operation to arrest the parents of children residing illegally.[229]
The COVID-19 pandemic prompted tech companies to respond to growing demand for citizen information from governments in order to conduct contact tracing and to analyze patient data.[233] Consequently, data collection companies such as Palantir had been contracted to partake in pandemic data collection practices. Palantir's participation in "HHS Protect Now", a program launched by the United States Department of Health and Human Services to track the spread of the coronavirus, attracted criticism from US lawmakers.[234]
Palantir's participation in COVID-19 response projects reignited debates over its involvement in tracking illegal immigrants, especially its alleged effects on digital inequality and restrictions on online freedoms. Critics allege that confidential data acquired by HHS could be exploited by other federal agencies in unregulated and potentially harmful ways.[234] Alternative proposals request greater transparency in the process to determine whether any of the data aggregated would be shared with the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement to single out illegal immigrants.[234]
After employee protests in June 2018, Google chose not to renew its contract with the US Department of Defense to work on Project Maven, a program to develop artificial intelligence that can analyze video feeds from aerial drones; Palantir took over the project in December 2019.[138] Google employees were concerned that the technology could lead to lethal autonomous weapons that choose targets without human input.[138]
Second Trump administration (2025)
According to required financial disclosures, Stephen Miller, who as United States homeland security advisor has been actively involved in the second Trump administration's deportation efforts, owns between $100,000 and $250,000 of Palantir stock; some Trump critics have raised concerns about a potential conflict of interest.[235][236][237] Similar financial disclosure requirements of U.S. government employees show that at least 10 other members of the Trump administration own Palantir stock.[238] Advocacy groups such as the Alliance for Secure AI have also criticized Palantir's use of AI during the second Trump administration.[239][240]
German police software (2020s)
There is considerable controversy about the use of Palantir by the state and the Federal Ministry of Interior's ongoing attempt to introduce it at the federal level. The controversy also elicits debate from neighboring countries, with De Tijd noting that even when a German court ruled the software unconstitutional in 2023, it was not abandoned, and the law was changed.[241][242][164]
The controversy also touches on Thiel's and Karp's German origins and alleged relationships with powerful political and economic actors in Germany (especially in the wealthier, more powerful states, such as Bavaria, Baden-Württemberg, North Rhine-Westphalia, and Hesse).[243][244] Hesse is Thiel's home state (he was born in Frankfurt), and Karp completed his PhD there.[245][246] Hesse was the first federal state to introduce Palantir software (as Hessendata, since 2017[247]) while Bavaria promotes its VeRA version at the federal level. Bavaria Minister of the Interior Joachim Herrmann has said that VeRA must be used nationwide to "create a uniform and effective security infrastructure".[248]
According to a 2025 documentary produced by Hessischer Rundfunk, Karp, like Thiel, seeks world domination.[255] Franz-Josef Hanke, a spokesperson for the Humanist Union in Hesse, has also said that this is Thiel's goal with Palantir.[256]
The German version of the Marxist[257] publication Jacobin has written that while Palantir does not steal data or carry out surveillance activity, its increased power in Germany is still worrisome, considering the founders' non-democratic tendencies, and that SPD and Alliance 90/The Greens also carry responsibility.[258]The European[de] has written that Thiel and Karp cause themselves trouble by trying to creating a mysterious aura, which leads to a negative reaction to Palantir software despite its usefulness in civilian and defense applications.[259]
According to an August 2025 Süddeutsche Zeitung article, a Yougov poll on behalf of the SZ Dossier found that a slim majority of Germans support federal agencies' use of Palantir: 51% of respondents partly or completely supported it, 30% partly or completely opposed it, and 19% did not give a response.[260] Nevertheless, civil skepticism of the company and software remains prominent; a petition on the platform Campact gathered 84,000 signatures against Palantir within a few hours and has more than 400,000 as of September 2025.[261][262][263]
Koichi Narasaki is CEO of Palantir Japan. Previously he was group chief digital officer of SOMPO Holdings, with which Palantir has a joint venture.[272][273]
As a firm doing sensitive work for governments, Palantir have connections with politicians and some of its former employees have also become public officials. This type of relationship (sometimes called a "revolving door") can cause controversy.[186][274]
Laura Rudas[de] is the executive vice president of strategy.[275] She is a former Austrian politician, having served as secretary-general of the Social Democrats and as a member of the Austrian Parliament. She left for Palantir despite having won a national reelection campaign.[276][277]
French politician Julie Martinez (Socialist Party) is global data protection officer (she has worked for Palantir for three years) and her party's spokesperson, having been appointed to this office in September 2025. Her and Palantir's reputation have caused controversy in France, but her party says the situation is not problematic. She also heads the think tank France Positive.[278][279][280]
Details about Palantir Korea's boards of directors are not fully known, but one board member is Shawn Pelsinger, who is now also Acrisure's chief administrative officer.[288][289]
For the fiscal year 2024, Palantir reported earnings of $462 million, with annual revenue of $2.9 billion, an increase of 28.8% over the previous fiscal cycle.
In 2025, Palantir was one of the donors who funded the White House's East Wing demolition, and planned building of a ballroom.[297]
Influence on other companies
Palantir's success has led a new wave of companies (mostly in the defense sector) to follow its business model, often connected to its personnel. The Wall Street Journal and Business Insider have described a "Palantir Mafia" that they compared to the PayPal Mafia. Those mentioned include founders of companies like Anduril Industries, 8VC, Addepar, and Ironclad.[298][299] Joe Lonsdale also co-founded anti-drone tech startup Epirus.[300][301]
The German unicorn Helsing is built as a German or European answer to Palantir.[302][303] Thiel also had a role in Helsing's success, and the company is considered part of the "Thiel ecosystem", though he does not directly invest in it.[216][215]
The French startup Comand AI, founded in 2023 by Antoine Chassang (ex-Snapchat) and Loïc Mougeolle (ex-Naval Group), aims to be a more adaptive alternative to Palantir. Its team was poached from Palantir, OpenAI, and Anduril.[304][305]
The British company Arondite was founded by Will Blyth (also CEO), a former British Army officer who had also worked for Palantir and Helsing.[306]
The Israeli defense tech startup Kela is founded by Hamutal Meridor (president, former officer in the Israeli army, and former head of Palantir's general operations in Israel), Alon Dror (CEO and former Israeli tank platoon commander), Jason Manne, and Omer Bar Ilan. Like Palantir, Kela develops commercial and military systems "in service of Western defense".[307][308][309]
London-based Conduct is a company founded by three ex-Palantir employees to overhaul legacy ERP systems, with a focus on SAP.[310]
In 2024, alongside General Catalyst and Red Cell Partners, the Founders Fund incubated the defense incubator Valinor Enterprises. The co-founders are former Palantir senior vice president Julie Bush (CEO), Trae Stephens, General Catalyst's Paul Kwan, and Red Cell's Grant Verstandig.[311][312] The team is sourced from Palantir, Anduril, and Helsing. The firm also has strategic relationships with these companies.[313][314]
↑ "What Is an IL5 Certification?". Akamai. November 13, 2024. Archived from the original on November 13, 2024. Retrieved November 13, 2024. IL5 is a certification by the United States Department of Defense (DoD) that authorizes a cloud service provider (CSP) to store and process some of the DoD's most sensitive data. The IL5 certification indicates that a CSP has the level of controls, protocols, and technologies to securely handle Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI) that is deemed to be mission critical. The security controls required for IL5 certification are among the strictest in the cloud services industry. [...]
* Impact Level 5 (IL5) is for DoD CUI and National Security Systems (NSS)
↑ Haskins, Caroline. "What Does Palantir Actually Do?". Archived from the original on September 7, 2025. Retrieved October 13, 2025. Palantir is often called a data broker, a data miner, or a giant database of personal information. In reality, it's none of these [...] Customers need to already have the data they want to work with—Palantir itself does not provide any.
↑ Hemmadi, Murad (September 18, 2025). "The Defence Department had a $14M contract with Palantir for data management software". Palantir had no access to the information processed by its software, the department claimed in response to questions from The Logic. Gotham was only used on data protected on "closed, classified" National Defence networks "within secure facilities," department spokesperson Andrée-Anne Poulin said
↑ "Frequently asked questions (FAQs)". NHS Federated Data Platform Frequently asked questions (FAQs). Retrieved October 13, 2025. Palantir has no intellectual property rights (IPRs) in NHS data as part of this contract. where NHS England commissions material containing IPRs, it owns those IPRs – this includes the data ontology commissioned by NHS England to support NHS FDP use known as the Canonical Data Model
↑ "CIA-backed Palantir Technologies raises $107.5 million". San Francisco: Reuters. December 11, 2013. Retrieved August 1, 2025. Palantir Technologies, the data-mining company that is partly backed by the Central Intelligence Agency, has raised another $107.5 million... brings the total raised by the company to over $800 million, values the company at more than $9 billion... Clients such as the National Security Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the CIA, along with corporate customers such as banks, use Palantir software to piece together information on terrorist plots, financial frauds and the like. The start-up has drawn attention because of its Prism software product, which has the same name as an NSA program that monitors emails and other communications of ordinary people on a mass scale. Palantir has said its product is separate.
↑ Waldman, Peter; Chapman, Lizette; Robertson, Jordan. "Palantir Knows Everything About You". Bloomberg.com. Bloomberg. Archived from the original on April 23, 2018. Retrieved April 23, 2018.
Mark O'Connell, "The War App" (review of Alex Karp and Nicholas W. Zamiska, The Technological Republic: Hard Power, Soft Belief, and the Future of the West, Crown Currency, 2025), The New York Review of Books, vol. LXXII, no. 14 (25 September 2025), pp. 18, 20, 22. O'Connell writes that Karp's attempt "to present himself as an unconventional thinker ... is ultimately in service of a consolidation of state power and business interests—what is normally referred to as the military-industrial complex, which since the end of World War II has been at the root of many long and brutal foreign conflicts, as well as the fortunes of many ruthless and clever opportunists."
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US$2.87 billion (2024)
