Palantir Technologies
Palantir Technologies Inc. is an American publicly traded company that develops data integration and analytics platforms enabling government agencies, militaries, and corporations to combine and analyze data from multiple sources. Its flagship products—Gotham and Foundry —connect previously siloed databases to support intelligence operations, counterterrorism analysis, law enforcement, and enterprise analytics. Headquartered in Denver, Colorado, it was founded in 2003 by Peter Thiel, Stephen Cohen, Joe Lonsdale, Alex Karp, and Nathan Gettings.
Palantir's customer base includes federal agencies, state and local governments, international organizations, and also private companies. The company has four main operating systems: Palantir Gotham, Palantir Foundry, Palantir Apollo, and Palantir AIP. Palantir Gotham is an intelligence tool used by militaries and counter-terrorism analysts, including the United States Intelligence Community and United States Department of Defense. Multiple police departments have used Gotham for crime analysis. Civil liberties organizations including the ACLU have criticized this use as predictive policing. CEO Alex Karp disputes this characterization, arguing the system is an analytical tool requiring human judgment rather than an autonomous predictive system that independently forecasts criminal activity. Its software as a service is one of five offerings authorized for Mission Critical National Security Systems by the U.S. Department of Defense. Palantir has been used for data integration and analysis by corporate clients such as Morgan Stanley, Merck KGaA, Airbus, Wejo, Lilium, PG&E and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles. Palantir Apollo is a platform to facilitate continuous integration/continuous delivery across all environments.
Palantir reported its first quarter of positive net income under non-GAAP metrics in Q4 2022; the company then reported its first quarter of positive GAAP net income in Q1 2023, totaling $31 million, reaching profitability after about 20 years since its 2003 founding.
Palantir has been criticized for its involvement in expanding government surveillance through artificial intelligence and facial recognition technologies. Critics have raised concerns about its contracts under the Trump administration, which enable deportations and the aggregation of sensitive data on Americans. Supporters say that Palantir does not collect, store, or sell data itself but rather provides software that helps clients analyze data they already possess, while clients retain control and rights over their own information.
History
2003–2008: Founding and early years
Palantir was founded in 2003. Thiel named the startup after the "seeing stone" in Tolkien's legendarium. Likewise, Palantir's office locations have names from Tolkien: The Shire, Rivendell, and Minas Tirith. 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". 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 Hegelian dialectic.In 2004, Thiel bankrolled the creation of a prototype by PayPal engineer Nathan Gettings and Stanford University students Joe Lonsdale and Stephen Cohen. The same year, Thiel hired Alex Karp, a former colleague of his from Stanford Law School, as chief executive officer.
There are several versions of the story of the company's founding. According to Gilman Louie, head of In-Q-Tel, 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. According to Anthony King, the FBI first recognized the success of PayPal's fraud detection system 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. 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.
According to Karp, Sequoia Capital chairman Michael Moritz doodled through an entire meeting, and a Kleiner Perkins executive lectured the founders about the company's inevitable failure.
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. According to Techcrunch, Palantir's $7.5 million Series A was led by Oakhouse Partners and its $10.5 million Series B was led by REV. In its early years, Palantir maintained founder control by declining to offer board seats to investors, including In-Q-Tel. This practice continued through subsequent funding rounds. Karp's biographer Michael Steinberger notes that, even later, when the company attracted significant outside money, it never gave up a board seat. Steinberger also writes that Karp, who primarily oversaw the company's operations, disliked companies like Google and Facebook, fearing that public backlash against Big Data might wrongly implicate Palantir, which, unlike them, neither collected nor sold data. Palantir's leadership viewed companies like Facebook as potential targets for public criticism regarding data practices. Thiel's involvement with both companies—as Palantir's founder and Facebook board member—created strategic tension in how the companies positioned themselves regarding data ethics.
In the 2025 book The Technological Republic, Karp and Zamiska argue that American technological dominance requires deeper integration of Silicon Valley and defense interests. Karp contends that China operates with fewer ethical constraints than U.S. defense companies, making technological leadership essential for national security. The authors stress that deterrence through technological dominance could prevent many wars. Bloomberg noted that the atomic bomb the Manhattan Project produced was ultimately used. The New Republic called Karp's formation of Palantir an embrace of techno-militarism to advance American global supremacy through hard power and targeted violence. The Wall Street Journal said Palantir had a "pro-America ethos" from its inception, highlighting a 2025 fellowship where fellows received a four-week seminar on Western civilization and whether it was worth defending.
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. 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. 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.
Theories created by authors such as Whitney Webb have circulated about Palantir's origins.
2010–2012: Expansion
In April 2010, Palantir announced a partnership with Thomson Reuters to sell the Palantir Metropolis product as "QA Studio". On June 18, 2010, Vice President of the United States Joe Biden and Office of Management and Budget Director Peter Orszag held a press conference at the White House announcing the success of fighting fraud in the stimulus by the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board. Biden credited Palantir with supporting the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board's fraud detection efforts, highlighting specific cases identified through the system. He announced that the capability would be deployed at other government agencies, starting with Medicare and Medicaid.Industry analysts estimated Palantir's 2011 revenues at approximately $250 million.
2013–2016: Additional funding
A document leaked to TechCrunch revealed that Palantir's clients as of 2013 included at least 12 groups in the U.S. government, including the CIA, the DHS, the NSA, the FBI, the CDC, the Marine Corps, the Air Force, the Special Operations Command, the United States Military Academy, the Joint Improvised-Threat Defeat Organization and Allies, the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. At the time, the United States Army continued to use its own data analysis tool. Also according to TechCrunch, U.S. spy agencies such as the CIA and FBI were linked for the first time with Palantir software, as their databases had previously been siloed.In September 2013, Palantir disclosed over $196 million in funding, according to a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filing. It was estimated that the company would likely sign almost $1 billion in contracts in 2014. 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." 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."
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. As of December 2014, the company continued to have diverse private funders, Ken Langone and Stanley Druckenmiller, In-Q-Tel of the CIA, Tiger Global Management, and Founders Fund, a venture firm operated by Thiel.
Palantir was valued at $15 billion in November 2014. In June 2015, BuzzFeed reported the company was raising up to $500 million in new capital at a valuation of $20 billion. By December, it had raised a further $880 million, while the company was still valued at $20 billion. In February 2016, Palantir bought Kimono Labs, a startup that makes it easy to collect information from public-facing websites.
In August 2016, Palantir acquired data visualization startup Silk.
In 2017, BuzzFeed News reported that despite the reputation that connected Palantir to U.S. intelligence agencies, 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".
2020–present
Palantir was one of four large technology firms to start working with the NHS on supporting COVID-19 efforts through the provision of software from Palantir Foundry, and by April 2020, several countries had used Palantir's technology to track and contain the contagion. Palantir also developed Tiberius, a software for vaccine allocation used in the United States.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". In September it had its IPO on the NYSE, advertising a goal of becoming the "default operating system across the US". In December 2020, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration awarded Palantir a $44.4 million contract, boosting its shares by about 21%.
In February 2023, Palantir reported its first-ever quarter of positive GAAP net income, totaling $31 million.
In November 2024, the Navy awarded Palantir a nearly $1 billion software contract. Various outlets comment that the company's actual business and size have remained small.
In 2025, Fortune noted that Palantir, with a market capitalization exceeding $400 billion, ranked among the world's most valuable companies by market cap, yet would fail to meet Fortune 500 revenue thresholds. The company's headcount in August 2025 was 4,100, but Karp wanted to reduce it to 3,600.
the second Trump administration had spent $113 million on existing and new contracts with the Department of Homeland Security and The Pentagon plus a contract of $795 million with the DOD, while deliberating contracts for the Social Security Administration and the Internal Revenue Service.
Valuation
The company was valued at $9 billion in December 2013 after raising an additional $107.5 million in funding. Forbes wrote that the valuation made Palantir "among Silicon Valley's most valuable private technology companies". Palantir's valuation rose to $15 billion after a $50 million round of funding in November 2014, and to $20 billion in late 2015 as the company closed an $880 million round of funding. In 2018, Morgan Stanley valued the company at $6 billion.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.
Before its IPO, Palantir had not made a profit. In July 2020, it filed for an IPO, and on September 30, 2020, it went public on the New York Stock Exchange through a direct public offering under the ticker symbol "PLTR".
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.
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.
In 2025, The Economist called Palantir possibly "the most over-valued firm of all time", with a market value of $430 billion—over 600 times its 2024 earnings. As of November 2025, its shares were the most expensive on the S&P 500, at 85 times expected forward annual sales.
Investments
Palantir invested approximately $400 million in roughly 20 SPACs, a strategy that simultaneously positioned it as an investor in emerging companies and as a potential software provider to those portfolio companies, according to investment bank RBC Capital Markets.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. Palantir Gotham has also been used as a predictive policing system, which has elicited some controversy over racism in their AI analytics.Palantir Foundry
Palantir Foundry is a software platform offered for use in commercial and civil government sectors. Foundry gained prominence in healthcare through deployment in the National COVID Cohort Collaborative, a federated network of electronic health records. Research using this platform generated extensive peer-reviewed publications 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.Foundry was also used for the administration of the UK Homes for Ukraine program to give caseworkers employed by local authorities access to data held by the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities and Home Office.
In November 2023, NHS England awarded Palantir a seven-year contract valued at £330 million to design and operate a Federated Data Platform connecting patient data across England's healthcare system. The contract was immediately criticized by the British Medical Association, The Doctors' Association UK, and cybersecurity professionals, citing concerns about patient data privacy, procurement transparency, and Palantir's commercial contracts with the Israeli Defense Force. In 2024, medical professionals picketed outside NHS England HQ, demanding cancellation of the deal.
As of May 2025, four US federal agencies, including the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Health and Human Services, used Foundry.
Other products
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.Artificial Intelligence Platform (AIP)
In April 2023, the company launched Artificial Intelligence Platform, 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. 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. Commercial companies have also used AIP across many domains. Applications include infrastructure planning, network analysis, and resource allocation.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. Palantir also offers five-day boot camps to onboard prospective customers. Palantir hosts an annual AIPCon conference featuring demos from existing customers.
TITAN
Palantir's TITAN is a mobile command vehicle equipped with AI and analytics software for military field intelligence operations. Developed with IRAD funding in partnership with Anduril Industries and Northrop Grumman, TITAN integrates intelligence and targeting data to support tactical decision-making. The company claims that TITAN can improve customers' ability to conduct long-range precision strikes. Palantir is under contract to deliver 10 units to the U.S. Army.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.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. In 2023, various sources reported that the Ukrainian military had begun receiving Skykit units.Palantir Metropolis
Palantir Metropolis was software for data integration, information management, and quantitative analytics. The software integrates data from commercial, proprietary, and public sources, enabling analysts to identify trends, relationships, anomalies, and predictive patterns. Aided by 120 "forward-deployed engineers" of Palantir in 2009, Peter Cavicchia III of JPMorgan used Metropolis to monitor employee communications 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. 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. In 2013, Cavicchia may have shared this information with Frank Bisignano, who had become CEO of First Data Corporation. Palantir Metropolis was succeeded by Palantir Foundry.ELITE
ELITE is a software tool Palantir developed for the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. The program provides a digital map populated with information about potential deportation targets, pulling data from the United States Department of Health and Human Services, among other sources, to provide an estimated location of where a target of the agency may be residing.Customers
Corporate use
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.| Business | Sales in billion $ | Share |
| Government | 1.7 | 54.8% |
| Commercial | 1.2 | 45.2% |
Palantir Metropolis was used by hedge funds, banks, and financial services firms.
| Region | Sales in billion $ | share |
| United States | 1.9 | 66.3% |
| Rest of World | 0.7 | 23.1% |
| United Kingdom | 0.3 | 10.6% |
Palantir Foundry clients include Merck KGaA, Airbus, and Ferrari.
Palantir partner Information Warfare Monitor used Palantir software to uncover both the Ghostnet and the Shadow Network.
U.S. civil entities
Palantir's software was used by the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board to detect and investigate fraud and abuse in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Specifically, the Recovery Operations Center used Palantir to integrate transactional data with open-source and private data sets to better screen the entities receiving stimulus funds. Other clients as of 2019 included Polaris Project, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, the National Institutes of Health, Team Rubicon, and the United Nations World Food Programme.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.
U.S. military, intelligence, and police
Palantir Gotham is used by counter-terrorism analysts at offices in the United States Intelligence Community and United States Department of Defense, fraud investigators at the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board, and cyber analysts at Information Warfare Monitor. Gotham was used by fraud investigators at the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board, a former US federal agency which operated from 2009 to 2015.Other clients as of 2013 included DHS, NSA, FBI, the Marine Corps, the Air Force, Special Operations Command, West Point, the Joint IED Defeat Organization and Allies. The United States Army continued to use its own data analysis tool. According to TechCrunch, "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."
U.S. military intelligence used the Palantir product to improve its ability to predict locations of improvised explosive devices in its war in Afghanistan. Field practitioners in Afghanistan reported that Palantir's analytical capabilities provided better support than the United States Army's Program of Record, the Distributed Common Ground System, though adoption remained limited across the theater. Congressman Duncan D. Hunter complained of United States Department of Defense obstacles to its wider use in 2012.
Palantir has also been reported to be working with various U.S. police departments, for example accepting a contract in 2013 to support the Northern California Regional Intelligence Center in developing a license plate reader database. Civil liberties organizations raised concerns about potential mass surveillance and privacy implications. In 2012 New Orleans Police Department partnered with Palantir to create a predictive policing program.
In 2014, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement awarded Palantir a $41 million contract to build and maintain a new intelligence system called Investigative Case Management to track personal and criminal records of legal and illegal immigrants. This application was originally conceived by ICE's office of Homeland Security Investigations, 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.
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.
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. 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.
In mid-2025, the U.S. Army awarded Palantir an "Enterprise Service Agreement" valued at up to $10 billion over 10 years. This contract vehicle consolidates 75 previously separate data and software contracts into a single, massive software contract, allowing the Army to procure Palantir’s AI and analytics tools more efficiently and cost-effectively.
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.Liam Fox encouraged the firm "to expand their software business" in Britain. 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. Conservative MP David Davis called for a judicial review into the sharing of patient data with Palantir.
The procurement of a £480m Federated Data Platform by NHS England, launched in January 2023, has been called a "must win" for Palantir. 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. In April 2023 it was revealed that a consortium of UK companies had unsuccessfully bid for the contract.
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."
In April 2023, The Guardian reported that eleven NHS trusts had suspended use of Palantir Foundry software pending resolution of technical implementation issues, according to a Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson.
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 their way in". 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.
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. Palantir's UK head, Louis Mosley, grandson of the former British Union of Fascists leader Oswald Mosley, 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".
In November 2023, NHS England awarded Palantir a £330 million contract to create and manage the Federated Data Platform.
In April 2024, medical professionals picketed at NHS England headquarters, demanding that it end its contract with Palantir over contracts with the IDF.
Europol
Europol has used the Gotham system.Denmark
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."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 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, 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.
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, 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.Germany
In 2023, German interior minister Nancy Faeser stopped the federal use of Palantir. 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.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. 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.Ukraine
Karp claims to have been the first CEO of a large U.S. company to have visited Ukraine after the 2022 Russian invasion. Palantir's technology has since been used close to the front lines. It is used to shorten the "kill chain" in Russo-Ukrainian War. According to a December 2022 report by The Times, Palantir's AI has allowed Ukraine to increase the accuracy, speed, and deadliness of its artillery strikes. Ukraine's prosecutor general's office also plans to use Palantir's software to help document alleged Russian war crimes.Netherlands
In 2025, Dutch Justice Minister David van Weel publicly confirmed that Dutch police departments had used Palantir software since 2011, a use that had remained largely undisclosed. Over the subsequent decade, researchers seeking government transparency were repeatedly denied, with documents finally released only after litigation but with 99% of content redacted. They show that many contracts with Palantir were signed.Israel
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 with intelligence and surveillance services, including a form of predictive policing. 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". 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.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. Hayes corrected the date in a statement issued that day and provided additional details later. The Social Democrats criticized the Israeli invasion of the Gaza Strip and accused Hayes of "profiting from genocide".
In May 2025, a pro-Palestinian protest was held in Denver against Congressman Jason Crow for repeatedly accepting campaign donations from Palantir.
Other
Palantir Gotham was used by cyber analysts at Information Warfare Monitor, a Canadian public-private venture that operated from 2003 to 2012.Palantir was used by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to verify if Iran was in compliance with the 2015 agreement.
Partnerships with corporations
United States
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, OpenAI, and Saronic, to challenge the domination of the traditional "primes". They also partner with EVTOL company Archer Aviation.Alongside 8VC and General Catalyst, Palantir also helped to create and is a member of the New American Industrial Alliance. 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.
Palantir, TWG Global, and xAI have a joint venture. Palantir also collaborates with Anthropic and Amazon Web Services to provide Anthropic's Claude AI models to U.S. intelligence and defense agencies.
Palantir also partners with the traditional defense "primes": Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and General Dynamics.
Palantir is known to disrupt the traditional consulting business model. But it also partners with traditional companies like Deloitte, Booz Allen, and Accenture.
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.
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.
On August 8, 2024, Palantir and Microsoft announced a partnership whereby Palantir will deploy its suite of products on Microsoft Azure Government clouds.
Korea
In Korea, Palantir has strategic relationships with HD Hyundai and KT.Palantir has a data alliance with HD Hyundai and also partners with HD Hyundai and Siemens to automate shipbuilding for both Korea and the U.S.
KT cooperates with Palantir to scale Foundry and AIP across Korean industries.
In 2025, Samsung partnered with Palantir to increase the yield and quality of its chips.
Germany
SAP has strategic partnerships with Palantir and Perplexity, aiming to enhance SAP's business AI offerings. Palantir also partners with SAP's U.S.-based branch, SAP National Security Services, to offer AI systems to the U.S. public sector.Palantir has a partnership with Axel Springer SE, a publisher known to have a close relationship with Karp, who sat on its board, and Thiel, who employed Springer's Mathias Döpfner's son Moritz as his chief of staff and business associate. Some German media outlets have speculated about Thiel's political influence in Germany through his relationships with media executives and his investment in emerging political figures.
Palantir partners with Merck KGaA through joint ventures Syntrophy, which focuses on cancer data analytics, and Athinia, which focuses on the semiconductor sector.
Palantir is strategic partners with Helsing. Espreso TV has linked the unusual number of defense CEOs at the 2025 Bilderberg Conference to Thiel's influence.
United Arab Emirates
On 4 November 2025, a joint venture between Palantir and Dubai Holding, the Dubai government’s investment arm, was announced. The New Arab noted that the partnership came just a day after Microsoft revealed plans to invest $15.2 billion in AI and cloud computing projects across the UAE.Controversies
Palantir has been criticized for its role in expanding government surveillance using artificial intelligence and facial recognition software. 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. 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. Wired has written:But Wired reported, citing a former Palantir employee, that the government can rely on Gotham to "centralize everything an agency knows about a person in one place".
Incidents of data leaks or mismanagement have been noted, including the 2015 data leak in which Techcrunch received documents that revealed the tools used by Palantir and a list of key customers; the 2021 software misconfiguration that allowed some FBI employees unwarranted access ; and the 2025 lawsuit Palantir filed against former employees Radha Jain and Joanna Cohen for stealing data in order to launch a "copycat" company with the help of General Catalyst. In December 2025, Palantir expanded its lawsuit to include the CEO of Percepta AI.
Asahi Shimbun wrote, "While Palantir works to protect the U.S. and its allies from Islamist terrorism and infringement on freedoms by authoritarian states, there is also concern that Palantir's software can be perverted by governments to surveil the public or curtail civil liberties." Politico wrote that Palantir does "not collect data, they do not store data and they definitely don't sell data" and that it is the end user who decides how rigorously they use the platform's safety measures. Commentators note that Palantir does provide safety features like auditing functions, but customers, including governments, can disable them. Nevertheless, the book Group Privacy: New Challenges of Data Technologies says this method might open the way to a solution whereby technology can enhance accountability as well. The tech writer Karl Montevirgen wrote in Encyclopædia Britannica, "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."
Algorithm development
i2 Inc sued Palantir in Federal Court, alleging fraud, conspiracy, and copyright infringement over Palantir's algorithm. Shyam Sankar, Palantir's then-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.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." The plan also included slides, allegedly authored by HBGary CEO Aaron Barr, which suggested " disinformation" and "disrupting" Glenn Greenwald's support for WikiLeaks.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.
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. 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. Palantir settled the suit in April 2017 for $1.7 million while not admitting wrongdoing.UK
During questioning in front of the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee, Christopher Wylie, the former research director of Cambridge Analytica, said that Palantir and Cambridge Analytica had had several meetings and that SCL chief executive Alexander Nix had facilitated its 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 employees from both Cambridge Analytica and Palantir used Kogan's Global Science Research and harvested Facebook data together in the same offices. Palantir said it had contact with Cambridge Analytica but decided not to move forward with a relationship. Palantir also said that it discovered only in March 2018 that one of its employees, Alfredas Chmieliauskas, had worked with Cambridge Analytica in a personal capacity.In June 2021, reacting to the use of Foundry by NHS, the tech-justice nonprofit Foxglove 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".
Palantir UK is headed by Louis Mosley, grandson of British fascist leader Oswald Mosley.
ICE partnership (since 2014)
Palantir has come under criticism due to its partnership developing software for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Palantir responded in 2018 that its software is not used to facilitate deportations. In a statement provided to the New York Times, 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 disprove this claim, instead showing that ICE considers Palantir's ICM software "mission critical". Other groups critical of Palantir include the Brennan Center for Justice, National Immigration Project, the Immigrant Defense Project, the Tech Workers Coalition, and Mijente. 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.In September 2020, Amnesty International released a report criticizing Palantir's failure to conduct human rights due diligence for its contracts with ICE. Palantir's human rights record was being scrutinized for contributing to human rights violations of asylum-seekers and migrants.
Immigration Lifecycle Operating System (Immigration OS)
In April 2025, Palantir was reported to be working closely with ICE to enable deportation in the second presidency of Donald Trump. ICE reportedly paid Palantir $30 million to develop the Immigration Lifecycle Operating System. The Washington Post reported that Palantir developed the software to track undocumented immigrants with the goal of deporting them faster. The Immigration OS project was renewed in September 2025, despite facing some Palantir employees questioning whether "the contract should be discontinued if ICE's use of the technology veers into extrajudicial actions or violate the company's civil liberties principles". In an October 2025 interview with the New York Times, Palantir chief technology officer Shyam Sankar said that Immigration OS "tracked encounters at the border, asylum applications and applications for benefits". According to Palantir, Immigration OS "does not track information of U.S. citizens who are relatives of undocumented immigrants".The Immigration OS project has also been criticized by Y Combinator co-founder Paul Graham, who wrote that Palantir is "building the infrastructure of the police state". Palantir's continued affiliation with ICE coincided with the changes to its employee code of conduct that were made in response to executive orders by President Trump forbidding federal contractors from diversity practices.
In 2022, DHS awarded $139.3 million to Palantir for “investigative case management operations, maintenance support services and custom enhancements”; as of 2026 the contract is ongoing.
"HHS Protect Now" and privacy concerns (2020)
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. 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.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. 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.
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. Similar financial disclosure requirements of U.S. government employees show that at least 10 other members of the Trump administration own Palantir stock. Advocacy groups such as the Alliance for Secure AI have also criticized Palantir's use of AI during the second Trump administration.In December 2025, it was reported that Palantir had begun developing a portal for the Department of Education, allowing universities to report foreign donations. The company is acting as a subcontractor of Monkton, a computer and network security company, which won a $9.8 million contract to design, develop, and deploy a "Section 117 Information Sharing Environment Capable of Providing Greater Transparency".
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.The controversy also touches on Thiel's and Karp's German origins and alleged relationships with powerful political and economic actors in Germany. Hesse is Thiel's home state, and Karp completed his PhD there. Hesse was the first federal state to introduce Palantir software 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".
There is also debate about the founders' application of the philosophy of René Girard, Nietzsche, Carl Schmitt, and the Frankfurt School at Palantir and in the surveillance industry.
According to a 2025 documentary produced by Hessischer Rundfunk, Karp, like Thiel, seeks world domination. Franz-Josef Hanke, a spokesperson for the Humanist Union in Hesse, has also said that this is Thiel's goal with Palantir.
The German version of the Marxist 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. The European has written that Thiel and Karp cause themselves trouble by trying to create a mysterious aura, which leads to a negative reaction to Palantir software despite its usefulness in civilian and defense applications.
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. 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.
Corporate affairs
Leadership
Board of directors
the board of directors of Palantir includes:- Alex Karp, CEO of Palantir
- Alexander Moore, co-founder and former CEO of NodePrime
- Alexandra Schiff, former reporter of The Wall Street Journal
- Stephen Cohen, co-founder and president of Palantir
- Peter Thiel, co-founder of PayPal, Palantir and Founders Fund
- Lauren Friedman Stat, former Fractional Chief Administration Officer at Friendly Force
- Eric Woersching, former general partner at Initialized Capital
Executive management
the executive management of Palantir includes:- Alex Karp, CEO. He is also co-managing director at Frankfurt-based Palantir Technologies Gmbh.
- Stephen Cohen, Co-Founder, President, Secretary, and Director
- Shyam Sankar, Chief Technology Officer and Executive Vice President
- David Glazer, Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer
- Ryan Taylor, Chief Revenue Officer and Chief Legal Officer
Other personnel
Jamie Fly, former Radio Free Europe president and CEO, serves as senior counselor to the CEO.Fabrice Brégier is president of Palantir France. He is the former COO and president of commercial aircraft at Airbus.
Koichi Narasaki is CEO of Palantir Japan. Previously he was group chief digital officer of SOMPO Holdings, with which Palantir has a joint venture.
Louis Mosley is the head and executive vice president of Palantir Technologies UK.
Details about Palantir Korea's boards of directors are not fully known, but one board member is Shawn Pelsinger, who is also Acrisure's chief administrative officer.
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 can cause controversy.
is the executive vice president of strategy. 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.
Mike Gallagher, former Chair of the House Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, is head of defense.
French politician Julie Martinez is global data protection officer 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.
David MacNaughton, former ambassador of Canada to the United States, is president of Palantir Technologies Canada. He resigned his ambassadorship to join the firm. His activities involving Palantir before and after resignation have been controversial.
Jacob Helberg, former senior advisor to Karp, is now the U.S.Under Secretary of State for Economic Growth, Energy, and the Environment.
Mike Kelly is president of Palantir Australia. He has previously served as Parliamentary Secretary for Defence and Minister for Defence Materiel.
Matthew Turpin, former director for China at the White House National Security Council and senior advisor for China to the Secretary of Commerce during the first Trump administration, serves as senior advisor.
Ownership
The largest shareholders of Palantir in early 2024 were:| Shareholder name | Percentage |
| The Vanguard Group | 9.4% |
| Peter Thiel | 7.2% |
| BlackRock | 4.7% |
| SOMPO Holdings | 3.9% |
| Alex Karp | 2.5% |
| Renaissance Technologies | 2.1% |
| State Street Corporation | 1.9% |
| Geode Capital Management | 1.4% |
| Jane Street Capital | 1.1% |
| Eaton Vance | 1.1% |
| D. E. Shaw & Co. | 1.0% |
| Others | 66.2% |
Voting structure
Palantir has a special voting structure, tied to the classification of shares into Class A, Class B and Class F. The Class F shares, totaling 1,005,000, are managed by the Founder Voting Trust and owned equally by the three founders Thiel, Karp, and Cohen, which ensures them a 49.99% voting interest regardless of the number of other shares they hold or the number of new shares the company issues. In response to criticism that the founders wanted to remain "emperors for life", they said the creation of the Class F shares did not violate the law or the company charter and had been approved by a majority of other Palantir investors when the firm went public in 2020. In 2025, Bloomberg wrote:The founders, executives, and "insiders" also hold Class B shares, each of which carries ten votes, while the publicly traded Class A shares carry only one vote each. Class B shares can be converted to Class A shares on a 1-to-1 basis to be sold to outsiders.
Finances
For the fiscal year 2024, Palantir reported earnings of $462 million, with annual revenue of $2.9 billion, an increase of over the previous fiscal cycle.| Year | Revenue | Net income | Total assets | Employees |
| 2018 | 595 | −598 | − | − |
| 2019 | 743 | −588 | 3,735 | 2,391 |
| 2020 | 1,093 | −1,166 | 2,691 | 2,439 |
| 2021 | 1,542 | −520 | 3,247 | 2,920 |
| 2022 | 1,906 | −374 | 3,461 | 3,838 |
| 2023 | 2,225 | 210 | 4,522 | 3,735 |
| 2024 | 2,866 | 462 | 6,341 | 3,936 |
Influence on other companies
Palantir's success has led a new wave of companies 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. The WSJ has written that venture-capital firms, such as Palumni VC and XYZ Capital, have emerged with a mission to invest in startups founded by former Palantir employees. Those mentioned include founders of companies like Anduril Industries, 8VC, Addepar, and Ironclad. Joe Lonsdale also co-founded anti-drone tech startup Epirus.The German unicorn Helsing is built as a German or European answer to Palantir. 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.
Govradar is a startup focused on public procurement for the German government and Bundeswehr. It was founded in 2020 by former Palantir employee Sascha Goyk, who has also served as a Bundeswehr reserve officer since 2005. His task at Palantir was developing solutions to make the company’s data analytics platform accessible to police and intelligence agencies in Germany, but because the company faced intense scrutiny, he left and founded his own company.
Nordic Air Defence is a Swedish startup developing counter-drone missile technology that is staffed by former employees of Palantir and Quantum-Systems, which is backed by Thiel Capital. Thiel-backed SNÖ Ventures invests in NAV.
The French startup Comand AI, founded in 2023 by Antoine Chassang and Loïc Mougeolle, aims to be a more adaptive alternative to Palantir. Its team was poached from Palantir, OpenAI, and Anduril.
The British company Arondite was founded by Will Blyth, a former British Army officer who had also worked for Palantir and Helsing.
The Israeli defense tech startup Kela is founded by Hamutal Meridor, Alon Dror, Jason Manne, and Omer Bar Ilan. Like Palantir, Kela develops commercial and military systems "in service of Western defense".
London-based Conduct is a company founded by three ex-Palantir employees to overhaul legacy ERP systems, with a focus on SAP.
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, Trae Stephens, General Catalyst's Paul Kwan, and Red Cell's Grant Verstandig. The team is sourced from Palantir, Anduril, and Helsing. The firm also has strategic relationships with these companies.
In 2025, biodefense company Valthos emerged from stealth, with backing from Lux Capital, OpenAI, and Founders Fund. Its co-founders are Kathleen McMahon, who previously served as leader of Palantir's life sciences division, and Lux Capital partner Tess van Stekelenburg.
Beijing-based Deepexi is seen as China's effort to build a version of Palantir. It went public in Hongkong on 28 October 2025. Its website calls it an "enterprise- large-model artificial intelligence application solution provider and a National Specialised and Innovative 'Little Giant' Enterprise", using a "general-purpose enterprise operational decision-making large model". The IPO prompted Brijesh Singh, a senior IPS officer, to call on India to build a similar company, to treat data as strategic infrastructure and fuse the military and civil spheres.