Palantir, an American knowledge evaluation and synthetic intelligence firm, has emerged as Silicon Valley’s newest tech darling: one that makes no secret of its macho, America-first ethos now ascendant in Trump-era tech tradition.
The firm’s attain spans the world economic system, with banks, hospitals, the U.S. authorities, and the Israeli navy amongst its ever-expanding consumer roster.
“We want and need this country to be the strongest, most important country in the world,” Alex Karp, Palantir’s CEO, lately declared at a consumer convention in Palo Alto, California, the place AFP was the solely media outlet current.
In armed conflicts, most notably in Ukraine, Palantir’s instruments assist consider potential targets in real-time, utilizing a number of sources, together with biometric knowledge and intercepted cellphone calls.
“I’m super proud of… what we do to protect our soldiers… (using our AI) to kill our enemies and scare them, because they know they will be killed,” the graying, curly-haired billionaire continued, sporting a good white T-shirt.
Washington has been filling Palantir’s coffers.
In the first quarter, the firm obtained $373 million from the U.S. authorities: a forty five% leap from the earlier 12 months, and it isn’t all navy spending.
This spring, federal immigration authorities (ICE) awarded the firm a $30 million contract to develop a brand new platform for monitoring deportations and visa overstays.
The firm then secured an funding of almost $800 million from the US navy, including to the $480 million contract signed in May 2024 for its AI platform supporting the Pentagon’s “Project Maven” goal identification program.
This marked Palantir’s first billion-dollar contract, elevating it alongside authorities contracting stalwarts like Microsoft and Amazon’s AWS.
However, monetary outcomes “are not and will never be the ultimate measure of the value, broadly defined, of our business,” Karp wrote in his letter to shareholders in early May, the place he tossed in quotes from Saint Augustine, the Bible and Richard Nixon.
“We have grander and more idiosyncratic aims.”
Palantir was based in 2003 by Peter Thiel, Silicon Valley’s preeminent conservative, Karp, and others with CIA backing.
The firm takes its identify from the magical seeing stones in Tolkien’s “Lord of the Rings.”
“Young people would say we’re like pure drugs: very expensive, highly sought after… that make you stronger and better,” Karp boasted on stage.
Palantir’s increasing footprint at the highest ranges of presidency has raised eyebrows.
Several members of the Trump administration’s “DOGE” cost-cutting fee, initially headed by Elon Musk, got here from the firm.
Recent experiences from The New York Times, Wired, and CNN have detailed secret authorities tasks to create, with Palantir’s assist, a central database combining knowledge from completely different federal businesses.
This improvement has created “a lot of concerns about how that information might be used,” warned Elizabeth Laird from the Center for Democracy & Technology.
Palantir maintains it is not constructing “surveillance technology” or a “central database on Americans.”
Unlike most conventional Silicon Valley corporations that have stored navy tasks discreet, Palantir now embraces its defence work brazenly.
Sasha Spivak, director of technique, stated that when she joined Palantir ten years in the past, the firm stored its sense of function behind closed doorways.
“Today we’re not ashamed, we’re not afraid, and we’re deeply proud of what we do and our clients,” stated Spivak.
Some worker teams are pushing again. In early May, 13 former Palantir staff printed a letter accusing tech giants of serving to to “normalize authoritarianism under the cover of a ‘revolution’ led by oligarchs.”
They argue that by supporting the Trump administration and DOGE, Palantir has betrayed its said values of ethics, transparency, and defending democracy.
“When I joined the company… there were many smart, motivated people; that’s pretty rare,” stated certainly one of the letter’s signatories, who needs to stay nameless, for concern of reprisal.
After months of searching for administration explanations about Palantir’s collaboration with Israel and ICE, a number of of those staff resigned.
“They said, ‘We’re a company that’s very responsive to employees,’ but people asking about Israel were quickly shut down and told, ‘That’s what we do; if you don’t like it, you can leave,'” the former staffer recalled.
Jeremy David, co-director of the Health division, performs down the controversies.
“My daily life is more about nurses and doctors who often hate us at first and are very grateful at the end,” he instructed AFP at the convention.
On stage, Joe Bonanno, head of information evaluation at Citibank, celebrated how one operation that beforehand required “nine days and sometimes 50 people” now “takes just a few minutes for one person.”
“Like I said, and like Alex said, I came to dominate, crush and annihilate. So if you’re JPMorgan, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, sorry,” he concluded with a broad smile.
Some potential purchasers quietly admit they do not respect the war-like rhetoric, however they see no various to Palantir’s capabilities.
