Palantir Technologies
Palantir Technologies Inc. is a public American company that specializes in software platforms[3] for big data analytics. Headquartered in Denver, Colorado, it was founded by Peter Thiel,[4] Nathan Gettings, Joe Lonsdale, Stephen Cohen, and Alex Karp in 2003. The company's name is derived from The Lord of the Rings where the magical palantíri were "seeing-stones," described as indestructible balls of crystal used for communication and to see events in other parts of the world.[5]
Company type
- NYSE: PLTR
- Russell 1000 component
2003
- Peter Thiel
- Nathan Gettings
- Joe Lonsdale
- Stephen Cohen
- Alex Karp
- Palantir Gotham
- Palantir Foundry
- Palantir Apollo
US$2.23 billion (2023)
US$120 million (2023)
US$217 million (2023)
US$4.52 billion (2023)
US$3.56 billion (2023)
3,735 (2023)
The company has three main projects: Palantir Gotham, Palantir Apollo, and Palantir Foundry. Palantir Gotham is an intelligence and defense tool used by militaries and counter-terrorism analysts. Its customers included the United States Intelligence Community (USIC) and United States Department of Defense.[6] Their SaaS is one of five offerings authorized for Mission Critical National Security Systems (IL5) by the U.S. Department of Defense.[7][8] Palantir Foundry is used for data integration and analysis by corporate clients such as Morgan Stanley, Merck KGaA, Airbus, Wejo, Lilium, PG&E and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles.[9] Palantir Apollo is a platform to facilitate continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD) across all environments.[10][11]
Palantir's original clients were federal agencies of the USIC. It has since expanded its customer base to serve both international as well state and local governments, and also to private companies.[12]
Products[edit]
Palantir Gotham[edit]
Palantir Gotham is Palantir's defense and intelligence offering. It is an evolution of Palantir's longstanding work in the United States Intelligence Community, and is used by intelligence and defense agencies. Palantir Gotham has also been used as a predictive policing system, which has elicited some controversy over racism in their AI analytics.[54]
Palantir Foundry[edit]
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. Foundry was also utilized by the Center NHS England in dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic in England to analyze the operation of the vaccination program. A campaign was started against the company in June 2021 by Foxglove, a tech-justice nonprofit, because "Their background has generally been in contracts where people are harmed, not healed." Clive Lewis MP, supporting the campaign said Palantir had an "appalling track record."[55]
As of 2022, Foundry was also used for the administration of the UK Homes for Ukraine program.[56] to give caseworkers employed by local authorities access to data held by the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, some of which is supplied by the UK Home Office.
In November 2023, NHS England awarded a 7-year contract to Palantir 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.[57]
Palantir Apollo[edit]
Palantir Apollo is a continuous delivery system that manages and deploys Palantir Gotham and Foundry.[58] Apollo was built out of the need for customers to use multiple public and private cloud platforms as part of their infrastructure. Apollo orchestrates updates to configurations and software in the Foundry and Gotham platforms using a micro-service architecture. This product has led Palantir's business model toward providing software as a service (SaaS) and away from developing bespoke solutions for customers as similar to a consulting company.[59]
Other[edit]
The company has been involved in a number of business and consumer products, designing in part or in whole. For example, in 2014, they 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.[60]
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 was able to deploy operations and receive responses via an AI chatbot.[61][62] Citing potential risks of generative artificial intelligence, CEO Karp said that the product would not let the AI independently carry out targeting operations, requiring human oversight.[63][64]
Partnerships and contracts[edit]
International Business Machines[edit]
On February 8, 2021, Palantir and IBM announced a new 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. It will help businesses/users interpret and use large datasets without needing a strong technical background. Palantir for IBM Cloud Pak for Data will be available for general use in March 2021.[108]
Amazon (AWS)[edit]
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.[109]
Babylon Health[edit]
Palantir took a stake in Babylon Health in June 2021. Ali Parsa told the Financial Times that "nobody" has brought some of the tech that Palantir owns "into the realm of biology and health care".[55]
Controversies[edit]
Algorithm development[edit]
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 as the cutout for obtaining i2's code. i2 settled out of court for $10 million in 2011.[67]
WikiLeaks proposals (2010)[edit]
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."[110] The plan also included slides, allegedly authored by HBGary CEO Aaron Barr, which suggested "[spreading] disinformation" and "disrupting" Glenn Greenwald's support for WikiLeaks.[111]
Palantir CEO 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.[110]
Racial discrimination lawsuit (2016)[edit]
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.[112] 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.[113] Palantir settled the suit in April 2017 for $1.7 million while not admitting wrongdoing.[114]
British Parliament inquiry (2018)[edit]
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.[115][116]
ICE partnership (since 2014)[edit]
Palantir has come under criticism due to its partnership developing software for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Palantir has responded that its software is not used to facilitate deportations. In a statement provided to the New York Times,[117] 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. However, documents obtained by The Intercept[84] show that this is not the case. 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,[118] National Immigration Project,[119] the Immigrant Defense Project,[120] the Tech Workers Coalition and Mijente.[121] In one internal ICE report[122] Mijente acquired, it was revealed that Palantir's software was critical in an operation to arrest the parents of children residing illegally.
On September 28, 2020, Amnesty International released a report criticizing Palantir failure to conduct human rights due diligence around its contracts with ICE. Concerns around Palantir's rights record were being scrutinized for contributing to human rights violations of asylum-seekers and migrants.[123][124]
Leadership[edit]
Jamie Fly, former Radio Free Europe president and CEO, serves as senior counselor to the CEO.[127]
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 Trump administration, serves as senior advisor.[128][129]