It’s chilly On a March morning at an undisclosed Mid-Atlantic hotel, Palantir’s developer conference will be held. Defense contractors, military personnel and business executives in attendance are unprepared for the weather. They assumed temperatures in the mid-70s from the day before would continue. As the cold rain turns to persistent snow, Palantir hands out thick blankets. As people move between the open-air pavilions, they look as if they have been pulled from a shipwreck. Even so, my spirits are high. To this self-selected crowd, Palantir is delivering on its promise. The company’s stock price is soaring. The gathering is infused with the heady groupthink of a multi-level marketing event.
After securing an invitation to the conference (a task made difficult by Palantir’s disapproval of WIRED’s recent coverage), I wanted a glimpse inside this mysterious company. Founded in 2003 by Peter Thiel and his then-unknown former Stanford classmate Alex Karp, the company is part of the Pentagon’s AI-based warfighting transformation. However, the biggest growth over the past few years has been in the commercial sector. “The commercial business is growing 120 percent year over year. We’re very proud of the 60 percent growth in the government sector, but they’re not on the same steep slope,” says Shyam Sankar, Palantir’s chief technology officer. He is also a member of a four-man squad of technical cadres who serve as lieutenant colonels in the Army Reserve.
Generative AI has fueled Palantir’s growth and significantly enhanced the hands-on support the company provides to its customers. Early in its evolution, Palantir embedded “forward-deployed engineers” into companies to help them incorporate Palantir’s software into their operations. Larger language models enable Palantir to build more powerful products, and engineers are now focused on helping customers build their own tools using Palantir’s technology. “Each time these models were improved, it felt like they were made specifically for us,” says Ted Mabry, an early employee and now director of commercial business. Mr. Sankar elaborates: “Our theme is that we are developing an Iron Man suit for recognition purposes,” he says. “Rates were limited by a variety of factors, including the number of people and the creativity of the questions. [with Gen AI] That rate limiter has been removed and the growth rate has changed. ”
The morning keynote will include Vice Admiral of the U.S. Navy, Director of the Maven AI Battlefield Project, and executives from Accenture, GE Aerospace, SAP, and Freedom Mortgage Corporation. This range reflects the company’s trajectory from defense to commercial sectors. During breakfast, I watch a demonstration of a family-run fashion business with 450 employees. Jordan Edwards, CEO of Mixology Clothing, discovered Palantir through an Instagram ad and says the AI-powered system has transformed his business. He uses Palantir’s software to help with purchasing decisions and has him send emails to negotiate prices. One line he sells “caused a 17-point margin change, from a loss of $9 per unit to a profit of $9 per unit,” he claims. Edwards now calls himself a “front-line CEO.”
Although Palantir’s main growth has been in the commercial sector, its soul remains in defense contracting. In its long struggle to become part of the national defense establishment (at one point suing the Army for contract consideration), it adopted a focus on results. Palantir believes this experience has forced it to adopt a level of rigor that sets it apart from its rivals in the commercial field. A chapter from Sankar’s just-published book, Mobilization: How to restart America’s industrial base and prevent World War III“Factories are weapons.” Both Sankar and CEO Alex Karp believe that American industry, particularly Silicon Valley, is not patriotic enough. Their hope is that Palantir’s example will encourage other companies to produce defense products in addition to consumer products.
Karp’s opening remarks at the conference emphasized how defense activities define the company, especially now that America is at war. Unusually wearing a blazer (“to convince my family I have a job,” he jokes), he says he’s usually speaking to commercial clients about how they can make them wealthier and happier and beat out their competitors. (He calls his rivals “non-competitives” because, in his mind, they don’t rank in Palantir’s class.) But with an active battlefield in Iran, the company’s only priority is now supporting the military. “On Palantir, it was built to give combatants an unfair advantage,” he says. “It was, ‘Yeah, we’re really going to beat the enemy.'” And I take great pride in that. ”
