American data analytics and artificial intelligence company Palantir has appeared as the latest Silicon Valley engineer who hasn't kept macho secrets secrets secrets secrets in place.
The company's reach spans the global economy, a growing client list by banks, hospitals, the US government and Israeli military.
“We want and need this country to become the strongest and most important country in the world,” Palantir CEO Alex Karp recently declared at a client meeting held in Palo Alto, California, where AFP is the only media outlet.
In the most prominent conflict in Ukraine, Palantia's tools can help assess potential targets in real time using multiple sources, including biometric data and intercepted telephones.
“I'm very proud of what we're doing to protect our soldiers… because they know they'll be killed to kill and scare the enemies,” the grey, curly haired billionaire continued, wearing a tight white T-shirt.
Washington is filling Palantier's financial resources.
In the first quarter, the company received $373 million from the US government on a 45% jump from the previous year, but that's not all medium-production spending.
This spring, federal immigration authorities awarded the company a $30 million contract to develop a new platform to track deportation and visa extensions.
The company subsequently secured nearly $800 million in investment from the US military, adding an AI platform that supports Pentagon's “Project Maven” target identification program, in addition to the $480 million contract signed in May 2024.
This marked Palantir's first billion-dollar deal, and raised it along with stubborn contracts like Microsoft and Amazon's AWS.
However, the financial results “will never be and never be the ultimate measure of the value of our business,” Carp wrote in his letter to shareholders in early May.
“We have a grander, more singular purpose.”
Palantir was founded in 2003 by the exceptional conservative Karp of Peter Thiel Silicon Valley and others.
The company takes its name from the magical appearance stones in Tolkien's Lord of the Rings.
“Young people will say that pure drugs are like they're very expensive and very popular…it makes you stronger and better,” Carp boasted on stage.
The expansion of the footprint at the highest level of Palantir's government has raised the brows.
Several members of the Trump administration's “doge” cost reduction committee, originally led by Elon Musk, came from the company.
Recent reports from The New York Times, Wired and CNN include detailed, secret government projects to create a central database that combines data from various federal agencies, with the help of Palantir.
The development “swelled a lot of concern about how that information would be used,” warned Elizabeth Laird of the Center for Democracy Technology.
Palantir claims it has not built “surveillance technology” or “a central database of Americans.”
Unlike most traditional Silicon Valley companies that have kept military projects modest, Palantir is now openly embracing its defensive work.
Strategy Director Sasha Spibak said when he joined Palantir 10 years ago, the company maintained a sense of purpose behind closed doors.
“Today, we are not embarrassed, not afraid, and we are deeply proud of what we are doing and our clients,” Spivak said.
Some employee groups are pushing back. In early May, 13 former Palantir employees issued a letter accusing them of helping to “normalize authoritarianism under the cover of an oligarch-led “revolution.”
They argue that by supporting the Trump administration and Doge, Palantier has betrayed the stated values of ethics, transparency and democracy.
“When I joined the company… there were a lot of pretty rare, smart, motivated people,” said one of the letter's signers, who wanted to remain anonymous in fear of retaliation.
Some of these employees have resigned after months of seeking management explanations about Israel's collaboration with ICE's Palantia.
“They said, 'We're a company that's very sensitive to employees,' but those who asked about Israel were quickly shut down and said, 'If you don't like it, you can leave,'” the former staff member recalled.
Jeremy David, co-director of the health department, is in a controversy.
“My daily life is about nurses and doctors who often dislike us at first and at the end I am very grateful,” he told AFP at the meeting.
On stage, Joe Bonanno, head of data analytics at Citibank, previously celebrated how “sometimes 50 people needed one operation “on nine days, sometimes 50 people.”
“Like I said, and as Alex said, I've come to dominate, crush, annihilate. So if you're jpmorgan, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, I'm sorry.”
Some potential clients quietly admit that they are not grateful for war-like rhetoric, but we see no replacement for Palantir's capabilities.
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