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Palantir is no stranger to politics. The data mining and software company got its start with government contracts, and 19 years after its founding, Palantir’s government work is still at the core of its business.
At its inception, Palantir’s business included the FBI, NSA, and CIA, and even In-Q-Tel was one of the company’s early supporters. CEO and co-founder Alex Karp is a self-proclaimed American veteran. They are tied to carp intelligence and defense, and their company’s contracts with government agencies demonstrate its commitment to using technology to strengthen the West. The company’s first campaign was said to have helped find Osama bin Laden a decade ago, and this year Palantir began working for Ukraine’s military.
Meanwhile, the company’s patriotism drew criticism both internally and externally. Palantir’s work with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ISA, on the deal sparked several internal employee complaints and sparked a nationwide debate about the technology’s role in America and the line between protecting civil rights and facilitating government duty.
Karp co-founded the company with Peter Thiel, a prominent conservative tech investor, and the two have publicly clashed over politics and technology. In an interview at the Aspen Ideas Festival, Karp commented on the division in Palantir’s leadership. “Look, I think one of the problems in this country is that there aren’t enough people like Peter and I … we’ve been fighting about things for 30 years,” Andrew Ross Sorkin of CNBC told CNBC. Still, he steers a company well enough to consistently secure government contracts around the world, and his successes have led to contracts in the private sector with companies such as BP, Merck and Sanofi.
CNBC released its first Disrupt 50 list in 2013, shortly after reports that Palantir helped track down bin Laden, and Palantir will remain a staple on the list until it appears on the live list in 2020. Palantr Shares are up about 12.6% since going public, but for 2022 shares are down more than 55%.
While most of its business is for government agencies, business beyond that is growing: Business revenue was up 120% in its last earnings report in August, with out-of-state business customers up more than 200%. Wall Street analysts who cover the stock are split: A quarter have a “buy” rating, a quarter expect underperform, and the other half call Palantir stock a “hold.”
For Palantir’s customers, whether regional or international, public or private, there is often ambiguity. From the beginning, the company’s goals were secretive, befitting a Defense Department or FBI contractor. However, despite being a publicly traded company with a market cap of $16.7 billion, Palantir’s operations remain opaque. Karp became the first Western CEO to visit conflict-affected Ukraine this year and meet with President Volodymyr Zelensky, and Palantir’s chief commercial officer and legal officer, Ryan Taylor, said on the earnings call that the company is “at the forefront of the most important problems in the world, from the war in Ukraine to hunger and As far as fighting monkeypox.
But it’s unclear how exactly Palantir is managing those problems.
In a CNBC interview at the World Economic Forum in Davos in May, Alex Karp estimated a 20-30% chance of nuclear war in Ukraine. Although it was a relatively solitary prediction at the time, in an interview on “Squawk Box” in September, Karp doubled down on potential future threats and in doing so emphasized his company’s position to help Ukraine defend itself against Russia: “Software and hardware can really kill the giant.”
While secretive, Palantir has remained clear about one main pillar of its CIA roots: healthcare.
During the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, Palantir assisted in the distribution of vaccines both domestically and internationally. He has collaborated with the CDC, NIH and FDA in the US, as well as the NHS in the UK. In the private sector, he is currently working with Japan’s Sompo, as well as Merck and Sanofi’s healthcare business.
COO Shyam Sankar told CNBC in August that the company’s work spans the entire value chain of healthcare. By partnering with government agencies to more efficiently distribute vaccines, field pharmaceutical companies and the biomanufacturing processes that make them, drive hospital operations that are getting needles into your hands, and clear backlogs by lifting health care outcomes. “Covid wake-up call.”
Palantir may remain as secretive as it began, and Karp, committed to his politics and patriotism, is likely to be outspoken on both. For 19 years, Palantir’s data mining and analysis software has been the subject of notable successes and detractors. Despite its backwardness, the technology wins hundreds of millions of dollars in contracts each year.
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