Palantir’s Quest to Create Clairvoyant Institutions
Founded by philosophers, the first Silicon Valley government contractor has become a commercial success after two decades. But its philosophical underpinnings have yielded perhaps more mixed results.
Palantir Technologies is a publicly-traded U.S. software company that specializes in data integration, analytics, and visualization. With a market capitalization of over $50 billion as of April 2024 and revenues of $2.2 billion in 2023, it is the only major Silicon Valley company to have built its business primarily on contracts with the U.S. government.1 The company classifies about 55% of its 2023 revenue as “government,” as opposed to “commercial,” and its commercial U.S. revenues were almost negligible as recently as 2019, but have grown tremendously fast since then.2 The company generally does not publicize who its clients are, but its largest clients are likely U.S. military and intelligence agencies, now in addition to hundreds of corporate clients both in the U.S. and abroad. Founded in 2003, the company is also the most notable success of the CIA’s venture capital arm, In-Q-Tel, which was Palantir’s first investor, and the CIA was the company’s only customer in its early years.3