It’s been 5 years because the budding tech big Palantir Applied sciences uprooted the corporate’s headquarters from Silicon Valley to Denver, hoping to plant itself within the rising tech hub and escape protests that had erupted each inside the firm and out of doors its doorways.
Immigrant-rights advocacy teams had organized protests exterior the corporate’s Palo Alto and New York places of work, in addition to on the dwelling of its CEO, Alexander Karp, who criticized the California coast’s “monoculture.” A University of California, Berkeley conference on privacy law dropped Palantir as a sponsor. Greater than 200 staff despatched a letter to Karp expressing their concern over the corporate’s contract with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which ostensibly targeted on the company’s investigative arm however which activists alleged facilitated raids and deportation efforts.
Amid the upheaval, firm leaders shifted their eyes to the east, the place state financial officers pitched Colorado as a fast-growing and extremely educated purple state with a effervescent startup tradition and pro-business insurance policies.
“Colorado is a really sane and nice place,” Karp stated in 2022, according to the Denver Business Journal. “It’s very likable, very pragmatic, and (there are) lots of industrious, sensible those who additionally wish to dwell in Colorado. It’s nice.”
Within the years since settling downtown, Palantir has been catapulted into the ranks of essentially the most useful tech firms within the nation. A number one knowledge evaluation agency, it’s now decisively essentially the most useful firm headquartered in Colorado, with a valuation of $437.2 billion as of Wednesday — price greater than the mixed totals of the 57 different Colorado-based public firms tracked by JS.
When it moved to the state, it had never turned a profit. Final quarter, Palantir surpassed $1 billion in income. Karp lives in New Hampshire, but when he lived in Colorado, he would path solely Phil Anschutz because the state’s wealthiest resident.
The corporate’s valuation has drawn literal “wows” from Wall Avenue analysts. It’s additionally prompted some skepticism. Final week, the Economist ran a narrative headlined: “Palantir may be essentially the most over-valued agency of all time.”
As the corporate’s profile has risen, the shoppers that performed a component in that development have drawn growing nationwide — and native — scrutiny to the corporate. Its increasing contracts with ICE, its work with the American and Israeli militaries, and nationwide reporting about its ties to billionaire Elon Musk’s “Division of Authorities Effectivity” below the brand new Trump administration have prompted nationwide protests and near-weekly headlines.
Such considerations sparked an open letter from a number of ex-employees and criticism from a United Nations official, and so they led Democratic senators and members of Congress to ship Karp a latest letter demanding solutions. WIRED recently referred to the company as “arguably some of the infamous companies in modern America.”
The corporate, which didn’t reply to interview requests from The Submit final week, makes use of synthetic intelligence to course of and analyze huge quantities of information, providing every thing from higher effectivity for airways to concentrating on help for the Ukrainian navy.
Palantir has managed to marry two technological obsessions of the twenty first century — mass knowledge assortment and the emergence of synthetic intelligence — with ever-growing needs for effectivity and safety.
“Palantir has been arguably among the many — if not essentially the most profitable firm, actually, at making use of these (synthetic intelligence) applied sciences, at scale, to large-scale knowledge,” stated James Evans, a University of Chicago professor and director of the college’s Information Lab. He additionally works on AI know-how for Google.
“And that is why they’ve additionally come below scrutiny and controversy — due to what sort of knowledge the federal government has in its possession.”
In an earnings name earlier this month, Karp, who has sought to border the corporate as pro-democracy and antiauthoritarian, reiterated its ethos: “America is the chief of the free world, that the West is superior, that we now have to combat for these values.”
What does Palantir do?
Palantir takes its identify from the crystal ball-like “seeing stones” from “The Lord of the Rings” collection, and the phrase itself interprets, from author J.R.R. Tolkien’s own Elvish language, to “those who watch from afar.”
Based as a form of security-focused offshoot of billionaire Peter Thiel‘s PayPal, Palantir fills a requirement created by firms’ and governments’ huge knowledge collections amassed over the previous 20-odd years, Evans stated.
To authorities and industrial purchasers awash in details about clients, merchandise and residents, Palantir provides an answer. For a hefty charge, it may take large, distinct datasets, mix them collectively and provide options to issues or “use circumstances” for what its clients can do with that knowledge.
For an airplane producer like Airbus, the corporate’s work meant merging 400 datasets to extra shortly repair manufacturing errors, saving lots of of tens of millions of {dollars}.
For well being officers dashing out vaccines in the course of the pandemic, Palantir meant shut monitoring of distribution.
Nebraska Medicine hired Palantir to make staffing suggestions and predict hospital mattress availability.
The U.S. Division of Protection tapped the corporate to determine probably bother spots for troopers and to make use of AI to shortly determine targets, and the Ukrainian military has used it for concentrating on, too.
Palantir has taken credit score for stopping terror assaults, and it has gained admirers within the navy for its skill to steer U.S. troops away from ambushes. It obtained initial funding from the Central Intelligence Company, and a number of media retailers have linked the corporate — with out affirmation — to the profitable seek for Osama Bin Laden, the mastermind of the Sept. 11 assaults.
Utilizing Palantir’s flagship program, law enforcement can centralize what they find out about an individual in a single place and seek for them utilizing traits like their immigration standing, their tattoos or their location, according to reports by WIRED and BuzzFeed.
That work is essential, Evans stated: As tech capabilities broaden, the federal government ought to have entry to AI software program of its personal. It’s inconceivable, in any other case, to watch for sure monetary collusion and crimes, he stated.
The corporate’s authorities work has spanned presidential administrations, and Karp, the CEO, has beforehand criticized now-President Donald Trump. However in accordance with the New York Occasions, the corporate has obtained greater than $113 million in federal authorities spending since Trump took workplace, together with extra cash from established contracts in addition to new contracts with the Division of Homeland Safety and the Pentagon.
The Occasions additionally reported that the corporate was employed to “compile knowledge on People” by merging data from completely different federal companies in a single location.
The corporate said in a blog post that the Occasions’ reporting about its authorities contracts was replete with “falsehoods and deceptive statements” and that it started pursuing a few of its new contracts below the Biden administration. It stated it was not constructing a “grasp database challenge” and to take action can be “basically at odds with Palantir’s values and our dedication to work in help of liberal democracies.”
Although Evans famous that its ties to federal contracting are a core and longstanding a part of its enterprise, Palantir’s latest work has drawn extra scrutiny. Certainly, Trump thanked the corporate at a July AI summit.
“We purchase lots of issues from Palantir,” he said.
Protests goal firm
Controversy has adopted Palantir’s work. 5 years after its ICE collaboration introduced protests to its doorways, Palantir has expanded its work with the company, agreeing to construct “ImmigrationOS” to trace the motion of immigrants within the nation.
According to CNN, the corporate was tasked with serving to Trump’s DOGE initiative to construct a “huge repository of information” that, amongst different issues, would assist determine individuals with civil immigration violations. Initially a challenge of Musk’s, DOGE moved by way of a number of authorities companies within the winter and fall in an effort to cut back spending and restrict authorities initiatives like overseas assist.
The corporate’s work with the Trump administration prompted a group of former Palantir employees within the spring to write down an open letter criticizing the corporate.
Palantir additionally has drawn scrutiny for its ties with Israel, to which it agreed to provide new battlefield technology in early 2024. Final month, the United Nations’ special rapporteur on the Palestinian territories included Palantir on an inventory of firms that “revenue freely” from Israel’s navy marketing campaign within the Gaza Strip and occupation of the West Financial institution.
The corporate has stated it’s happy with its work with Israel, according to the Guardian. It held a board assembly in Israel’s capital in early 2024, and the corporate’s work in Gaza and the West Financial institution prompted one of many largest Norwegian traders to dump its inventory final yr, Reuters reported.
Karp, the CEO, is a self-described progressive who’s donated primarily to Democrats, together with to former Vice President Kamala Harris final yr and to Colorado’s U.S. Sen. John Hickenlooper and U.S. Rep. Jason Crow.
In a letter he wrote when the corporate went public, Karp framed Palantir as an lively defender of the West. He stated it wouldn’t work with clients firm leaders thought of “inconsistent with our mission to help Western liberal democracy and its strategic allies.” Although the corporate beforehand turned down a contract with Saudi Arabia over its human rights report, it introduced that it will “deepen its ties” with the nation in Could.
In his letter, Karp reaffirmed that the corporate’s software program “is used to focus on terrorists and to maintain troopers protected.”
“We have now chosen sides,” he wrote, shortly after shifting to Denver.
The corporate has devoted a rising pile of cash to federal lobbying, according to the Wall Street Journal. However lawmakers of each events have raised considerations: In mid-June, a gaggle of Democratic lawmakers wrote to Karp, alarmed by the New York Occasions’ reporting about Palantir’s alleged work to create a “government-wide, searchable ‘mega-database’ “ of taxpayer data. A number of Republicans expressed comparable considerations to Semafor.
The corporate’s efforts have sparked criticism amongst former staff, too. Juan Sebastián Pinto moved to Denver in 2021, in search of a change from the work he did for promoting and structure corporations. Then he obtained a job provide from Palantir as a content material strategist, to “assist the gross sales and technical groups categorical these advanced concepts and messaging,” he stated.
He labored with the corporate’s automotive groups — which means work with automotive firms — and on protection.
Pinto stated he was involved concerning the “automated warfare” that Palantir was engaged on, in addition to the quantity of information automotive firms have been gathering about their purchasers. He left and was one of many former staff who signed the open letter criticizing the corporate earlier this yr.
He’s additionally a part of a nascent protest effort to name consideration to Palantir in Denver and — as Hatem Teirelbar of Denver Anti-Struggle Motion put it — to duplicate what protesters in California achieved 5 years in the past. Final month, a small group of protesters marched by way of downtown, accusing Karp and Thiel of being child-killers and handing out fliers urging individuals to “get Palantir out of Denver.”
They ended on the firm’s headquarters, which is within the Tabor Middle on seventeenth Avenue. The constructing had already been closed and its courtyard cordoned off.
Teirelbar stated the purpose was to drive the corporate’s landlord to cease leasing to Palantir. Anecdotally, he stated, extra individuals appear to know concerning the firm now than at the beginning of the yr or in years previous.
“I can let you know identify recognition is far larger,” he stated. “We’ve gone from telling individuals who Palantir is and the place they’re, to simply saying ‘Palantir’ — (and that) simply will get their curiosity.”
A rising workforce
Pinto linked the corporate’s presence within the state to deeper questions on Colorado’s identification and financial focus.
“We have now to acknowledge what sort of legacy we go away behind as a state as we’re growing our identification,” Pinto stated. “And issues are occurring proper now that may have an effect on the remainder of the world — not solely rising AI weapons and concentrating on applied sciences, but in addition the combination of those applied sciences with the federal authorities, which is strictly why Palantir is right here.”
For the reason that firm’s transfer to Denver, Palantir’s international, full-time workforce has jumped to 4,164 as of June, up from roughly 2,400 in 2020, in accordance with federal safety filings. Along with Denver, the corporate has places of work in political and cultural capitals the world over, together with Paris, Tokyo, London and Washington, D.C.
It’s additionally grow to be a part of the state’s rising tech ecosystem, which incorporates places of work for Google, Salesforce and Slack. In a June 2020 letter to Karp that urged a transfer to Denver, Gov. Jared Polis — whose wealth can be a product of the early tech growth — highlighted the state’s emergence as “one of many high science and know-how hubs in the USA.”
The governor’s workplace declined an interview request this week. In an announcement, spokesman Conor Cahill stated the state is “all the time open to attracting extra firms.”
“There are firms in our state that some individuals like and others don’t,” he stated, “and that’s their proper.”
Denver Submit workers author Aldo Svaldi, the Related Press and the New York Occasions contributed to this story.
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