Palantir is making the most of a “revolving door” of executives and officers passing between the $264bn knowledge intelligence firm and excessive degree positions in Washington and Westminster, creating an affect community who’ve guided its extraordinary development.
The US group, whose billionaire chair Peter Thiel has been a key backer of Donald Trump, has loved an astonishing inventory worth rally on the again of sturdy rise of gross sales from authorities contracts and offers with the world’s largest firms.
Detailed findings by the Tech Transparency Project (TTP), which analysed transparency disclosures and dozens of job strikes, in addition to US and UK public information obtained by the Monetary Occasions, present how Palantir has employed extensively from authorities companies essential to its gross sales.
The evaluation reveals the US group’s sprawling affect community which incorporates: deep ties with largest consumer, the Division of Protection; a six-fold enhance in lobbying spending within the US previously decade; and making a non-profit basis to fund tutorial analysis and form coverage discussions.
Palantir has received greater than $2.7bn in US contracts since 2009, together with over $1.3bn in Pentagon contracts, in line with federal information. Within the UK, Palantir has been awarded greater than £376mn in contracts, in line with Tussell, a knowledge supplier. Palantir declined to remark.
The corporate’s executives “have their fingerprints everywhere in the Trump transition and administration”, stated Invoice Hartung, senior analysis fellow on the Quincy Institute for Accountable Statecraft.
“Silicon Valley used to say ‘we don’t must foyer as a result of we have now a superior product’, however now it’s all in on politics.”
Palantir argues its knowledge evaluation merchandise are in demand from shoppers together with BP and Hertz attributable to their market-leading means to analyse advanced units of data. Its know-how is credited with serving to kill al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden, distributing Covid-19 vaccines and convicting financier Bernard Madoff.
Palantir chief Alex Karp — an outspoken Democratic donor who backed Trump’s opponent Kamala Harris — stated it might achieve additional windfalls from the brand new president’s anticipated give attention to finances effectivity in addition to increased spending on nationwide safety.
Its shares rose 340 per cent over the course of 2024, when it was the highest performer within the S&P 500. Palantir’s high executives, Thiel and Karp, have earned over $1bn in share gross sales since Trump’s November election victory.
“It is a revolution. Some folks will get their heads minimize off,” stated Karp asserting stellar quarterly earnings on Monday that despatched it inventory to new highs. “We’re anticipating to see actually sudden issues and to win.”
The revolving door
Whereas Elon Musk has emerged as Trump’s largest Silicon Valley booster, Thiel was the tech sector’s champion of the president throughout his first marketing campaign in 2016.
The investor additionally performed a vital function within the ascendancy of JD Vance, launching the brand new vice-president’s enterprise capital profession earlier than turning into the biggest donor to his marketing campaign for US senate in 2022.
Thiel threw a celebration occasion for Trump’s inauguration at his DC residence final month, attended by Vance in addition to Silicon Valley leaders like Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg and OpenAI’s Sam Altman.
After the US election in November, Trump started tapping Palantir executives for key authorities roles.
Jacob Helberg, senior adviser to Karp, was nominated as beneath secretary of state for financial development, power and the setting, which might make him the highest financial coverage and commerce official on the State Division.
In the meantime, Gregory Barbaccia, who labored at Palantir for a decade till 2020, was named federal chief data officer on the government workplace of the President, overseeing the nation’s $70bn IT finances.
Palantir has additionally assembled former lawmakers and authorities officers from each Republican and Democrat backgrounds.
In August, it recruited Mike Gallagher, an ex-Republican congressman who led the Home Choose Committee on China, to assist determine contract alternatives. He resigned from the Home in April 2024 and beneath federal coverage is banned from lobbying Congress for one yr.
In 2023, Palantir employed Geof Kahn, a former CIA veteran who labored on Trump’s 2016 transition crew, and Jamie Fly, former international and nationwide safety adviser to Florida senator Marco Rubio, Trump’s secretary of state.
Since 2019, it has employed former senior defence and authorized officers, resembling Trump administration appointees Matthew Turpin and Alexander Alden, Obama-era staffer Wendy Anderson and ex-Biden assistant Funmi Olorunnipa Badejo.
No less than six people have moved between Palantir and the Pentagon’s Chief Digital and Synthetic Intelligence Workplace (CDAO), an workplace that oversees the defence division’s adoption of information, analytics and AI, in line with the TTP.
In the meantime, Joe Lonsdale, a enterprise capitalist and Palantir co-founder, has performed a central function in establishing and staffing Musk’s Division of Authorities Effectivity, a brand new advisory group searching for to chop swaths of the federal finances.
A detailed ally of the Tesla chief, Lonsdale additionally helped set up and finance the pro-Trump America PAC, which turned the automobile by which Musk donated over $239mn to Trump’s marketing campaign.
These kinds of strikes permit firms like Palantir to realize “credibility on Capitol Hill,” stated Jeff Hauser, government director of the Revolving Door Undertaking, and assist them “exert each direct and oblique affect on contracting and appropriations”.
Hauser added: “Palantir is doing it as a result of it has been confirmed over many years that the revolving door may help firms win extra contracts.”
Ramping up lobbying
In October, Palantir employed the agency of certainly one of Washington’s most outstanding company lobbyists, Miller Methods, to foyer on defence coverage and appropriations, in line with federal disclosures.
The agency’s head, Jeff Miller, had established himself because the go-to lobbyist for influencing the Trump administration in the course of the president’s first time period in workplace. His different tech shoppers embody SpaceX, Amazon and Apple.
General, Palantir ramped up spending on lobbying final yr to $5.8mn, up from round $1mn in 2015, in line with federal disclosures. Nonetheless, that compares to $12.3mn by Google, and $12.4mn and $8.8mn by conventional defence firms Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman respectively.
Palantir has additionally backed the creation of a foyer commerce group, the New American Industrial Alliance, which is suggested by former Trump administration officers and goals to overtake the Pentagon’s work with defence contractors. Additionally it is backed by Lonsdale’s 8VC enterprise agency.
In 2023, it launched the Palantir Basis for Protection Coverage and Worldwide Affairs, which gained non-profit tax exempt standing.
The group stated it’s a “non-partisan organisation devoted to advancing nationwide safety”, and was set as much as affect coverage discussions by funding tutorial analysis and internet hosting conferences. It publishes a journal referred to as The Republic, with its first challenge that includes an essay titled, ‘Don’t let copyright kill American AI’.
Palantir has used an analogous playbook within the UK. Its British enterprise is overseen by Louis Mosley, a former activist within the Conservative occasion, whereas head of UK company affairs Ben Mascall was beforehand an adviser on the Ministry of Defence and the pinnacle of strategic communications at Downing Avenue.
Forward of profitable a contract worth up to £330mn with the NHS in November 2023 to assist handle affected person knowledge, Palantir recruited two senior NHS officers specialising in AI and knowledge, a transfer which raised issues concerning the firm’s rising ties to the well being service.
Palantir has additionally employed civil servants from departments together with the UK’s Ministry of Defence and the Residence Workplace, and solid different hyperlinks with British authorities officers. It has used former high-level civil servants, resembling former MI6 chief Sir John Sawers, to dealer introductions to the UK authorities.
The corporate has been a consumer of International Counsel, the lobbying agency based by Labour peer Peter Mandelson — the incoming British ambassador to the US. Lobbying expenditure knowledge isn’t publicly obtainable within the UK.
Palantir attended no less than 13 ministerial-level conferences between 2022 and 2023, but additionally prolonged hospitality resembling drinks and dinners to senior officers resembling Caroline Bellamy, the chief knowledge officer on the Ministry of Defence the place Palantir has a $75mn contract.
In January 2024, Thiel personally met Lord Dominic Johnson, then funding minister, to “develop a relationship”, in line with paperwork launched to the FT beneath transparency legal guidelines.
Johnson deliberate to handle issues concerning the lack of entry to the European market by Palantir’s defence arm and pitch the UK as a “world-leading vacation spot and incubator for enterprise philanthropy”, the paperwork present.
In keeping with closely redacted assembly notes offered to the FT, Thiel expressed pessimism concerning the UK economic system citing excessive taxes, low development and “the truth that development is pushed by actual property somewhat than innovation like tech”.
