If it exists, then Palantir knows it

In 2002, the Award-winning movie Minority Report starring Tom Cruise showed the story of a technological system used by American Intelligence agencies, that enables effective crime prevention to reduce the murder rate to zero. Although the script of this movie takes place in 2054, in real life something very similar has existed since 2004.

In that year, a group of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, including Peter Thiel, a former member of the well-known Pay-Pal Mafia and Facebook investor, decides to found Palantir Technologies. This technology company uses cutting-edge Big Data and Artificial Intelligence technology to extract the data required by the companies that request its services. This omniscience that characterizes Palantir’s business model gave rise to the name of the company itself, as it is the name given to the mystical stones used by the characters of Lord of The Rings to see and communicate through the past and the future.

Despite being listed on the stock exchange market, Palantir’s activities remain highly mysterious. It is known that in the early days, its clients were mainly government agencies such as the CIA, the FBI and the NSA. Their unparalleled expertise when it comes to data storage, visualization and analysis allows Palantir to be one of the US government’s main partners in the fight against crime. Its services have for example been used in monitoring terrorist attacks. The CIA reportedly benefited from Palantir’s data exploration skills in planning its activities during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. This precious data also served, according to the Western press, in designing the assassination of Osama Bin Laden.

Palantir also assisted in solving major financial crimes, such as the fraud carried out by Bernie Madoff. The former financial adviser had been sentenced to 150 years of prison for what is still considered to be the largest financial fraud in History, amounting to some $65 billion. Palantir’s role was crucial in his arrest, as it allowed the analysis in a record time of 40 years of financial records of Madoff’s investment fund, thus allowing for the discovery of the frauds perpetrated by him.

More recently, Palantir has decided to expand the range of its clients beyond just crime prevention activities. For example, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security uses Palantir’s Artificial Intelligence technology in immigration tracking, and at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, Peter Thiel’s company helped the British National Health Service to better understand patient data in order to deploy more effectively the vaccination process.

As one might expect, Palantir’s secretive activities are the subject of much criticism, particularly with regard to the civil rights violations caused by such incisive surveillance by the American company. In the financial field, too, opinions are divided. For some investors, Palantir’s actions have reached levels that go beyond what is reasonable in terms of what a private company should be able to do. On the other hand, many consider it to be a gold mine to invest in due to the type of market it is in and the lack of competitors that could effectively take market share from it.

Perhaps in order to give more transparency and credibility to the company, and thus attract more investment, Palantir decided in 2021 to go public and enter the stock market. Its performance so far has been marked by a lot of volatility, probably occasioned by a particular pandemic context, but still with slight growth overall.

Given the current scenario of inflation and the likely decision to cut spending by the U.S. government, Palantir’s main client and source of revenue, and adding to this a societal context of great scrutiny applied to large American technological companies, it will be interesting to see if Palantir’s « God’s eye » will also be able to anticipate these adversity factors and allow Peter Thiel’s company to emerge victoriously.

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