Artificial Intelligence · Profile from AI Research Companion
Palantir
The Denver-based data-integration and AI software company, co-founded in 2003 by Peter Thiel and Alex Karp with early backing from the CIA's venture arm In-Q-Tel, that spent its first decade and a half as a secretive, loss-making contractor to intelligence agencies and militaries and then became the clearest public-market winner of the enterprise-AI boom. Palantir does not train frontier models. It sells the layer that connects an organisation's data to models and to decisions: Gotham (defence and intelligence), Foundry (commercial and civil government), Apollo (deployment) and, since 2023, AIP (the Artificial Intelligence Platform, which puts large language models from OpenAI, Anthropic and others to work on that data). Revenue rose from ~$1.1bn (2020) to $4.475bn (2025, +56%), and Palantir guided to $8.150–8.158bn for 2026 (August 2026, company). It became the AI stock retail investors loved and short sellers hated: by November 2025 its market value was reported above ~$400bn at more than 100 times trailing sales, making it one of the most expensive large companies ever priced.
At a glance
- Founded
- 2003, Palo Alto, by Peter Thiel, Alex Karp, Joe Lonsdale, Stephen Cohen and Nathan Gettings (founder list as usually reported)
- Headquarters
- Denver, Colorado (moved from Palo Alto, announced August 2020); large offices in Washington DC area, New York, London and Palo Alto
- Ownership / structure
- Public. NYSE direct listing 30 September 2020 (PLTR); moved its listing to Nasdaq on 26 November 2024; S&P 500 member from 23 September 2024 and Nasdaq-100 from December 2024 (reported). Three share classes, including Class F shares that give the founders (Karp, Thiel, Cohen) a controlling share of votes
- Leadership (2026)
- Alex Karp (co-founder and CEO since the mid-2000s); Stephen Cohen (co-founder and president); Shyam Sankar (CTO); David Glazer (CFO); Ryan Taylor (chief revenue officer and chief legal officer); Peter Thiel (co-founder and chairman) (verify current titles)
- AI products
- Gotham (2008 onwards), Foundry (commercial data platform, from mid-2010s), Apollo (continuous deployment, from ~2017), AIP (announced April 2023), Maven Smart System (US and NATO military AI targeting and command platform), the "ontology" (a model of an organisation's objects, actions and permissions) underlying all of them
- Scale
- Revenue $1.093bn (2020), $1.542bn (2021), $1.906bn (2022), $2.225bn (2023), $2.865bn (2024), $4.475bn (2025); Q2 2026 revenue $1.935bn (+93% year on year), US commercial $764m (+149%), US government $809m (+90%) (company); GAAP net income $1.625bn (2025)
- Capital / valuation
- Raised ~$3bn privately before listing (reported, verify); private valuation ~$20bn (2015, reported); direct-listing reference price $7.25, opened at $10 (September 2020); market value ~$415–422bn at a ~$207.52 share-price high (November 2025, reported); shares ~$146 in early May 2026, down ~18% for the year to then (reported)
- Key partnerships
- US Army, US Special Operations Command, the intelligence community, NGA and the Chief Digital and AI Office (Maven); NATO (Maven Smart System NATO, 2025); UK NHS England (Federated Data Platform, 2023) and Ministry of Defence; Anthropic and AWS (Claude in classified environments, 2024); Databricks (March 2025); Oracle, Microsoft and other clouds; Lear, Airbus, BP, Rio Tinto and other commercial customers (company)
- Signature moves (incl. failures)
- The founding and In-Q-Tel backing (2003); suing the US Army (2016); taking over Project Maven after Google left (2019); the direct listing and the move to Denver (2020); the SPAC investment programme (2021, failure); AIP and the bootcamps (2023); the Maven Smart System's rise to program of record (2024–26); the Army enterprise agreement (2025); ICE, ImmigrationOS and the NHS backlash (2025–26, controversy); index inclusion, the valuation peak and the Burry short (2024–26)
10 strategic moves analysed
Each one gets a full strategy file in the companion: context, the decision, the financing, what happened, and the lesson.
2003
Founding and In Q Tel Backing
Founding
2016
Suing the US Army over DCGS A
Lawsuit (bid protest)
2019
Taking Over Project Maven After Google
Government contract (programme takeover)
2020
Direct Listing and Denver Move
IPO (direct listing)
2021
SPAC Investment Programme
Investment programme (strategic investments tied to customer contracts) — a failure
2023
AIP and Bootcamps
Launch (product and go-to-market)
2024
Maven Smart System to Program of Record
Government contract (expansion to program of record)
2025
Army Enterprise Agreement
Government contract (enterprise agreement)
2025
ICE ImmigrationOS and the NHS Backlash
Controversy / regulatory and political scrutiny (contracts that became reputational liabilities)
2025
Valuation Peak and the Burry Short
Capital markets (index inclusion, listing transfer and valuation)