
16/08/2025
Palantir Technologies, founded in 2003 with seed funding from In-Q-Tel, the CIA’s venture arm, quickly became a data-integration powerhouse in the wake of 9/11. Its Gotham platform gave agencies like the CIA, NSA, FBI, and DHS the ability to unify vast amounts of surveillance, financial, and communications records once thought too fragmented to connect. From there, Palantir expanded into private industry with products like Foundry and Metropolis, embedding itself in banking, telecoms, healthcare, and aviation. The company has often been described as an “AI crystal ball,” capable of predicting behaviors and outcomes by analyzing human activity patterns, a description echoed by outlets like Wired and The Week when covering its predictive modeling power.
Its reach extended far beyond national security. JPMorgan Chase, for example, used Palantir’s software to monitor employees by pulling data from emails, GPS, and browsing histories, creating detailed behavioral fingerprints. Government agencies from the IRS to HHS and immigration services also leveraged it to connect medical records, welfare systems, airport feeds, CCTV streams, and social media platforms. Critics call this “pre-planned governance,” where policies are shaped not only by what citizens do but by what algorithms predict they will do. Civil libertarians have warned that this creates the closest thing to a centralized citizen database in U.S. history, blurring the line between national security and mass surveillance.
Though some claim Palantir has “disappeared,” it remains a publicly traded company worth tens of billions, with government contracts spanning defense, health, and finance. What has shifted is its visibility—its platforms work quietly in the background, embedded in federal systems and Fortune 500 corporations alike. This hidden influence is why many compare its role to Wall Street’s use of data to anticipate fear and greed, and why Palantir continues to be seen as one of the most powerful yet least understood companies shaping American life.