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Palantir software engineer Salary | Interview Kickstart
Palantir is a sought-after company due to its worldwide reputation, software engineer salary, and additional bonuses. The company seeks exceptionally talented software engineers with practical expertise in distributed systems infrastructure, user experience design, big data processing, and data science. You must be adept at creating the best user experience for customers to land a software engineering job at Palantir.
If you are interested in pursuing a career at Palantir, you must understand the role and responsibilities of a software engineer at Palantir. Continue reading to discover the Palantir software engineer salary, perks, bonuses, stock options, health benefits, commuter benefits, and all you need to know before applying for a job at Palantir.
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This article will discuss the Palantir Technologies software engineer salary package based on experience, company, location, critical skills, and eligibility criteria.
Here’s what we’ll cover:
- About Palantir
- What does a Palantir software engineer do?
- What makes you eligible for a Palantir software engineer position?
- Annual average Palantir software engineer salary in the US
- Average Palantir software engineer salary by levels
- Top skills that can help elevate your Palantir software engineer salary
- Palantir software engineer salary — Which US city pays the most?
- Benefits of working as a software engineer at Palantir
- FAQs on Palantir’s software engineer salary
About Palantir
Palantir Technologies is an American software company.
Peter Thiel, Nathan Gettings, Joe Lonsdale, Stephen Cohen, and Alex Karp founded the company in 2003 to build software that empowers businesses to integrate their data, operations, and decisions effectively. It has headquarters in Denver, Colorado.
Presently, Palantir Technologies offers a suite of software applications that assist integration, visualization, and information analysis. Its popular products help in the human-driven analysis of real-world data, uncovering human trafficking, unraveling financial crimes, and much more.
What Does a Palantir Software Engineer Do?
You must possess an unwavering focus and outshining engineering mindset to effectively carry out the duties as a software engineer at Palantir. You will be involved in various tasks of the company’s product lifecycle, from idea generation to implementation to execution. The following points provide an overview of your potential responsibilities as a software engineer at Palantir:
- You must closely collaborate with the technical and non-technical teams to explain your concepts and understand the customers’ problems.
- You should be able to build and work on platforms for integrating, managing, and securing data.
- The company can also assign you some fieldwork wherein you will directly work with customers — deploying products and optimizing their workflows.
- As a senior software engineer, you should be adept at designing technologies that can help Palantir achieve its goals, such as helping institutions protect liberty via privacy-protective capabilities in the company’s products.
- You will be responsible for contributing high-quality code to Palantir products (such as Palantir Gotham or Foundry).
- You will have to deal with users and non-technical stakeholders to address and understand how your technical initiatives impact them.
You must check out the official job description for the role you are applying for to obtain precise information about your key responsibilities.
What Makes You Eligible for a Palantir Software Engineer Position?
You must fit the following eligibility criteria to secure a software engineering job at Palantir Technologies.
The basic requirements for a software engineer at Palantir are as follows:
- You must possess a strong engineering background in computer science, physics, mathematics, software engineering, or relevant experience.
- You should be well-versed in data structures, system design, algorithms, storage systems, cloud infrastructure, software frameworks, and other technical tools (as mentioned in the job description).
- As a software engineer, you should be a strong coder with demonstrated skills in at least one programming language, such as Python, Java, C++, JS, or others.
- You should possess a desire to create intuitive, scalable products to work with data.
Annual Average Palantir Software Engineer Salary in the US
The average Palantir software engineer salary is $142,350 annually (Comparably.com). It includes a base salary of $126,400 per year and a bonus of $15,950. You will be delighted to know that the total compensation for software engineers at Palantir exceeds the US average for a software engineer by $35,205 per year.
The Palantir software engineer salary ranges from $135,500 to $144,250, with equity ranging from .001-.005%.
Average Palantir Software Engineer Salary by Levels
You must be intrigued to know about the lead software engineer salary and other software engineer salaries at Palantir.
If you are at an entry-level software engineer position with 1 to 4 years of experience, you can earn an average total compensation of $135k that includes tips, bonuses, and overtime pay.
If you have 5 to 9 years of experience in a relevant field, you will be able to earn an average total compensation of $142k. The following table will help you understand the average Palantir software engineer salary based on different positions/software engineer levels (Glassdoor.com).
Top Skills That Can Help Elevate Your Palantir Software Engineer Salary
You should know the primary factors that can impact your Palantir software engineer salary.
Some of these factors are as follows:
- Your years of experience in a relevant field.
- Your education impacts your Palantir software engineer salary. If you have a master’s degree or a Ph.D., you have chances of getting a higher salary.
- Some additional certifications that relate to your job role.
- If you perform well at junior positions while being a part of the Palantir software engineering, you multiply your chances of advancing to higher levels and thus obtaining a higher Palantir software engineer salary.
- The location of the company’s office plays a vital role in deciding your Palantir software engineer salary.
- Your negotiation skills during salary negotiations in the interview process.
Your skill-set influences your Palantir software engineer salary. You must check out the position-specific skills in the official job description of the role you are applying for. Here is a list of some top skills that can help you elevate your Palantir software engineer salary:
- Proficiency in programming languages, including Go and Java for the back end and Typescript for the front end.
- Expertise in open-source technologies such as Cassandra, React, Spark, ElasticSearch, Redux.
- Knowledge of industry-standard build tools: Gradle, Webpack, and Github.
- Demonstrated ability to work with big data technologies: big data technologies including Hadoop, IMDB, Blockchain, NoSQL, Data Lakes.
- Docker
- Kafka
- Selenium and other software testing tools
You must possess the following soft skills to complement your technical responsibilities as a software engineer at Palantir.
- Adaptability
- Communication skills
- Problem-solving ability
- Teamwork ability
- Openness to feedback
Palantir Software Engineer Salary — Which US City Pays the Most?
Your Palantir software engineer salary will be influenced by the position of the company’s office. Certain US cities have higher salaries for software engineers than other cities.
For example, the average Palantir software engineer salary in Seattle is $142,350 annually.
This amount includes a base salary of $126,400 and a $15,950 bonus (Glassdoor.com). The total compensation for Seattle employees is $35,205 above the US average compensation for a software engineer.
New York is the highest paying city in the United States for Palantir software engineer positions. The following table will help you compare the Palantir software engineer salaries for various cities in the United States as per salary details from Glassdoor.
Comparison of Palantir Software Engineer Salary With FAANG+ Companies
If you wish to pursue a career in software engineering, you must know the average pay scales of top tech companies. Here is a comparison of the average software engineer Palantir salary with the salaries offered by FAANG+ companies.
Benefits of Working as a Software Engineer at Palantir
You should know the multiple benefits that Palantir offers to its employees in addition to the Palantir software engineer salary.
The most promising benefits are as follows:
- Health insurance
- Dental insurance
- Life insurance
- Vision insurance
- Accidental death and dismemberment insurance
- Adoption assistance
- Disability insurance
- Flexible Spending Account (FSA)
- Health Savings Account (HSA) that includes $100 per month contributed by the employer
- Mental health care
- Vacation and paid time-offs (unlimited with manager approval)
- Free lunch and snacks
- Maternity and paternity leave
- Fertility assistance
- On-site mothers’ room
- 401k retirement plan
- Flexible working arrangements with working from home facility
FAQs on Palantir’s Software Engineer Salary
1. What is the salary range for a software engineer position at Palantir?
You can expect your Palantir software engineer salary to fall in the range of $135,500 to $144,250 per year in the United States (Comparably.
com).
2. Who is a forward-deployed software engineer at Palantir?
A forward-deployed software engineer (FDSE) is also known as a delta engineer. An FDSE is a software engineer who engages with customers directly to configure Palantir’s existing software platforms and solve their most challenging problems.
3. What is the average forward-deployed software engineer Palantir salary?
The average forward-deployed software engineer Palantir salary is $112,277 per year in the United States (Glassdoor.com).
4. What is the average hourly pay for Palantir’s software engineers?
The average Palantir software engineer salary is $70 per hour, which is above the national average per hour for software engineering positions (Glassdoor.com).
5. How long is the Palantir hiring process for software engineers?
You should know that the hiring process for software engineering positions takes an average of 26 days at Palantir Technologies.
The competition is stiff as the company receives hundreds of applications for every software engineer role. You must prepare well to nail your interview at Palantir.
Ace Your Palantir Software Engineer Interview
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Average Palantir Salary By Location, Job Title, and Department
Updated August 22, 2022
$114,671yearly
To create our salary estimates, Zippia starts with data published in publicly available sources such as the U.
S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), Foreign Labor Certification Data Center (FLC) Show More
$55.13 hourly
Entry level Salary
$73,000
yearly
$73,000
10 %
$114,671
Median
$178,000
90 %
Highest Paying Jobs At Palantir
While the average employee salary at Palantir is $114,671, there is a big variation in pay depending on the role. The higher paying positions at Palantir include expert, information technology project manager, senior user experience designer, and product manager. A typical expert salary at Palantir is $152,162 per year. Other roles at Palantir include recruiting coordinator and executive assistant. A recruiting coordinator at Palantir earns an average yearly salary of $46,426.
Highest Paying Jobs At Palantir
| Rank | Job Title | Average Palantir Salary | Hourly Rate |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Expert | $152,162 | $73. 15 |
| 2 | Information Technology Project Manager | $142,971 | $68.74 |
| 3 | Senior User Experience Designer | $142,191 | $68.36 |
| 4 | Product Manager | $141,811 | $68.18 |
| 5 | Network Technician Lead | $140,352 | $67.48 |
| 6 | Product Designer | $133,363 | $64.12 |
| 7 | Deployment Engineer | $129,206 | $62.12 |
| 8 | Software Engineer | $123,694 | $59.47 |
| 9 | Application Software Developer | $123,666 | $59.45 |
| 10 | Strategist | $114,138 | $54.87 |
| 11 | Business Consultant | $112,289 | $53.99 |
| 12 | Senior Consultant | $110,797 | $53.27 |
| 13 | Finance Analyst | $99,921 | $48.04 |
| 14 | Operations Analyst | $82,720 | $39. 77 |
| 15 | Technical Writer | $66,834 | $32.13 |
| 16 | Revenue Accountant | $65,853 | $31.66 |
| 17 | Content Specialist | $64,868 | $31.19 |
| 18 | Technical Recruiter | $62,100 | $29.86 |
| 19 | Communications Specialist | $57,116 | $27.46 |
| 20 | Executive Assistant | $51,436 | $24.73 |
Highest Paying Palantir Competitor Salaries
Competitors of Palantir include DocuSign, Twilio, and Palo Alto Networks. The average salaries at DocuSign rank the highest, with their employees earning an average salary of $135,649 per year. The salaries at Twilio average $132,264 per year, and the salaries at Palo Alto Networks come in at $131,646 per year.
Salaries By Palantir Competitors
| Rank | Company Name | Zippia Score | Average Salary |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | DocuSign | 4. 7 |
$135,649 |
| 2 | Twilio | 4.7 | $132,264 |
| 3 | Palo Alto Networks | 5.0 | $131,646 |
| 4 | Cloudera | 4.7 | $126,690 |
| 5 | Workday | 4.9 | $125,723 |
| 6 | LendingClub | 4.6 | $123,551 |
| 7 | Square | 4.9 | $119,615 |
| 8 | WePay | 4.7 | $116,141 |
| 9 | Comverse Technology | 4.6 | $112,361 |
| 10 | Splunk | 4.8 | $111,921 |
| 11 | SADA | 4.5 | $110,365 |
| 12 | Box | 4.8 | $108,057 |
| 13 | Intuit | 4.8 | $106,118 |
| 14 | Gartner | 4.8 | $100,132 |
| 15 | Fidessa | 4.6 | $91,116 |
| 16 | Bms , Bankruptcy Management Solutions | 4. 2 |
$85,547 |
| 17 | Collabera | 4.5 | $80,839 |
| 18 | DXC Technology | 4.8 | $77,358 |
| 19 | DKW Communications, Inc. | 4.6 | $73,921 |
| 20 | Perot Systems | 4.4 | $68,636 |
Average Pay By State For Palantir
| Rank | State | Average Palantir Salary | Hourly Rate |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | New York | $125,960 | $60.56 |
| 2 | Washington | $125,339 | $60.26 |
| 3 | District of Columbia | $117,396 | $56.44 |
| 4 | California | $115,576 | $55.57 |
| 5 | Colorado | $84,537 | $40.64 |
How Much Does Palantir Pay By Location?
It’s no secret that workers earn different salaries in different parts of the country, since the cost of living can be much higher in certain areas.
Employees at Palantir earn different salaries depending on their region. The city that stands out for having the highest pay is Seattle, WA, where Palantir pays its workers an average salary of $126,734. This can be compared to New York, NY, where Palantir employees earn an average salary of $126,195.
Salaries By Location At Palantir
| Rank | Location | Average Palantir Salary | Hourly Rate |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Seattle, WA | $126,734 | $60.93 |
| 2 | New York, NY | $126,195 | $60.67 |
| 3 | Palo Alto, CA | $123,318 | $59.29 |
| 4 | Washington, DC | $117,544 | $56.51 |
| 5 | McLean, VA | $110,334 | $53.05 |
| 6 | Evanston, IL | $99,453 | $47.81 |
| 7 | Houston, TX | $90,423 | $43.47 |
| 8 | Denver, CO | $84,624 | $40. 68 |
Palantir Salaries By Department
Salaries at Palantir differ depending on the department or organizational function. Our data shows that employees in business development roles earn the highest wages at Palantir, with an average yearly salary of $126,369. The engineering department also pays well, with an average salary of $124,127 per year. The organizational function at Palantir where employees earn the lowest salaries is administrative with yearly earnings averaging $40,028. Accounting is the second-lowest paying organizational function at Palantir, where the workers earn $82,723 per year.
Salaries By Department At Palantir
| Rank | Department | Average Palantir Salary | Hourly Rate |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Business Development | $126,369 | $60.75 |
| 2 | Engineering | $124,127 | $59.68 |
| 3 | Art/Design | $121,822 | $58. 57 |
| 4 | IT | $115,754 | $55.65 |
| 5 | Marketing | $106,013 | $50.97 |
| 6 | Finance | $92,180 | $44.32 |
| 7 | Accounting | $82,724 | $39.77 |
| 8 | Administrative | $40,029 | $19.24 |
How Much Does Palantir Pay by Department?
Best Paying Palantir Engineering Position Salaries
| Rank | Position | Average Palantir Salary | Hourly Rate |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Deployment Engineer | $129,206 | $62.12 |
| 2 | Data Scientist | $124,003 | $59.62 |
| 3 | Software Engineer | $123,694 | $59.47 |
| 4 | Application Software Developer | $123,666 | $59.45 |
Best Paying Palantir Marketing Position Salaries
| Rank | Position | Average Palantir Salary | Hourly Rate |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Product Manager | $141,811 | $68. 18 |
| 2 | Product Marketing Manager | $128,658 | $61.85 |
| 3 | Strategist | $114,138 | $54.87 |
| 4 | Business Analyst | $113,387 | $54.51 |
| 5 | Business Development Analyst | $70,340 | $33.82 |
| 6 | Content Specialist | $64,868 | $31.19 |
| 7 | Communications Specialist | $57,116 | $27.46 |
| 8 | Event Internship | $29,416 | $14.14 |
Best Paying Palantir Finance Position Salaries
| Rank | Position | Average Palantir Salary | Hourly Rate |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Business Consultant | $112,289 | $53.99 |
| 2 | Senior Consultant | $110,797 | $53.27 |
| 3 | Finance Analyst | $99,921 | $48.04 |
| 4 | Revenue Manager | $99,208 | $47. 70 |
| 5 | Contracts Manager | $90,994 | $43.75 |
| 6 | Operations Analyst | $82,720 | $39.77 |
Recently Added Palantir Salaries
Frequently Asked Questions About Palantir Salaries
Is the pay good at Palantir?
Yes, the pay is good at Palantir. Compared to the industry average of $106,883 per year, the average annual salary at Palantir is $114,671, which is 7.29% higher.
What is the starting pay at Palantir?
The starting pay at Palantir is $73,000 per year, or $35.10 per hour.
How much does Palantir pay compared to Splunk?
Palantir pays $114,671 per year on average compared to Splunk which pays $111,921. That works out to $55.13 per hour at Palantir, compared to $53.81 per hour at Splunk.
How much does Palantir pay an hour?
Palantir pays $55.13 an hour, on average.
Have more questions? See all answers to common company questions.
Search For Jobs
Zippia gives an in-depth look into the details of Palantir, including salaries, political affiliations, employee data, and more, in order to inform job seekers about Palantir. The employee data is based on information from people who have self-reported their past or current employments at Palantir. The data on this page is also based on data sources collected from public and open data sources on the Internet and other locations, as well as proprietary data we licensed from other companies. Sources of data may include, but are not limited to, the BLS, company filings, estimates based on those filings, h2B filings, and other public and private datasets. While we have made attempts to ensure that the information displayed are correct, Zippia is not responsible for any errors or omissions or for the results obtained from the use of this information. None of the information on this page has been provided or approved by Palantir. The data presented on this page does not represent the view of Palantir and its employees or that of Zippia.
Palantir may also be known as or be related to PALANTIR TECHNOLOGIES INC, Palantir, Palantir Technologies, Palantir Technologies Inc, Palantir Technologies Inc. and Palantir Technologies, Inc.
The director of a small IT contractor of the security forces received a salary of a billion dollars
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The CEO of Palantir, a developer of analytics software for various intelligence agencies, received a salary of $1 billion for 2020. This is several dozen times more than the salary of Apple CEO Tim Cook for the same period, although Palantir itself is worth about $43 billion compared to $2 trillion for Apple.
Mega salary of the head of a small company
Head of IT company Palantir Alexander Karp (Alexander Karp) received $1 billion in salary in 2020. According to Reuters, his personal income skyrocketed precisely in 2020 – at the end of 2019, he earned only $12.5 million.
90,002 $787.9 million from the salary of the CEO of Palantir were options, and he received another $296.4 million in the form of shares. How much he received in cash, the agency does not give. For comparison, the salary is Tim Cook (Tim Cook), the head of Apple, the most expensive company in the world), reached $14.7 million in the same 2020. According to Business Insider, Cook’s income also showed an increase, but not as significant as that of Karpa – Apple CEO received 28% more in 2020 than in 2019
Alexander Karp received the highest salary among Palantir’s management. So, the co-founder and president of the company Steven Cohen (Steven Cohen) earned $ 192 million in 2020.
But it should be noted that in 2019his salary was more than 10 times less – $ 16.1 million.
Palantir is a company with 18 years of history. It was founded in 2003 by five PayPal alumni, including Alexander Karp and Peter Thiel , one of the co-founders of PayPal. Karp has been CEO since 2004.
Palantir’s core business is the development of software for data analysis. The company cooperates with many organizations, including investment companies and hedge funds. Her client list also includes various intelligence agencies, including the CIA, FBI and NSA.
Alexander Karp can confidently say that he earns more than the CEO of Apple
The company’s best-known products are Palantir Gotham, which is used by the US government for counterterrorism analytics, and Palantir Metropolis, a financial software used by hedge funds and banks.
At the end of September 2020, Palantir went public with an IPO (First Public Offering) in the form of a direct offering.
She listed her shares on the New York Stock Exchange. As a result, the company raised $1.9billion, and its capitalization at that time was $16.9 billion. By April 30, 2020, it had grown to $42.6 billion.
Working with the CIA
One of Palantir’s long-standing clients is the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA, Central Intelligence Agency, CIA). The history of cooperation between a private company and a government agency began in 2005, when In-Q-Tel, a non-profit venture capital fund of the Office, invested in Palantir. He invested $2 million in the company, and by 2013 the total amount of his investments in Palantir reached $300 million. The first contract for software development Palantir signed with the CIA in the same 2005, and until 2008 the Office was the only client of the company.
Other clients
In its 18 years of operation, Palantir has added dozens of US government departments and agencies to its list of clients. Among them are the Department of Homeland Security, NSA, FBI, CDC, US Marine Corps, US Air Force, US Special Operations Command, etc.
Alexander Gubinsky, Samaraavtozhgut: How we received a grant for the implementation of computer vision
IT industry support
Palantir’s designs have been used by the Los Angeles and New York Police Departments at various times. On the recommendation of the latter, JPMorgan Chase also turned to Palantir – he ordered her to develop an IT system to combat fraud and control the quality of the mortgage portfolio.
In 2016, Palantir took part in a lawsuit against the US Army. The company applied to develop a new-generation Distributed Common Ground System (DCGS) intelligence system for the military, but lost the tender. She went to court because she considered the results of the competition rigged.
Palantir was convinced that the army was biased against bids from third-party companies, intending to give the order to its usual contractor. As CNews reported, in November 2016, the court sided with her.
- Applications for spying on someone else’s smartphone, for which you will get nothing
Elyas Kasmi
Hobbits against terrorists. Palantir: the story of a secret intelligence company
With the help of Palantir technology, the secret services are identifying criminals, oil companies are increasing production, and the healthcare system is fighting the coronavirus. Let’s talk about the history of the mysterious project.
Twin towers. Fall as the beginning
September 11, 2001 shocked the world and became the starting point for the idea of Palantir. A rare case when Alex Karp and Peter Thiel were unanimous. Ever since their days at Stanford, when they lived in the same dorm and attended many lectures together, friends constantly argued – and almost never agreed on a single issue. Their career paths diverged at first: Thiel became a co-founder of PayPal, Karp went to Germany to study philosophy, but communication did not stop.
Now, after the fall of the Twin Towers, Karp and Thiel discussed how to use information technology to fight crime. “It is necessary to reduce terrorism while maintaining civil liberties,” Thiel believed.
“We were very naive. We just thought it was a cool idea,” Karp recalled. “I underestimated how difficult it would be.”
How Paypal led to Palantir, a quick thread:
Peter Thiel and Palantir’s CEO Alex Karp were roommates at Stanford. Both received their JD’s from Stanford Law in 1992.https://t.co/VO9KjgXCda pic.twitter.com/s4HjTmt0Ws— Frederik (@NeckarValue) August 26, 2020
Palantir was born in 2004 with two other Stanford graduates, Joe Lonsdale and Stephen Cohen, and PayPal engineer Nathan Gettings. They began writing the first code for a new product, building on the work that PayPal’s fraud detection technology had built on.
Thiel was the sole investor at first—after selling PayPal in 2002, he became a millionaire, created a hedge fund, and invested heavily in technology startups such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Lyft, Spotify, Reddit, Airbnb, and SpaceX.
And in my own project, of course.
Men in Black
Other investors were in no hurry to get into a start-up focused on working with the military and intelligence. “Government was unpopular in Silicon Valley,” Karp said.
“Everyone told us we should stay away from Washington because it’s corrupt and we can’t play golf with senators,” confessed Joe Lonsdale.
However, Palantir managed to attract the interest of an investor, the existence of which the founders of the company did not suspect at first – a CIA venture arm called In-Q-Tel, which finances technology projects. An endless series of meetings began with “representatives of the client”, which even could not always be called acquaintances: a man in a suit came and said something like “I work for the government, my name is John, you don’t need to know the rest.”
In the end, something out of the ordinary happened: the CIA allowed the Palantir software to be installed in the counterterrorism center and provided access to some of the data.
It was not yet a contract: Palantir agreed to work for free to demonstrate the capabilities of their program. A few months later, at a presentation to a group of dignitaries, the founders of the company noticed how two men in gray suits, watching what was happening from the corner of the room, silently gave each other “five” – and this meant victory.
Then word of mouth began to work: the first users of Palantir were so delighted that they told friends from other structures about the program – and the rumor spread. The Department of Defense, the NSA, the FBI heard about the startup, and analysts everywhere demanded access to new opportunities from management.
Needles in a thousand stacks
What exactly does Palantir do? The software allows you to combine a huge amount of diverse data and find patterns in them.
Previously, the company describes, “needles were hunted in not one, but thousands of haystacks.” For example, “in Afghanistan and Iraq, soldiers manually mapped networks of insurgents and roadside bomb makers.
” Now, everything from whistleblower reports to intelligence reports and drone photos is processed on a single platform, and special algorithms can detect connections between people, events and places. The program produces tables and charts, overlays data on maps and calendars – as a result, conclusions are quickly drawn where only luck, many months of immersion in documents or an analyst’s exceptional intuition could work before.
It soon became clear that the problems of processing and analyzing information are essentially the same – both for state structures and for private companies. Palantir developed a second platform, Foundry, and then a third, Apollo.
With the help of Gotham, they plan military operations and pursue drug cartels, and with the help of Foundry, for example, BP increased oil production in the North Sea by 10%. Banks and hedge funds are using Palantir’s technology to detect fraud, while Hershey is looking for correlations between weather and consumer cravings for chocolate.
During a pandemic, processing data from medical facilities shows which hospitals are overloaded, which run out of masks and gloves, and how vaccines are distributed.
Naming according to Tolkien: why Palantir
“The silence closed and rang in his ears. At first the ball was dark, amber-black, sparkling in the moonbeams, then it slowly glowed from within, glaring into his eyes, irresistibly attracting them. The ball flared up and spun, no, it was a fiery crimson whirlwind that spun in it – and suddenly went out. The hobbit gasped, groaned and tried to tear himself away from the ball, but only crouched, squeezing it with both hands. — J. R. R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings.
Thiel has read The Lord of the Rings more than ten times – not a very impressive number for a Tolkienist, but Palantir is far from the only company that owes the naming to the world of Middle-earth. Thiel at various times founded Mithril Capital, Valar Ventures, Lembas, Rivendell – all these names are familiar to fans of the famous fantasy saga.
Palantirs in Tolkien’s books are stones that allow one to see through space. True, according to the plot, although they were created for a good purpose, they could turn into a tool with which the enemy subjugated those who looked inside. One gets the impression that Thiel did not particularly care about subtext and was not afraid to expose himself to criticism.
Peter Thiel, Photo by Heisenberg Media on Foter
The company’s name for the defense and intelligence software platform is Gotham, a dark metropolis in Batman where law enforcement can’t handle rampant crime without the help of a superhero. The New York office of Palantir is also decorated in the style of “Batman”.
In this hodgepodge of symbols and meanings, the public role of a superhero is assigned to Alex Karp, a Ph.D. who has become the head of a technology corporation. He does not demonstrate his passion for The Lord of the Rings, but he does martial arts right in the office corridors and solves the Rubik’s cube in less than 3 minutes.
Charismatic and eccentric, Karp attracts attention: his actions and statements are regularly discussed in financial magazines and on reddit.
Bin Laden, payback
This has never been officially confirmed, but rumor has it that the Palantir platform played an important role in the discovery of “terrorist No. 1” by the security services – and thus fulfilled its original purpose.
“That’s one of those questions you’re obviously never allowed to answer when you’re running a company like mine,” Karp told the Washington Post. “But I can tell you that Palantir stopped some of the biggest terrorist attacks you’ve never heard of. And many of the anti-terrorist activities you read about are not really due to Palantir, but to the incredible people who use Palantir around the world.”
The CEO of Palantir does not hide the fact that he received many threats from extremists and was forced to hire a bodyguard for round-the-clock escort. Against the background of the risk to life, Karp’s salary looks less astronomical – he earned a record $1.
1 billion last year.
“Our software is on the cutting edge, sometimes literally, which means we are too.”
Palantir CEO Alex Karp raked in $1.1B in 2020, among highest executive pay in history https://t.co/v4QkXsdsfc pic.twitter.com/cP7zKUKybN
— New York Post (@nypost) June 3, 2021
The Shire vs Silicon Valley
The Palantir office in California in Palo Alto was called The Shire, also by Tolkien, as the birthplace of the hobbits. Last year, the company moved to Denver, and Karp criticized the Silicon Valley community for “growing intolerance and monoculture.” Representatives of the technology sector could not be mistaken for their company working for the government.
“The Silicon Valley engineering elite may know more about software development than anyone else. But they do not know more about how society should be organized and what justice requires.
Palantir has been accused of using its programs to find and deport illegal migrants, which allegedly violates human rights. “My favorite employees were yelling at me,” Karp said. “Some of my favorite employees have quit.”
But Silicon Valley companies only cover up with their slogans the fact that they make money on personal data monetization and are built on advertising money, says Karp. Moreover, they sell their services all over the world, and Palantir declares its commitment only to US allies – for example, the company will never supply its programs to China, but it has a contract with the British Royal Navy.
“America has very serious, very competent adversaries who have a very different view of how the world should work and a very different view of human rights and economic justice than most people in America. And we live in a complex world where we may have to defend ourselves.”
Wall Street won’t understand
“Once companies go public, they become less competitive,” Karp said in 2014.
“We need a lot of creative, weird people who maybe Wall Street won’t understand.”
The decisive step was postponed for a long time, but in September 2020, Palantir nevertheless went public. On the first day of trading, the stock soared 31% despite the fact that the company had been unprofitable for 16 years.
Palantir reported its first profit only in 2021
“Money doesn’t motivate me,” says Karp. “It’s not something that makes me get out of bed in the morning.”
The company’s financial strategy is also unusual: for example, Palantir recently purchased over $50 million worth of gold bars and placed them in safekeeping – in case of “black swans”, as the COO explained. And Peter Thiel is known to be building a bunker in New Zealand, just in case. Does the Secret Service Company, as they call it, know something we don’t? Perhaps, because they “create a model of the real world from countless data points” every day.