How Palantir’s tech-based patriotism and politics grew into a multi-billion dollar company
In this weekly series, CNBC takes a look at companies that made the inaugural Disruptor 50 list, 10 years later.
Palantir is no stranger to politics. The data mining and software company got its start with government contracts, and 19 years since its inception, Palantir’s government work is still central to its business.
At its start, Palantir’s business came directly from the FBI, the NSA, and even the CIA, whose venture arm In-Q-Tel was one of the company’s earliest backers. CEO and co-founder Alex Karp is a self-proclaimed American patriot. For Karp, data and defense are intertwined, and his company’s contracts with government agencies reflect a commitment to leveraging technology to bolster the West. The company’s earliest splash was reportedly helping to find Osama bin Laden over a decade ago, and this year, Palantir began work for Ukrainian military operations.
In between, the company’s patriotism has prompted some criticism, internally and beyond. Palantir’s work with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, for example, infamously prompted a flurry of internal employee petitions, sparking nationwide debates about tech’s role in the U.S. and the line between protecting civil liberties and facilitating government duty.
Karp founded the company with well-known conservative tech investor Peter Thiel, and the two have publicly sparred over politics and technology. In an interview at the Aspen Ideas Festival, Karp commented on the division inside Palantir’s leadership. “Look, I think one of the problems in this country is, there are not enough people like Peter and me … we’ve been fighting about things for 30 years,” he told CNBC’s Andrew Ross Sorkin. Still, they run a company well enough together to consistently secure government contracts around the world, the successes of which have led to contracts in the private sector with companies like BP, Merck, and Sanofi.
Shortly after reports surfaced that Palantir assisted in tracking down bin Laden, CNBC rolled out its inaugural Disruptor 50 List in 2013, and Palantir would remain a fixture on the list until it went public via direct listing in 2020. Palantir shares are up about 12.6% since going public, but for 2022, shares are down over 55%.
While a bulk of its business is still for government agencies, work beyond that is growing: commercial revenue was up 120% in its last earnings report from August, while stateside commercial customers were up over 200%. Wall Street analysts covering the stock are split: a quarter have a “buy” rating, a quarter expect underperformance, and the other half have rated Palantir stock a “hold.”
What Palantir is actually doing for its customers, stateside or international, public or private, remains often unclear. From the start the company’s goals were secretive, fitting for a Department of Defense or FBI contractor. However, even as a $16.7 billion market cap publicly traded company, Palantir’s work remains opaque. Karp was the first Western CEO to visit Ukraine and meet with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy during this year’s conflict, and in its earnings call Palantir Chief of Business Affairs and legal officer Ryan Taylor confirmed that the company is “on the forefront of the problems that matter most in the world, from the war in Ukraine to fighting famine and monkeypox.”
But how exactly Palantir is managing those problems is unknown.
In a CNBC interview at this year’s World Economic Forum in Davos in May, Alex Karp estimated a 20%-30% chance of nuclear war in Ukraine. Though a relatively lone prognostication at the time, Karp doubled down on the possible dangers ahead in a September interview on “Squawk Box,” and in so doing, he emphasized his own company’s position in helping Ukraine defend itself against Russia: “Software plus heroism can really slay the giant.”
Secretive though it may be, Palantir has been clear about one major pivot from its CIA roots: health care.
During the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, Palantir assisted with domestic and international vaccine rollout. It has partnered with the CDC, NIH, and FDA in the U.S., as well as England’s NHS. In the private sector, it’s currently working with the health-care business of Japan’s Sompo, as well as Merck and Sanofi.
COO Shyam Sankar told CNBC in August that the company’s work spans health care’s entire value chain. It is “working with government agencies to help them distribute vaccines efficiently, plugging into the pharma companies and biomanufacturing processes that create them, driving the hospital operations that are getting those needles into your arms, and driving the health care outcomes, clearing the backlog in the wake of Covid.”
Palantir is likely to remain as secretive as it started, and Karp, committed to his nuanced politics and patriotism, will likely remain outspoken on both. For 19 years, Palantir’s data mining and analytics software has been the subject of noted successes and protests. Despite backlash, its tech wins hundreds of millions of dollars in contracts each year, employed by the world’s biggest geopolitical players to move chess pieces around the globe.
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A sign is posted in front of the eBay headquarters in San Jose, California.
Justin Sullivan | Getty Images
Shares of eBay soared 8% Wednesday as Meta said it will allow some listings to show up on Facebook Marketplace, its popular platform connecting consumers for local item pickups and more.
EBay stock reached its highest level since November 2021.
The rollout will begin with a test in Germany, France and the United States, where buyers will be able to view listings directly on Marketplace and complete the rest of their transactions on eBay, Meta said in a release.
The partnership could provide a boost to eBay’s marketplace business, which has struggled to compete with e-commerce rivals like Amazon, Walmart, Temu and even Facebook’s own marketplace platform that lets users buy and sell items.
EBay has recently embraced niche categories like collectibles and luxury goods to try and keep buyers and sellers returning to its site. CEO Jamie Iannone told CNBC in an October interview that shoppers were coming to the site, known for its used and refurbished goods, as they sought out discounts amid a rocky macroeconomic environment.
Meta’s move is an attempt to appease the European Commission, the executive body of the European Union, after the regulator fined the company 797 million euros ($821 million) in November for tying its Marketplace product to the main Facebook app.
At the time, the Commission said that Meta’s bundling of Marketplace with Facebook could mean competitors are effectively “foreclosed” given the distribution reach of the platform. Facebook counts more than 3 billion users globally.
The Commission also said that Meta imposes “unfair trading conditions” on other online classified ads service providers who advertise on its platforms, especially Facebook and Instagram. It added that these conditions allow Meta to use data generated from other advertisers to benefit Marketplace.
Meta appealed the ruling at the time, saying that it “ignores the realities of the thriving European market for online classified listing services.”
“While we disagree with and continue to appeal the European Commission’s decision on Facebook Marketplace, we are working quickly and constructively to build a solution which addresses the points raised,” the company said Wednesday.
EBay touted its integration with Facebook Marketplace as a way for the e-commerce site to “increase exposure to our sellers’ listings, on and off eBay, as part of our strategy to engage buyers and deepen customer loyalty.”
Facebook in 2023 announced a similar partnership with Amazon that lets users browse and purchase products without leaving the app.
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Additional reporting by CNBC’s Annie Palmer.
An Amazon employee works to fulfill same-day orders during Cyber Monday, one of the company’s busiest days, at an Amazon fulfillment center in Orlando, Florida, on Dec. 2, 2024.
Miguel J. Rodriguez Carrillo | Getty Images
Amazon warehouse workers at a site in North Carolina will vote next month on whether to join a union, setting the stage for the company’s latest labor battle.
Workers at the Garner, North Carolina, facility will cast their ballots from Feb. 10 to Feb. 15, according to a Tuesday post on X by Carolina Amazonians United for Solidarity & Empowerment, the group seeking to organize staffers. Representatives from Amazon and the National Labor Relations Board didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.
Known as CAUSE, the grassroots group led by current and former employees has been working to organize Amazon employees at the warehouse, which is located in a suburb about 10 miles south of Raleigh, for the past three years.
If the election is successful, the warehouse, known as RDU1, would be only the second Amazon site in the U.S. to unionize. Workers at Amazon’s largest warehouse in New York City voted to join the Amazon Labor Union in 2022, but the group struggled to negotiate a contract with Amazon, and last June, the ALU voted to affiliate with the Teamsters.
A handful of union elections were held at Amazon warehouses in the U.S. in recent years but employees have either rejected unionization or the results continue to be disputed in lengthy court battles. Last November, a federal labor judge ordered a third rerun election at an Amazon warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama, after ruling the company improperly interfered in the vote.
CAUSE filed for a union election last month, saying in a press release that 30% of workers at the North Carolina site signed union authorization cards, which is the necessary threshold to trigger an NLRB vote. Organizers are seeking to boost wages and improve working conditions.
The union filing comes after Amazon delivery and warehouse workers went on strike at nine facilities last month to push the company to come to the bargaining table, according to the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, which represents the employees. The action was intended to snarl Amazon’s operations during the busiest holiday shopping period of the year, referred to as peak season. An Amazon representative told Reuters the company expected to see a limited impact on deliveries from the strike.
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