Palantir Foundry / Gotham
Data integration and analytics platforms sold to governments and companies. Website ↗
Who runs it
Documented facts (18)
404 Media reported, based on internal ICE material, public procurement records and sworn testimony from an ICE official, that Palantir is working on ELITE, an ICE tool that populates a map with potential deportation targets, brings up a dossier on each person with a "confidence score" on their current address, and receives addresses from the Department of Health and Human Services among other sources. ICE uses it to find locations where many people it might detain could be based.
Appears on the list, released by the White House in October 2025, of donors funding President Trump's new White House ballroom, built after the demolition of the East Wing. The amounts were not disclosed at the time; in October 2026 The Washington Post reported, as cited by CNBC, that Palantir's contribution was in the millions.
Response: Palantir did not immediately respond to CNBC's request for comment.
The Gesellschaft für Freiheitsrechte (GFF), backed by the Chaos Computer Club, filed a constitutional complaint against the Bavarian police's use of Palantir's Gotham software under the name VeRA, arguing that it lacks an adequate legal basis and effective oversight, also targets people who are not suspects, and that such algorithms often have discriminatory effects. VeRA draws on data already collected by Bavarian police; the case-processing system IGVP alone held records on about 38.7 million people at the end of August 2022, 60% of them witnesses, victims or informants.
Response: Bavaria's interior ministry considers the use lawful and necessary for effective hazard prevention and says no competitive European alternative exists; the Bavarian parliament voted a legal basis for VeRA in July 2024. The complaint is pending before the Federal Constitutional Court.
The report "From economy of occupation to economy of genocide" (A/HRC/59/23) by Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories, which describes Israel's campaign in Gaza as genocide, states that Palantir expanded its support to the Israeli military after October 2023 and that there are reasonable grounds to believe it provided predictive policing technology, defence software infrastructure and its Artificial Intelligence Platform for real-time battlefield data integration and automated decision-making. The report cites Palantir's January 2024 strategic partnership with Israel and board meeting in Tel Aviv "in solidarity", and Alex Karp's April 2025 remark "mostly terrorists, that's true" in reply to accusations that Palantir had killed Palestinians in Gaza, as indicative of executive-level knowledge.
“There are reasonable grounds to believe Palantir has provided automatic predictive policing technology, core defence infrastructure for rapid and scaled-up construction and deployment of military software, and its Artificial Intelligence Platform, which allows real-time battlefield data integration for automated decision-making.”
Response: Palantir sent the Special Rapporteur a letter dated 22 May 2025, cited in the report but not published. Israel called the report politically motivated and legally baseless, and the United States accused the Special Rapporteur of "economic warfare" against US companies.
The New York Times reported that the Trump administration had turned to Palantir to put in place the technical building blocks for sharing data on Americans across federal agencies, following a March 2025 executive order, with its Foundry software deployed in at least four federal agencies, including the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Health and Human Services. Ten Democratic lawmakers wrote to Palantir calling a possible searchable "mega-database" a "surveillance nightmare".
Response: Palantir denied many of the claims in a May 30 blog post, saying it does not have the ability to "proactively share data across federal government sources", and in a June 17 response to the lawmakers stated that "Palantir is not building a master database, and Palantir is neither conducting nor enabling mass surveillance of American citizens."
Palantir representatives took part with DOGE in a project to build a "mega API" over all IRS databases, which hold taxpayer names, addresses, Social Security numbers and tax returns, with DOGE aiming for Palantir's Foundry to become the "read center of all IRS systems", according to IRS sources cited by WIRED.
Response: A Treasury spokesperson said "there is no contract signed yet and many vendors are being considered, Palantir being one of them." Palantir did not immediately respond to WIRED.
Awarded a roughly $30 million ICE contract to build "ImmigrationOS", a platform to identify and apprehend people for deportation and track "self-deportations".
Signed a five-year contract worth about €24 million, reportedly without an exit clause, with the Baden-Württemberg interior ministry for police data analysis, before the state had a legal basis for automated police data analysis and, according to taz, apparently without the knowledge of the Green coalition partner. The enabling bill was only tabled in September 2025; bodies consulted on it, including the DGB union confederation, criticised the contract being signed before a legal basis existed.
Response: The state government says funds for the software were approved in the 2025/2026 budget in December 2024 and that a first draft of the enabling law already existed when the contract was signed.
On Palantir's fourth-quarter 2024 earnings call, said the company was there to make its partner institutions the best in the world and, when necessary, to scare enemies and on occasion kill them. Discussing disruption of the US government, which Gizmodo linked to the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), he also said "there's a revolution" in which "some people get their heads cut off", a remark that may be read as a metaphor.
“when it's necessary, to scare enemies and on occasion kill them”
Germany's Federal Constitutional Court ruled unconstitutional the Hesse and Hamburg police laws authorising automated data analysis. In Hesse the analysis platform was Palantir's Gotham software, used by police under the name "HessenDATA".
The Verge revealed that since 2012 Palantir had provided software to a New Orleans police program, set up as a philanthropic partnership outside public procurement, that traced people's ties to gang members, outlined criminal histories, analysed social media and predicted the likelihood that individuals would commit violence or become victims. Key city council members were unaware of it. In March 2018 the mayor's office said it would not renew the pro bono contract.
Emails obtained by WNYC under FOIA showed that ICE agents preparing the January 2018 raids on nearly a hundred 7-Eleven stores were told to use Palantir's FALCON mobile app, which searches databases including immigration histories and family relationships, and that Palantir staff supported agents ahead of operations.
Response: Palantir declined WNYC's requests for comment.
Homeland Security documents obtained through FOIA litigation showed that Palantir software was central to a 2017 ICE operation targeting the parents and relatives who sponsored unaccompanied migrant children. ICE told The Intercept the operation led to 443 arrests, including 35 criminal arrests.
Response: Palantir had previously stated: "We do not work for E.R.O." (ICE's Enforcement and Removal Operations). Palantir did not immediately comment on the documents.
Government documents reported by The Intercept showed that ICE was deploying Investigative Case Management (ICM), a system built by Palantir under a $41 million contract awarded in 2014, which lets agents search data from multiple federal and private law enforcement sources to identify targets and build cases. The documents described ICM as "mission critical" to ICE.
Hosted a dinner party on 29 July 2016 attended by white nationalist Kevin DeAnna while backing Donald Trump's campaign, and emailed him the next day, according to emails obtained by BuzzFeed News.
“really enjoyed meeting you last night”
Response: Thiel did not respond to BuzzFeed News's request for comment.
Acknowledged to The New York Times that he had secretly financed, with about $10 million, Hulk Hogan's privacy lawsuit against the news site Gawker, as part of a years-long plan to fund lawsuits against the company. A Florida jury had awarded Hogan $140 million in damages against Gawker.
“It's less about revenge and more about specific deterrence”
Response: Thiel said: "It's precisely because I respect journalists that I do not believe they are endangered by fighting back against Gawker."
Wrote in the essay "The Education of a Libertarian" that he no longer believes freedom and democracy are compatible.
“Most importantly, I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible.”
In the essay "The Education of a Libertarian", cited the extension of the vote to women, together with the growth of welfare beneficiaries, as having turned "capitalist democracy" into an oxymoron.
“Since 1920, the vast increase in welfare beneficiaries and the extension of the franchise to women — two constituencies that are notoriously tough for libertarians — have rendered the notion of "capitalist democracy" into an oxymoron.”
Response: In a later clarification appended to the essay, Thiel wrote: "It would be absurd to suggest that women's votes will be taken away or that this would solve the political problems that vex us. While I don't think any class of people should be disenfranchised, I have little hope that voting will make things better."