It’s chilly A March morning at the undisclosed Mid-Atlantic Hotel, where the Palantir developer conference is being held. The defense contractors, military officers and corporate executives attending the meeting are unprepared for the weather; they assumed temperatures in the mid-70s the previous day would continue. The chilly rain turns into a steady snowfall, and Palantir hands out bulky blankets. As people move between the open-air pavilions, it looks as if they were pulled from shipwrecks. Nevertheless, spirits are high. In the eyes of this self-selecting crowd, Palantir delivers on its promises. The company’s share price is rising rapidly. The meeting is filled with dizzying groupthink about a multi-level marketing event.
After securing an invitation to the conference – a task made challenging by Palantir’s disapproval of WIRED’s recent coverage – I was eager to get an inside look at the mysterious company. Founded in 2003 by Peter Thiel and his then little-known former Stanford colleague Alex Karp, the company became part of the Pentagon’s transformation into artificial intelligence warfare. However, over the last few years, the greatest development has occurred in the commercial sector. “The commercial business is growing at a rate of 120 percent year-on-year. We’re very proud of the 60 percent growth in government, but it’s not even on the slippery slope,” says Palantir’s chief technology officer Shyam Sankar, who is also part of a four-member contingent of CTOs serving as lieutenant colonels in the Army Reserve.
Generative AI has helped Palantir grow by streamlining the hands-on support the company provides to its customers. Early in its evolution, Palantir was intended to embed “forward engineers” into companies, helping them weave Palantir’s software into their operations. Gigantic language models have enabled Palantir to build more powerful products, and now engineers are focused on helping customers build their own tools using Palantir technology. “Every time these models got better, it felt like they were made just for us,” says Ted Mabrey, one of the original employees who now heads the commercial division. Sankar explains: “Our whole thesis was that we were building Iron Man suits for cognitive purposes,” he says. “We were limited by the number of people, the creativity of the questions and things like that. And then [with Gen AI] this rate cap was eliminated, which changed the rate of growth.”
Keynote speakers this morning will include a U.S. Navy vice admiral, the officer in charge of the Maven AI battlefield project, and executives from Accenture, GE Aerospace, SAP and Freedom Mortgage Corporation. The range reflects the company’s journey from defense to the commercial sector. At breakfast time, I watch a demo of a family-owned fashion company with 450 employees. CEO Jordan Edwards of Mixology Clothing says he found Palantir through an Instagram ad and that the AI-powered system has transformed his business. He uses Palantir software to make purchasing decisions and then has him send emails to negotiate prices. For one line he sells, “this resulted in a 17-point margin change – from losing $9 per unit to gaining $9 per unit,” he says. Edwards now describes himself as: “forward CEO.”
Although Palantir develops mainly in the commercial sector, its soul remains defense contracts. During her long struggle to join the defense establishment (at one point she sued the Army to be considered for her contract), she focused on results. Palantir likes to think that this experience forced it to adopt a level of rigor that allowed it to outshine rivals in the commercial arena. One chapter of Sankar’s just published book titled Mobilize: How to Restart America’s Industrial Base and Stop World War III, it’s called “The Factory is a Weapon.” Both Sankar and CEO Alex Karp believe that American industry, especially in Silicon Valley, has shown insufficient patriotism. They hope Palantir’s example will inspire other corporations to produce homeland defense products in addition to consumer work.
Karp’s opening remarks at the conference emphasized how defense work defines the company, especially now that America is at war. Unusually dressed in a blazer (“It’s to convince my family I have a job,” he jokes), he says he would normally talk to commercial clients about how to make them richer and happier and lend a hand them destroy the competition. (He calls rivals “non-competitive” because he doesn’t think they’re on par with Palantir’s class.) However, given the busy battlefield in Iran, the company’s only priority right now is supporting its troops. “At Palantir, we were created to give our warriors…an unfair advantage,” he says. “It was, ‘Yes, we are really going to f**k our enemies.’ And I am very proud of that.”