What Is Palantir?
Palantir is a U.S.-based software company that specializes in data integration, advanced analytics and artificial intelligence platforms for government and commercial customers. Its tools are built to help organizations turn fragmented, messy and often sensitive data into actionable insights and real-time operational decisions.
The company’s origins are in national security and intelligence, where its Gotham platform became known for helping analysts connect disparate data sources to detect threats and support missions. Over time Palantir expanded beyond government work, launching its Foundry platform to bring similar capabilities to enterprises in sectors like manufacturing, healthcare, energy and finance.
Today Palantir positions itself as an operational AI provider rather than a traditional business intelligence vendor, emphasizing that its systems sit inside mission-critical workflows—on factory floors, in military operations centers and within critical infrastructure—where decisions must be fast, explainable and auditable.
Palantir’s AI Platforms and Technology
Palantir offers several flagship platforms that work together. Gotham serves defense and intelligence customers, giving analysts and operators a unified view of complex, classified and open-source data so they can uncover patterns, model scenarios and coordinate responses. Foundry targets commercial and civil organizations, providing a low-code environment where business users can clean, transform and analyze data, build applications and collaborate on decisions without deep programming expertise.
Apollo underpins both Gotham and Foundry as a continuous delivery and deployment layer, allowing Palantir’s software to run consistently across on-premises data centers, public clouds, private clouds and edge environments. This is crucial for customers that operate in disconnected or highly secure settings, such as military bases, industrial plants or critical infrastructure facilities.
The Artificial Intelligence Platform (AIP) is Palantir’s newest growth engine. AIP lets organizations plug modern large language models and other AI components into their private data, while enforcing security, permissions and governance. Customers can use AIP to build AI agents that draft plans, write code, recommend actions or simulate scenarios, all within a controlled environment where humans remain in charge of final decisions.
Growth, Impact and Outlook
In recent quarters Palantir has reported rapid revenue growth and expanding profitability, highlighting the momentum behind enterprise AI adoption. Its U.S. commercial business has become the main growth driver, growing much faster than its already sizable government segment as manufacturers, insurers, healthcare providers and energy companies scale up AIP deployments.
Palantir’s software is being used to solve practical, high-value problems: reducing downtime by predicting equipment failures, reshaping supply chains in response to shocks, managing military logistics, coordinating disaster response and improving visibility into complex financial or clinical data. By modeling real-world operations and layering AI on top, Palantir aims to help organizations move from static reports to continuous, decision-ready insight.
Looking ahead, the company is investing heavily in research, partnerships and new offerings that extend its reach across industries and geographies. At the same time, Palantir operates in a politically and ethically sensitive space, especially given its work with defense and law enforcement, which fuels ongoing debate about surveillance, civil liberties and the governance of powerful AI tools. How the company balances growth, innovation and responsibility will be central to its long-term role in the global AI ecosystem.