Specializing in military AI, the California big data company is one of the major beneficiaries of the operation “Fureur épique”.
And what if it were, the famous “World Company”, relentless, lawless, caricatured by “Les Guignols de l’info” over thirty years ago. Created in 2003 by the Trumpist Peter Thiel, a close friend of Elon Musk (they founded PayPal together), and Alex Karp, with a mad scientist look and bellicose speech (“We think we are making America more deadly”), Palantir rubs its hands in every conflict. Starting with the war in Iran. The first week of the operation “Fureur épique”, the company’s stock price, which doubled in 2025, increased by 15%.
This is due to the fact that death is one of the specialties of the Californian champion. The company was born in Silicon Valley from big data analysis, launched with the support of the CIA. Its name, borrowed from Quenya, a language imagined by Tolkien, the author of “The Lord of the Rings”, means “far-seeing”. Long a discreet intelligence company operating in the shadows of US government agencies, Palantir is now a profitable company and a darling of Wall Street. Its AIP artificial intelligence platform has become the reference tool in the Pentagon’s command rooms and the boardrooms of large private enterprises. In 2025, the company generated $4.5 billion in revenue for a net profit of $1.6 billion. The kind of profitability that financial analysts love.
Proposing action plans Palantir has revolutionized American defense AI. During the invasion of Iraq in 2003, an intelligence unit of 2000 people was mobilized to examine battlefield data and identify targets. Today, for the operation “Fureur épique”, twenty soldiers are enough to accomplish the same mission. Their secret weapon: the Palantir software, which uses artificial intelligence to process massive amounts of data and propose military targets. Satellites, drones, ground sensors, surveillance planes: all this information is aggregated and analyzed by algorithms capable of detecting patterns, prioritizing threats, and proposing action plans. Palantir has also become one of the levers of Donald Trump’s domestic policy, particularly during the anti-immigration campaign. The group, which has just moved its headquarters to Florida, provides AI tools to the US Department of Homeland Security to help process information. The company also has a $30 million contract with ICE to provide “real-time visibility” on self-deporting individuals.
If the federal government represents more than a third of its revenue, Palantir has diversified greatly. The company has signed 34 contracts with the British government worth nearly £750 million. It is also present in Ukraine since the beginning of the Russian invasion, providing its platforms to the Ukrainian armed forces for intelligence, operational planning, and artillery targeting. Palantir’s technology has been used by the Israeli army to “pacify” Gaza. Recently, the American company was chosen by NATO to deploy its Maven Smart system within its 32 member states. Among private clients, Airbus, Rio Tinto, the world’s number one mining company, Stellantis, IBM, Hyundai, Sanofi, and many confidential contracts.
“If they are not afraid of America’s anger raining down on them, they will attack us” In a recent interview with a friendly blogger (he never grants interviews to mainstream or economic media), Alex Karp, the CEO, shares his vision of what he calls “techno-war”. “I’m progressive. I want fewer wars. But we only stop war by having the best technology and making our adversaries afraid. If they are not afraid of America’s anger raining down on them, they will attack us.” In his book, titled “The Technological Republic. Strong way, flexible belief, and the future of the West,” Alex Karp even mentions a new Manhattan Project. The one that produced the atomic bomb to end the Second World War.
According to him, the focus should not be on developing nuclear weapons but on accelerating the military applications of artificial intelligence. This will give the United States a permanent technological advantage over China and its enemies. And he emphasizes a philosophy not far from that depicted by Aldous Huxley in “Brave New World”: “With good data and the right technology, individuals and institutions can still solve difficult problems and change the world for the better.”
