History of Palantir: Company timeline, facts & milestones

17 Oct 2026, 14:33 · The Fresno Bee

This all started before the First Age, when the Elves of Valinor created the palantíri.

These seeing-stones, featured in J.R.R. Tolkien’s epic fantasy novel The Lord of the Rings, allowed communication across great distances and enabled their users to observe events in faraway places.

They also provided the name of Palantir (PLTR), a data analytics and AI software company with an estimated $11.2 billion in total remaining deal value as of Dec. 31, 2025, reflecting demand for its software among government and commercial customers.

The Tolkien theme is reflected in the names of the company’s office locations, including The Shire in Palo Alto, California, Rivendell in McLean, Virginia, and Grey Havens in London.

Palantir employees are also frequently referred to internally as “Hobbits,” while “Save the Shire” has become a cultural rallying cry within the company’s leadership.

As to what Palantir actually does, well, we’ll leave that question to outspoken CEO Alex Karp.

“Palantir is here to disrupt and make the institutions we partner with the very best in the world,” Karp said during the company’s fourth-quarter earnings call on Feb. 3, 2025. “And, when it’s necessary, to scare enemies and on occasion kill them. And we hope you’re in favor of that.”

The company, which had 4,429 full-time employees as of Dec. 31, 2025, earns revenue by selling multi-year software licenses and subscriptions for its big-data and AI platforms to government agencies and commercial enterprises.

Palantir builds software that connects separate data sources into one searchable system so organizations can spot patterns and make fast decisions.

Its platforms include Gotham, used in government and defense work; Foundry, which serves commercial and other customers; and its Artificial Intelligence Platform, or AIP.

Bloomberg / Getty Images

Palantir’s early years

The company was incorporated in 2003, with Peter Thiel, Alex Karp, Stephen Cohen, Joe Lonsdale, and Nathan Gettings as co-founders. Karp serves as chief executive and a member of the company’s board.

The world was a much different place back then. The United States was still reeling from the September 11 terrorist attacks, which had exposed major weaknesses in the nation’s national security apparatus.

Different intelligence and law-enforcement agencies possessed pieces of information about al Qaeda and the future hijackers, but that information often remained trapped within institutional silos.

Thiel, co-founder of PayPal (PYPL), wanted to adapt the hybrid human-and-software fraud-detection systems developed at the fintech to combat terrorism and protect national security.

The idea was to create software capable of integrating vast amounts of fragmented data that would give analysts a way to connect information that previously existed in separate systems.

“We started Palantir because we felt the post-9/11 security-versus-liberty tradeoff was a false choice — we needed better technology to catch terrorists without giving up our privacy,” Thiel said.

And yet for a company that claims to be concerned about privacy, Palantir has drawn fierce criticism from human rights organizations, privacy advocates, and anti-war activists.

In 2004, Thiel bankrolled the creation of a prototype by PayPal engineer Gettings and Stanford University students Lonsdale and Cohen. That same year, he hired Karp, a former colleague from Stanford Law School, as chief executive officer.

Palantir struggled during its early years; with few alternatives left, the startup relied almost entirely on Thiel and his venture fund, which provided an initial $30 million to keep it afloat.

Palantir partners with the government

But then Palantir found a matching vision in In-Q-Tel, the CIA’s non-profit venture capital arm. In-Q-Tel had been created in 1999 specifically to bridge the gap between commercial tech startups and Washington’s rigid national-security establishment.

Palantir built a custom counterterrorism data demo that caught the agency’s attention, and In-Q-Tel later invested about $2 million in Palantir.

Since then, Palantir’s software has been used by defense and intelligence agencies, including the CIA, NSA, FBI, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the U.S. military, as well as international partners such as Israel and Ukraine.

Palantir software helped locate Mexican drug cartel members who murdered an American customs agent, according to Forbes, and tracked down hackers who installed spyware on the computer of the Dalai Lama.

In the book The Finish, detailing the killing of Osama bin Laden, author Mark Bowden writes that Palantir’s software “actually deserves the popular designation Killer App.”

Palantir has deflected questions about its possible role in the operation.

Palantir’s 2020 IPO

The company went public in September 2020, opening at $10 per share on its first day of trading, and Karp said in the company’s prospectus that “our welfare and security depend on effective software.”

“Our software platforms are used by the United States and its allies around the world,” he said. “Many of the world’s most vital institutions, from defense and intelligence agencies to companies in the healthcare, energy, and manufacturing sectors, rely on the software platforms that we have built.”

Karp also took a swipe at Silicon Valley, saying that “we seem to share fewer and fewer of the technology sector’s values and commitments.”

“Software projects with our nation’s defense and intelligence agencies, whose missions are to keep us safe, have become controversial, while companies built on advertising dollars are commonplace,” he said.

Palantir’s stock in the modern day

Shares have surged more than 1,000% since its direct listing debut. The company, which has never conducted a stock split since going public, later transferred its stock listing to the Nasdaq from the New York Stock Exchange in 2024.

Palantir generated $4.475 billion in revenue, up 56%, and reported $1.625 billion in net income in 2025, compared with about $462 million in 2024, a roughly 252% increase in net income. The company does not pay dividends.

Analysts have turned increasingly bullish on Palantir due to booming demand for sovereign artificial intelligence, government defense contracts, and expanding commercial AI adoption.

Palantir’s controversies

Palantir has attracted a great deal of controversy due to its roles in mass surveillance, immigration enforcement, civil liberties violations, and deep corporate ties to defense and intelligence agencies.

Demonstrators and groups have staged sit-ins and rallies at Palantir offices in New York City, London, and across the United States.

Karp has pushed back against protesters demonstrating against U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), arguing that Palantir’s work with the government to protect civil liberties.

“Our product, actually, in its core, requires people to conform with Fourth Amendment data protections,” he told CNBC in February.

Looking ahead, Karp doesn’t need any seeing-stones to envision his company’s future.

“We’re going to partner with the world’s best people and we’re going to dominate,” he said. “You can be along for the ride, or you don’t have to be.”

A timeline of major milestones in Palantir’s history

May 6, 2003: Palantir is founded in Palo Alto, California.

2004–2005: In-Q-Tel, the CIA’s venture-capital arm, invests in Palantir, and the CIA becomes an early major customer.

2008: Palantir launches Gotham, its first software platform, built for intelligence and defense customers.

2009–2010: Palantir expands into commercial and financial services. In 2010, it partners with Thomson Reuters to offer its Metropolis analytics platform to financial clients.

2016: Palantir expands its commercial software business with Foundry, a platform designed to help organizations integrate data and manage operations.

September 30, 2020: Palantir goes public through a direct listing on the New York Stock Exchange.

April 7, 2023: Palantir announces its Artificial Intelligence Platform (AIP), designed to connect large language models to its data platforms and help organizations deploy AI across their operations.

November 26, 2024: Palantir begins trading on the Nasdaq Global Select Market after transferring its listing from the NYSE. It joins the Nasdaq-100 Index on December 23.

September 8, 2026: Palantir makes AIP Evolve generally available, allowing AI agents to propose and validate improvements to AI systems, including changes aimed at reducing costs and latency.

September 10, 2026: Palantir and Nvidia (NVDA) announce a collaboration to bring sovereign AI capabilities to critical supply chains, beginning with Nvidia’s own operations.

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This story was originally published October 17, 2026 at 7:33 AM.