Palantir Technologies

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Palantir Technologies

logo
legal form Private company
founding 2004
Seat Palo Alto , United StatesUnited StatesUnited States 
management Alex Karp (CEO)
Number of employees 2,000 (as of December 2015)
sales $ 750 million (2017)
Website www.palantir.com

Palantir Technologies, Inc. is a privately held US provider of software and services specializing in the analysis of large amounts of data ( big data ). Founded in 2004, early customers included federal agencies of the United States Intelligence Community (USIC). Since then, Palantir has grown its customer base among state and local authorities and has also served commercial companies in the finance and pharmaceutical industries. The company is best known for two software projects: Palantir Gotham is used by counterterrorism analysts at USIC and the United States Department of Defense , by fraud investigators for the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board, and by cyber analysts for the Information Warfare Monitor (responsible for the GhostNet and Shadow Network investigations ). Palantir Metropolis is used by hedge funds , banks and financial service providers.

The name Palantir corresponds to the designation of the "seeing stones" in JRR Tolkien's fantasy saga " Lord of the Rings ", "Palantiri".

Managing Director (CEO) Alex Karp stated in 2013 that the company did not plan to go public because an IPO would "make running a company like ours very difficult". At the beginning of 2014, Palantir was valued at $ 9 billion, according to Forbes . The magazine then explained that this rating made the company "one of the most valuable privately owned technology companies in Silicon Valley ". In December 2014, the company continued to have various private investors, including Kenneth Langone and Stanley Druckermiller , In-Q-Tel from the CIA , Tiger Global Management and Founders Fund . In December 2014, Peter Thiel was Palantir's largest shareholder. In January 2015, the company was valued at $ 15 billion following a private $ 50 million fundraising round that took place in November 2014.

The U.S. government sued Palantir in 2016 following a Labor Department review . The Department of Labor believed the company was systematically discriminating against Asian applicants. According to the lawsuit, Palantir "routinely dropped out" of Asian applicants during the application process, even if they were "equally qualified as white applicants".

history

2003–2009: founding and early years

Four of the five founders previously worked at PayPal. Founder and Chairman Peter Thiel is the largest shareholder as of 2014.

Although officially incorporated in May 2003, it is widely believed that Palantir was not founded until 2004 by Peter Thiel, Alex Karp, Joe Lonsdale , Stephen Cohen and Nathan Gettings. Early investments came from In-Q-Tel , the venture capital arm of the US Central Intelligence Agency , of $ 2 million and of $ 30 million from Thiel and his company Founders Fund. Alex Karp is Palantir's managing director (CEO). In addition to its headquarters in Palo Alto, California , the company has ten international offices and five offices in the USA.

Palantir's technology was developed in pilot projects made possible by In-Q-Tel over three years by computer scientists and intelligence analysts. The software concept is based on a technology created by PayPal to detect fraudulent activities, which were largely carried out by Russian syndicates in the area of ​​organized crime. The company was of the opinion that computer-based use of artificial intelligence alone would not be able to beat adaptable opponents. Palantír thought was the use of people as analysts, to examine data from many sources - the so-called " Advanced Intelligence " (intelligence augmentation).

It has now become known through the company's founders that Palantir had difficulties in raising funds in its early days. According to Karp, Sequoia Chairman Michael Moritz scribbled on his notepad once during an entire meeting. For over an hour and a half, a senior member of Kleiner Perkins taught the Palantir founders that their company was inevitably doomed to fail.

2010: GhostNet and Shadow Network

Palantir's partner Information Warfare Monitor used Palantir's software to uncover both the GhostNet and the Shadow Network . The GhostNet was a Chinese cyber spy network that attacked 1,295 computers in 103 countries, including the Dalai Lama's office , a NATO computer and embassies. The Shadow Network was also a Chinese espionage operation that hacked into India's security and defense apparatus. Cyber ​​spies stole documents relating to Indian security, embassies abroad and NATO troop activities in Afghanistan.

2010–2012: expansion

In April 2010, Palantir announced a partnership with Thomson Reuters to sell the Palantir Metropolis product as QA Studio. On June 18, 2010, Vice President Joe Biden and the Director of the Office of Management and Budget , Peter Orszag , held a press conference at the White House discussing Achievements of the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board (RATB) anti-fraud reports. Biden attributed the success to Palantir's software, which was used by the US federal government. He announced that the software would also be used by other government agencies, beginning with Medicare and Medicaid .

It is estimated that revenues in 2011 were around $ 250 million.

2013

"[In 2013] US espionage agencies used Palantir to link databases across departments. Before that, most of the databases used by the CIA and FBI were separate, forcing users to search each database individually. Now it's through Palantir all connected. "
- TechCrunch in January 2015

A document leaked to TechCrunch revealed that in 2013 Palantir's customers included at least twelve groups within the US government, including the CIA , DHS , NSA , FBI , CDC , the Marine Corps , the Air Force , the Special Operations Command ( Special Operations Command ), the West Point Military Academy , the Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organization and its partners, the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board, and the National Center for Missing and Defeat exploited children ( National Center for Missing and exploited children ). However, the US Army continued to use its own analysis tool. Also according to TechCrunch, US espionage agencies like the CIA and the FBI were linked for the first time by Palantir software; their databases had previously been disconnected.

In a report filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission in September 2013 , Palantir revealed more than $ 196 million in fundraising. Estimates suggested the company would close nearly $ 1 billion in deals in 2014. CEO Alex Karp announced in 2013 that the company had no intention of going public because it would "make running a company like ours very difficult". In December 2013, the company began a financing round that raised approximately $ 450 million from private investors. As a result, the company's value rose to $ 9 billion, according to Forbes , placing Palantir, as the magazine went on, "among the most valuable private technology companies in Silicon Valley."

2014–2016: Additional funding

In December 2014, Forbes reported that Palantir was planning to raise $ 400 million in another round of funding after filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) the previous month . The report was based on research by venture capital experts. Forbes said that if the round were successful, Palantir's funding could reach $ 1.2 billion. In December 2014 the company continued to have various private investors, Kenneth Langone and Stanley Druckermiller , In-Q-Tel of the CIA, Tiger Global Management and Founders Fund , which is a venture capital firm led by Palantir Chairman Peter Thiel . In December 2014, Thiel was Palantir's largest shareholder.

The company was valued at $ 15 billion in November 2014. In June 2015, BuzzFeed reported that the company was in the process of raising up to $ 500 million in fresh capital and was being evaluated with $ 20 billion. By December 2015, $ 880 million had been raised; the company's valuation remained at $ 20 billion. In February 2016, Palantir bought Kimono Labs, a start-up that makes it easy to gather information from public websites.

In August 2016, Palantir acquired the data visualization start-up Silk.

Planned IPO in 2020

The company announced on July 6, 2020 that management had filed a preliminary application for listing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission . As early as mid-June 2020 there had been reports of a possible stock market debut, which management had long refused (see above). Unlike an IPO , the company does not issue any new shares. It just brings existing ones to market.

Products

Palantir Gotham

Palantir Gotham (formerly known as Palantir Government) integrates structured and unstructured data and provides search and investigation functions as well as knowledge management and secure collaboration between different parties. The Palantir platform includes data protection precautions as prescribed in legal requirements such as those in the " 9/11 Commission Implementation Act " of 2004. It is said that Palantir's privacy controls help target investigations. This is in contrast to expansive data mining techniques, which have drawn criticism from concerned data protection lawyers. Palantir has very fine-grained security tags.

Palantir previously operated the AnalyzeThe.US site , which allowed potential Palantir users and their affiliates to use Palantir Gotham to analyze publicly available data from data.gov , usaspending.gov , the Center for's "Open Secrets" database Implement responsive policies and health care data from hhs.gov .

Palantir Metropolis

Palantir Metropolis (formerly known as Palantir Finance) is data integration , information management and quantitative analysis software . Applicable to commercial, proprietary, and public data sets, the software reveals trends, relationships, and anomalies using predictive analytics .

Other

The company was partially or solely responsible for the design of a number of business and consumer products. In 2014, for example, Palantir introduced Insightics , which, according to the Wall Street Journal, "extracts customer buying behavior and demographic information from merchant credit card statements". It was developed in collaboration with First Data , a company that has credit data.

Customers

Private, civil use

Palantir Metropolis is used by hedge funds , banks and financial service providers .

Palantir's partner Information Warfare Monitor used Palantir software to expose both the GhostNet and the Shadow Network .

Germany

According to press releases from the beginning of April 2018, the Hessian police bought the Palantir software Gotham to fight Islamist terrorism and serious and organized crime and are training their staff on it; a price was not named by the Hessian Ministry of the Interior for "reasons of the public security interest of the State of Hesse" . The project runs under the name Hessendata . Because there was no tender, an investigative committee of the Hessian state parliament is now investigating the processes.

On June 8, 2019, the Hessian Interior Minister Peter Beuth was awarded a Big Brother Award for the second time , because with Hessendata , Hessen is taking another big step towards the "control and surveillance state". In addition, the American company was given access to the highly sensitive data network of the Hessian police.

From the third quarter of 2020, the North Rhine-Westphalian State Criminal Police Office plans to use a system that, according to the tender, should be very similar to Hessendata (i.e. Palantir Gotham). In NRW project DAR's ( system D atenbankübergreifenden A nalysis and R echerche ) and will cost 14 million euros.

Deutsche Telekom is also said to have been (or was) interested in working with Palantir. From their environment it could be seen that CEO Tim Höttges met with the Palantir management in 2016. Deutsche Telekom did not want to publish details on this.

During the COVID-19 pandemic , Palantir offered governments around the world the free use of its Foundry product for crisis management in health authorities . Some countries such as B. Great Britain and Greece accepted the offer. The German Federal Ministry of the Interior is currently not planning to work with this company in the corona crisis. The Chaos Computer Club rejects the use of Foundry as "Covid-Washing" because Palantir develops surveillance technologies.

Civil institutions in the USA

Palantir's software is used by the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board to detect and investigate fraud and abuse of the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act . In particular, Palantir used the recovery operations center (ROC) to integrate transaction data with open source and private data sets that provide information about the institutions that receive government funding. Other customers as of 2013 are the Polaris Project , the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

U.S. military, intelligence, and police

Palantir Gotham is used by anti-terrorism analysts in government agencies from the intelligence community of the United States (USIC) and the US Department of Defense , fraud investigators of the Panel on transparency and accountability (Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board) and cyber analysts of the Information Warfare Monitor ( responsible for the investigation regarding GhostNet and Shadow Network ).

Other customers as of 2013 include DHS , NSA , FBI , CDC , the Marine Corps , the Air Force , the Special Operations Command , the West Point Military Academy , the joint organization for combating unconventional explosive devices ( Joint IED -defeat ) and their partners. During this time, however , the US Army continued to use its own analysis tool. And, according to TechCrunch, "US intelligence agencies also used Palantir to connect databases across departments . Before that, most of the databases used by the CIA and FBI were isolated from one another, forcing users to search each database individually. Now, through the use of Palantir all connected. "

US military intelligence services used Palantir to improve their ability to predict explosive locations during the Afghan war. A small number of experts reported that it was more useful than the US Army's program, the Distributed Common Ground System (DCGS-A). In 2012, California Congressman Duncan D. Hunter complained about obstruction by the US Department of Defense regarding the use of Palantir on a wider scale.

Palantir has also been reported to work with several U.S. law enforcement agencies, including, in 2013, a contract with the Northern California Regional Intelligence Center to develop the controversial license plate database for California.

“Palantir, named after the seeing stones from Lord of the Rings , is considered the hippest employer in the Valley. In its early years, but still today, it was funded by the security apparatus and the Ministry of Defense. They supply software for data collection and data analysis to the Pentagon, the FBI, the police and the NSA. So the business is called: Big Data for Big Brother . And the fact that Alex Karp sat next to Peter Thiel in Trump Tower probably means that Trump wants to privatize the security services even more. These are not good prospects for the future. "

- Jonas Lüscher : The rich become immortal and the rest of them are superfluous. :

Palantir Night Live Event

Palantir hosts Palantir Night Live at its McLean and Palo Alto offices. At the event, speakers from the secret service and technology scene will discuss topics of general interest. Past guests include Garry Kasparov , Nart Villeneuve from the "Information Warfare Monitor", Enterprise 2.0 author Andrew McAfee , memory "athlete" Nelson Dellis and Michael Chertoff .

Controversy

WikiLeaks Affair (2010)

Allegedly, in 2010 the law firm Hunton & Williams LLP asked Berico Technologies , Palantir and HBGary Federal to draft a " WikiLeaks Threat" response plan . In early 2011, Anonymous published internal HBGary documents, including the plan. This intended that Palantir software should serve as the "basis for the collection of the data, their integration and analysis as well as production". The plan also included slides allegedly written by HBGary CEO Aaron Barr suggesting "[spreading] misinformation" and "interrupting Glenn Greenwald's support for WikiLeaks".

Palantir CEO Karp cut ties with HBGary and issued a statement apologizing to "progressive organizations ... and Greenwald ... for any involvement" we may have had in this regard. Palantir released an employee during the review by an impartial law firm. The employee, Matthew Steckman, was later reinstated.

Discrimination lawsuit (2016)

On September 26, 2016, the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs filed a lawsuit against Palantir for racial discrimination against Asian applicants. According to the lawsuit, Palantir "routinely dropped out" of Asian applicants during the application process, even if they were "equally qualified as white applicants". The lawsuit alleged that Palantir looked at 130 job applications, 73% of which were from Asian applicants, but ended up hiring only 4 Asians and 17 non-Asians. "The probability that this result happened by chance is about 1: 1 billion," emphasized the lawsuit.

Secret access to New Orleans police files

In 2018 it was announced that Palantir had had access to police and judicial databases in New Orleans for many years . The corporation used this agency data to trial its crime prediction system . Reportedly, none of the members of the city's city council knew about it.

Hessen-Data

The introduction of the Palantir product Gotham to the Hessian police under the name Hessen-Data brought the Hessian Interior Minister Peter Beuth his second Big Brother Award . In his laudation, Rolf Gössner characterized the project and the company as follows:

"The Hessian Interior Minister Peter Beuth is responsible for the US company Palantir being commissioned to install and operate their Gotham analysis software in the IT system of the Hessian police. This software is named after the fictional city infested by crime and corruption, where Batman hunts criminals and ensures law and order. After the Gotham software was adapted to Hessian police requirements, it is called Hessen-Data . The police are authorized to use it with § 25a of the tightened Hessian Police Act (HSOG), which is why this paragraph is also derisively called 'Palantir authorization'. According to this, extensive data analyzes may be carried out to preventively combat over forty criminal offenses, which are listed in Section 100a, Paragraph 2 of the Code of Criminal Procedure (Telecommunications Surveillance), as well as to avert certain dangers.

But what is so problematic and damaging to fundamental rights about this linking and analysis software from the US company Palantir ?

Palantir , named after the seeing stones from Lord of the Rings , is 'one of the most controversial companies in Silicon Valley', according to the Süddeutsche Zeitung . According to the US civil rights association ACLU, it is considered a 'key company in the surveillance industry'. The US 'star investor' and billionaire Peter Thiel, who had already co-founded the online payment service Paypal, founded the company in 2004 with financial support from the US secret service CIA. The company's customer list reads like a who's who of the US military and security bureaucracy: CIA, FBI, NSA, Pentagon, Marines and Airforce. Or to put it another way: As the house supplier of these authorities, the company is deeply involved in the military-digital complex of the USA and its business model is called: BigData for BigBrother. Peter Thiel is also on the board of directors of Facebook and supported Donald Trump's election campaign with over one million US dollars. "

- Rölf Gössner in his laudation for Peter Beuth at the BigBrotherAwards 2019

Web links

supporting documents

  1. ^ Sarah Buhr, Palantir Has Raised $ 880 Million At A $ 20 Billion Valuation . 23rd December 2015.
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  5. ↑ a b c d A Tech Fix For Illegal Government Snooping? NPR, July 13, 2009, accessed November 2, 2016 .
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  29. ^ Palantir, Valued at $ 15 Billion, Is Raising More Money. Wall Street Journal, January 16, 2015, accessed November 3, 2016 .
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  31. ↑ Palantir Has Raised $ 880 Million At A $ 20 Billion Valuation. TechCrunch, December 23, 2015, accessed November 3, 2016 .
  32. ^ Palantir acquires data visualization startup Silk. ZDNet, August 10, 2016, accessed on November 3, 2016 .
  33. ↑ Katharina Müller: Darling of the CIA initiates an IPO. SZ.de, July 8, 2020 (accessed on the same day)
  34. ↑ www.palantir.com/palantir-gotham. Retrieved November 4, 2016 .
  35. ^ Newton Lee: Facebook Nation. Springer, 2014, ISBN 978-1-493-91740-2 , p. 204 ( limited preview in Google book search).
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  37. ↑ www.palantir.com/palantir-metropolis. Archived from the original on November 4, 2016 ; accessed on November 4, 2016 .
  38. ^ First Data Reports First Quarterly Profit in More Than Seven Years. Wall Street Journal, February 10, 2015, accessed November 4, 2016 .
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  41. ↑ Detlev Borchers: Hessendata: Schwarz-Grün wants to expand the use of anti-terror software . In: Heise Newsticker . ( heise.de [accessed on June 13, 2019]).
  42. ^ A b c Rolf Gössner : BigBrotherAwards laudation: Authorities and administration: Peter Beuth, Hessian Minister of the Interior . ( bigbrotherawards.de [accessed on June 13, 2019]).
  43. ^ "Big Brother Award": Data protection negative price for Hesse's interior minister . ISSN  0174-4909 ( faz.net [accessed June 10, 2019]).
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  49. ↑ Military has to fight to purchase lauded IED buster. The Washington Times, July 16, 2012, accessed November 4, 2016 .
  50. ^ Palantir is helping California police develop controversial license plate database. The Verge, June 29, 2013, accessed November 4, 2016 .
  51. ↑ April 16, 2017 , Basellandschaftliche Zeitung
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  56. ^ Palantir has secretly been using New Orleans to test its predictive policing technology. Palantir deployed a predictive policing system in New Orleans that even city council members don't know about , The Verge , February 27, 2018

Coordinates: 37 ° 26 '33.4 "  N , 122 ° 9' 43.9"  W.