{"version":1,"tree":{"n":"html","c":[{"n":"head","x":"\n ","l":"\n ","c":[{"n":"title","x":"Desconocido","l":"\n \n "},{"n":"link","l":"\n","a":[["rel","stylesheet"],["type","text/css"],["href","../../stylesheet.css"]]},{"n":"link","l":"\n","a":[["rel","stylesheet"],["type","text/css"],["href","../../page_styles.css"]]}]},{"n":"body","a":[["class","calibre"]],"c":[{"n":"div","x":"| ","a":[["class","calibre_navbar"]],"c":[{"n":"a","x":"Siguiente","l":" | ","a":[["href","javascript:void(0)"],["rel","articlenextlink"],["data-eueMZIbjjuCPX9e9np7aa2","{\"name\": \"feed_12/article_5/index_u30.html\", \"frag\": \"\"}"]]},{"n":"a","x":"Menú de sección","l":" | ","a":[["href","javascript:void(0)"],["data-eueMZIbjjuCPX9e9np7aa2","{\"name\": \"feed_12/index_u18.html\", \"frag\": \"article_4\"}"]]},{"n":"a","x":"Menú principal","l":" | ","a":[["href","javascript:void(0)"],["data-eueMZIbjjuCPX9e9np7aa2","{\"name\": \"index_u63.html\", \"frag\": \"feed_12\"}"]]},{"n":"a","x":"Anterior","l":" | ","a":[["href","javascript:void(0)"],["rel","articleprevlink"],["data-eueMZIbjjuCPX9e9np7aa2","{\"name\": \"feed_12/article_3/index_u59.html\", \"frag\": \"\"}"]]},{"n":"hr","l":"\n","a":[["class","calibre6"]]}]},{"n":"div","a":[["class","calibre-nuked-tag-article"]],"c":[{"n":"div","x":"Us against the world","a":[["class","calibre8"]]},{"n":"h1","x":"What is behind the staggering ascent of Palantir?","a":[["class","calibre9"]]},{"n":"div","x":"The unorthodox firm is profiting from the AI and Trumpian revolutions","a":[["class","calibre19"]]},{"n":"p","x":"may. 08, 2025 01:50 | PALO ALTO","a":[["class","calibre10"]]},{"n":"div","a":[["class","calibre-nuked-tag-article"]],"c":[{"n":"img","a":[["src","images/img1_u25.jpg"],["title","Silhouette of Alex Karp, chief executive officer of Palantir Technologies, speaking into a microphone against an orange screen."],["class","calibre3"],["data-calibre-src","feed_12/article_4/images/img1_u25.jpg"]]}]},{"n":"div","x":"To the moon","a":[["class","calibre11"]]},{"n":"p","a":[["class","calibre12"]],"c":[{"n":"span","x":"A","a":[["data-caps","initial"],["class","calibre13"]]},{"n":"span","x":"LEX KARP","l":" acts like everyone hates him. As the boss of Palantir strutted the stage at a recent gathering of clients, he got a kick out of sounding perverse, in his tousle-haired, punk-professor way. He used words like “masturbation” and “self-pleasuring”. He berated Silicon Valley, though he was speaking in Palo Alto, its heartland. At the last minute, he cancelled an interview with ","a":[["class","calibre14"]]},{"n":"i","x":"The Economist","l":", though he used to sit on its parent company’s board; he did not like our review of a book he co-authored. The man we named the best ","a":[["class","calibre18"]]},{"n":"span","x":"CEO","l":" of 2024 can be thin-skinned.","a":[["class","calibre14"]]}]},{"n":"p","x":"And yet the software company he heads, worth $250bn and imbued with his us-against-the-world bolshiness, is going from strength to strength. On May 5th it reported that its revenue in the first three months of 2025 increased by 39% year on year, the seventh quarter in a row of blistering growth. Besides some weakness in Europe, the only dark cloud was a 12% slump in the share price the following day—perhaps reflecting concern that Palantir’s growth, however fast, might not justify the quintupling of its market value over the past year (see chart). Even so, as Mr Karp put it, “Palantir is on fire.”","a":[["class","calibre12"]]},{"n":"div","a":[["class","calibre-nuked-tag-article"]],"c":[{"n":"img","a":[["src","images/img2_u14.png"],["title",""],["class","calibre3"],["data-calibre-src","feed_12/article_4/images/img2_u14.png"]]}]},{"n":"div","a":[["class","calibre11"]]},{"n":"p","x":"Its success is emblematic of two trends. The first is generative artificial intelligence (","a":[["class","calibre12"]],"c":[{"n":"span","x":"AI","l":")","a":[["class","calibre14"]]},{"n":"span","x":"; ","l":"Palantir helps firms adopt it. Second is the growing demand for intelligence and defence technology in a world of border closures and superpower rivalry, where Palantir (more controversially) excels. In both fields, its edge comes from a unique approach to profits, growth and culture.","a":[["class","calibre14"]]}]},{"n":"p","x":"For about 20 years after it was founded in 2003, Palantir did not make a profit. It had the strange business model of embedding lots of highly paid engineers with its customers, hand-crafting software to solve bespoke problems. Mr Karp conceived of these so-called forward deployed engineers (","a":[["class","calibre12"]],"c":[{"n":"span","x":"FDE","l":"s) as being like bossy French waiters in high-class restaurants who know what customers want better than they do. They had to be pushy and persuasive.","a":[["class","calibre14"]]}]},{"n":"p","x":"But as their on-the-ground knowledge was incorporated into software products, the number of ","a":[["class","calibre12"]],"c":[{"n":"span","x":"FDE","l":"s per customer shrank and the business began to scale profitably. In the past two years, Palantir’s revenues have surged while its employees, who number 4,000, have barely increased. That has enabled the firm to maintain gross margins of 80%-plus. Its new ","a":[["class","calibre14"]]},{"n":"span","x":"AI","l":" platform, ","a":[["class","calibre14"]]},{"n":"span","x":"AIP","l":", which maps and organises its customers’ data to help them run large language models, is following a similar path.","a":[["class","calibre14"]]}]},{"n":"p","x":"The company’s approach to growth is just as unorthodox. A former employee describes Mr Karp as Palantir’s salesman-in-chief, but the firm spurns traditional marketing efforts, such as steak dinners and golf. Instead it invites customers to “boot camps”, where they experiment with its products.","a":[["class","calibre12"]]},{"n":"p","x":"Palantir starts off with small projects for its customers and, if they are successful, expands across the organisation. Pete Seurken, who runs supply chains for Wendy’s, a fast-food chain, says Palantir’s ","a":[["class","calibre12"]],"c":[{"n":"span","x":"AIP","l":" software enables his team to do in five minutes what used to take 15 people a day. The rest of Wendy’s is interested. “That’s [Palantir’s] mechanism. They come in and generate such value…the rest of the organisation takes notice,” he says.","a":[["class","calibre14"]]}]},{"n":"p","x":"Palantir needs relentless growth to justify a valuation that makes some on Wall Street queasy. Before its latest sell-off, Palantir’s valuation multiple of 56 times next year’s forecast revenue implied that its annual sales growth would have to rise to 50% for the next four years to be realistic, says Brent Thill of Jefferies, an investment bank. The hype is partly the result of meme-stock investors. These days, people can buy “Palantir to the moon” ","a":[["class","calibre12"]],"c":[{"n":"span","x":"T","l":"-shirts at Walmart, notes Mr Thill.","a":[["class","calibre14"]]}]},{"n":"p","x":"That loyalty is fuelled by Palantir’s provocative culture, its most idiosyncratic trait. Employees describe it as a firm with few job titles and an embrace of “constant disagreement”. The defiance partly stems from its work on Western military and spy contracts, which used to make it a leper within Silicon Valley. Even today, with more venture capitalists adopting a pro-American approach to defence technology, Mr Karp suggests they are fair-weather friends, uncommitted to arming America.","a":[["class","calibre12"]]},{"n":"p","x":"The company vocally supports Elon Musk’s work under President Donald Trump at the Department of Government Efficiency (","a":[["class","calibre12"]],"c":[{"n":"span","x":"DOGE","l":"). Shyam Sankar, its chief technology officer, told Wall Street analysts this week that overspending had started to make the American government look like “finely marbled Wagyu.” Employees hope that as the government shrinks, Palantir will pick up ","a":[["class","calibre14"]]},{"n":"span","x":"DOGE","l":"-related work from the Trump administration.","a":[["class","calibre14"]]}]},{"n":"p","x":"Mr Karp said it also expects to do lucrative work providing the software for military gear. It is leading a partnership with Anduril, an upstart maker of drones, to help the army improve battlefield targeting. And it is reportedly part of a consortium, alongside Anduril and SpaceX, Mr Musk’s rocketry firm, that is bidding for a contract to help build Mr Trump’s “Golden Dome” missile-defence shield.","a":[["class","calibre12"]]},{"n":"p","x":"Palantir’s government work is contentious. Paul Graham, a venture capitalist, recently described the company as building “the infrastructure of the police state” after it emerged that the firm had won a $30m contract to support the federal government’s immigration crackdown.","a":[["class","calibre12"]]},{"n":"p","x":"Palantir was unapologetic; it sought to use Mr Graham’s post as a recruiting tool. Mr Seuken of Wendy’s says such contrarianism makes Palantir tick. Mr Karp’s “us-against-the-world mentality…feeds the culture of the organisation.” He adds: “Silently, from behind, we may be cheering him on, because quite frankly we enjoy the fact that someone is standing up and saying ‘this is what we believe’.” ","a":[["class","calibre12"]],"c":[{"n":"span","x":"■"}]},{"n":"p","a":[["class","calibre12"]],"c":[{"n":"i","x":"To stay on top of the biggest stories in business and technology, sign up to the ","a":[["class","calibre18"]],"c":[{"n":"a","x":"Bottom Line","l":", our weekly subscriber-only newsletter.","a":[["href","https://www.economist.com/newsletters/the-bottom-line"]]}]}]}]},{"n":"div","x":"\n","a":[["class","calibre_navbar"]],"c":[{"n":"hr","l":"\n","a":[["class","calibre6"]]},{"n":"p","x":"This article was downloaded by ","l":"\n","a":[["class","calibre16"]],"c":[{"n":"strong","x":"calibre","l":" from ","a":[["class","calibre13"]]},{"n":"a","x":"https://www.economist.com/business/2025/05/08/what-is-behind-the-staggering-ascent-of-palantir","a":[["href","https://www.economist.com/business/2025/05/08/what-is-behind-the-staggering-ascent-of-palantir"],["rel","calibre-downloaded-from"]]}]},{"n":"br","a":[["class","calibre-nuked-tag-article"]]},{"n":"br","l":" | ","a":[["class","calibre-nuked-tag-article"]]},{"n":"a","x":"Menú de sección","l":" | ","a":[["href","javascript:void(0)"],["data-eueMZIbjjuCPX9e9np7aa2","{\"name\": \"feed_12/index_u18.html\", \"frag\": \"article_4\"}"]]},{"n":"a","x":"Menú principal","l":" | ","a":[["href","javascript:void(0)"],["data-eueMZIbjjuCPX9e9np7aa2","{\"name\": \"index_u63.html\", \"frag\": \"feed_12\"}"]]}]}]}]},"ns_map":["http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"]}