The U.S. Government Is a Palantir Regular

Palantir has received more than $1.9 billion in U.S. federal contracts since 2008, according to usaspending.gov, the official U.S. government website that lists publicly accessible data on public spending. The data was accessed on July 21, but there is likely a lack in reporting the latest expenses.

According to this source, the U.S. Army has awarded the highest amount of any U.S. subagency to Palantir, at $730.3 million since 2008. It is followed by the U.S. Air Force at $486.2 million and the U.S. Special Operations Command at $303.7 million. Altogether, the umbrella U.S. Department of Defense has awarded Palantir at least $1.65 billion over the past 16 and a half years - by far the highest amount of any agency.

But Palantir has worked with other federal agencies for years too. Records show the first contract between Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Palantir is from the year 2011, covering a sum of $58,122 for a supply of Dell servers, Cloud Server licensing and training. In 2018, ICE struck a deal for Palantir’s Gotham software, a platform primarily used by government and intelligence agencies for data analysis and investigation, for a price of $249,999.50. Palantir’s Falcon was later introduced as a customized version of the Gotham platform, developed for Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), a division of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

Altogether, ICE has given Palantir contracts of at least $248.3 million, according to the data published by usaspending.gov. The latest addition published was for a contract that runs from September 2022-September 2025, for $88 million, with a $50 million extension.

However, according to Wired, Palantir received a $30 million contract from ICE in April to build a major database called ImmigrationOS, which will use data across several federal agencies to track down undocumented people living in the United States. This reflects the intensifying relationship between the federal agency and Palantir under the Trump administration. In May, Palantir also secured a $1.3 billion contract with the DoD which runs through to 2029, focused on Project Maven, an AI tool used by the military.

The New York Times further reports that Trump has asked Palantir to build a centralized database that would consolidate data from across federal agencies. This idea has raised concern among critics and Democratic lawmakers over privacy and the potential for misuse, requesting Palantir respond to a number of questions. Palantir issued a response via its blog, stating "Palantir’s software is built at every stage to uphold, not undermine, legal and regulatory protections as well as the ethics and standards that help institutions govern the appropriate uses of powerful technologies."