Levka<p><a href="https://kolektiva.social/tags/Palantir" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Palantir</span></a></p><p>"What Does Palantir Actually Do?</p><p>Palantir is often called a data broker, a data miner, or a giant database of personal information. In reality, it’s none of these—but even former employees struggle to explain it.</p><p>The problem, however, is that even ex-employees struggle to provide a clear description of the company. 'It's really hard to explain what Palantir works on or what it does,' says Linda Xia, who was an engineer at Palantir from 2022 to 2024. 'Even as someone who worked there, it's hard to figure out, how do you give a cohesive explanation?'</p><p>Xia was one of 13 former Palantir staffers who signed an open letter published in May arguing that the company risks being complicit in authoritarianism by continuing to cooperate with the Trump administration. She and other former Palantir staffers who spoke to WIRED for this story argue that, in order to grapple with Palantir and its role in the world, let alone hold the company accountable, you need to first understand what it really is.</p><p>It’s not that former employees literally don’t know what Palantir is selling. In interviews with WIRED, they spoke fluidly about how its software can connect and transform different kinds of data collected by government agencies and corporations. But when asked to, say, name its direct business competitors, two former Palantir employees who requested anonymity to speak freely about their experiences, struggled to come up with anything. 'I still don't know how to answer that question, to be honest,' says one.</p><p>Juan Sebastián Pinto, who worked as a content strategist at Palantir and also signed the open letter, says it sells software to other businesses, a category commonly referred to in Silicon Valley as B2B SaaS. Another former staffer says Palantir provides 'really extravagant plumbing with data.'</p><p>(. . .)</p><p>So what sets Palantir apart?</p><p>Part of the answer may lie in Palantir’s marketing strategy. Pinto says he believes that the company, which recently began using the tagline 'software that dominates,' has cultivated its mysterious public image on purpose. Unlike consumer-facing startups that need to clearly explain their products to everyday users, Palantir’s main audience is sprawling government agencies and Fortune 500 companies.<br>What it’s ultimately selling them is not just software, but the idea of a seamless, almost magical solution to complex problems. To do that, Palantir often uses the language and aesthetics of warfare, painting itself as a powerful, quasi-military intelligence partner. 'Palantir is here to disrupt and make the institutions we partner with the very best in the world,' Palantir CEO Alexander Karp says in a February 2025 earnings call, 'And when it's necessary, to scare enemies, and on occasion, kill them.'"</p><p><a href="https://archive.ph/zh2dq" rel="nofollow noopener" translate="no" target="_blank"><span class="invisible">https://</span><span class="">archive.ph/zh2dq</span><span class="invisible"></span></a></p>