How did Palantir get so powerful?
5/6/202627 min
In the aftermath of 9/11, the problem wasn't just intelligence failure; it was information stuck in silos. The FBI and CIA had pieces of the puzzle, but no shared picture. Enter Palantir: a company built on the premise that data, if stitched together properly, could surface threats before they metastasise.
Co-founded by Peter Thiel and Alex Karp, Palantir's early pitch was deceptively simple: give analysts the ability to see connections across messy datasets without compromising privacy.
The arrival of large language models has supercharged what Palantir was already doing: ingesting, structuring, and interrogating enormous amounts of information. The result is a shift from finding needles in haystacks to, arguably, predicting where the needles will land. It's powerful, unsettling, and very on-brand for a company named after an all-seeing stone from Lord of the Rings.
Follow If You're Listening on the ABC Listen app.
Check out our series on YouTube:https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDTPrMoGHssAfgMMS3L5LpLNFMNp1U_Nq