A tech start-up named for objects in 'The Lord of the Rings' has become a major government contractor. But what exactly does this influential but little-known company do?
Palantir engineers at the company offices in Palo Alto, Calif., March 13, 2014. Palantir, which offers software, teams of engineers that customize the software, and helps organizations make sense of vast amounts of data, is preparing to go public. Image: Peter DaSilva/The New York Times
About a month before he became president, Donald Trump met with the leaders of the country’s top technology companies at Trump Tower in Manhattan.
The meeting included the chief executives of Amazon, Apple, Google, Microsoft and other household names like Tesla and Oracle. And then there was Alex Karp, chief executive of a company, called Palantir Technologies, that few outside Silicon Valley and government circles had heard of.
Palantir, the only privately held company represented in the room, had become a major player among government contractors. And, indicative of its growing prominence, one of its founders, venture capitalist Peter Thiel, had supported Trump during the 2016 election and had helped set up the meeting.
Now, as Palantir prepares to go public in what could be the largest stock market listing of a tech startup since Uber last year, many are wondering: What exactly does this influential but little-known company do?
Offering software — and, crucially, teams of engineers that customize the software — Palantir helps organizations make sense of vast amounts of data. It helps gather information from various sources like internet traffic and cellphone records and analyzes that information. It puts those disparate pieces together into something that makes sense to its users, like a visual display.
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