In the book The Finish, detailing the killing of Osama bin Laden, author Mark Bowden writes that Palantir's software "actually deserves the popular designation Killer App."Īnd now Palantir is emerging from the shadow world of spies and special ops to take corporate America by storm. The software helped locate Mexican drug cartel members who murdered an American customs agent and tracked down hackers who installed spyware on the computer of the Dalai Lama. General David Petraeus, the most recent former CIA chief, describes Palantir to FORBES as "a better mousetrap when a better mousetrap was needed" and calls Karp "sheer brilliant."Īmong those using Palantir to connect the dots are the Marines, who have deployed its tools in Afghanistan for forensic analysis of roadside bombs and predicting insurgent attacks. Palantir's advisors include Condoleezza Rice and former CIA director George Tenet, who says in an interview that "I wish we had a tool of its power" before 9/11. Give its so-called "forward-deployed engineers" a few days to crawl, tag and integrate every scrap of a customer's data, and Palantir can elucidate problems as disparate as terrorism, disaster response and human trafficking. Palantir turns messy swamps of information into intuitively visualized maps, histograms and link charts. In the last five years Palantir has become the go-to company for mining massive data sets for intelligence and law enforcement applications, with a slick software interface and coders who parachute into clients' headquarters to customize its programs. Palantir lives the realities of its customers: the NSA, the FBI and the CIA-an early investor through its In-Q-Tel venture fund-along with an alphabet soup of other U.S. "It's easy to be the focal point of fantasies," he says, "if your company is involved in realities like ours." Schizophrenics have stalked Karp outside his office for days at a stretch. Karp's 24/7 security detail is meant to protect him from extremists who have sent him death threats and conspiracy theorists who have called Palantir to rant about the Illuminati. "There's nothing worse for reducing your ability to flirt with someone." "It puts a massive cramp on your life," Karp complains, his expression hidden behind large black sunglasses. Even on the suburban streets of Palo Alto, steps from Palantir's headquarters, the bodyguard lingers a few feet behind. But his solitude is disturbed somewhat by "Mike," an ex-Marine-silent, 6 foot 1, 270 pounds of mostly pectoral muscle-who trails him everywhere he goes. On one sun-baked July morning in Silicon Valley Palantir's lean 45-year-old chief executive, with a top-heavy mop of frazzled hair, hikes the grassy hills around Stanford University's massive satellite antennae known as the Dish, a favorite meditative pastime.
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