Palantir Desires to Be a Life-style Model

Palantir bros should not arduous to come across on-line: There are a number of Palantir-focused subreddits, the biggest of which has 109,000 members. Some people on X have been in a position to amass enormous followings by posting solely concerning the firm all through the day.

Palantir followers can obsessively deal with the corporate’s inventory worth. They can behave like American soccer followers when it goes up, celebrating as if their group scored a landing. When it will get an enormous contract, it’s as if their group received a brand new star participant. In this context, it is sensible that folks would wish to buy merch—it’s like shopping for a jersey.

Palantir’s fan base progressively expanded through the years that contractors for immigration enforcement and the army had been least fashionable in Silicon Valley. For followers, Palantir was a contrarian darkish horse that stood by its ideas, despite the fact that others detested them.

For Palantir, turning into a way of life model appears extra about getting the corporate’s followers to publicly determine with its model and its mission. This is made express on a white notice card, with CEO Alex Karp’s signature, that was included with current orders of Palantir merch.

“Thank you for your dedication to Palantir and our mission to defend the West,” the cardboard reads. “The future belongs to those who believe and build. And we build to dominate.”

Younes has expressed the same sentiment. “Palantir isn’t just a software company,” he wrote on X in August. “It’s a world view—western values, pro-warfighter, problem solving, conviction, dominant software, etc. that’s why people rep the gear.”

These values haven’t at all times been fashionable in Silicon Valley. In reality, traditionally, they’ve been outright rejected. In 2018, thousands of Google staff rallied in opposition to the corporate’s involvement in Project Maven, a Pentagon mission analyzing drone footage with AI. Conceding to the employees, Google selected to not renew its Maven contract however stated it wouldn’t cease working with the Pentagon. That identical yr, protests in opposition to Palantir had been popping up in Palo Alto in response to the corporate’s work with ICE. (ICE didn’t cancel any contracts.)

However, below the second Trump administration, the tech world is starting to brazenly embrace aligning with the army—each transactionally, and symbolically. In June, the Army commissioned an elite group of tech executives to be “lieutenant colonels.” Palantir chief expertise officer Shyam Sankar was joined by Meta chief expertise officer Andrew Bosworth, OpenAI chief product officer Kevin Weil, and present Thinking Machines Lab adviser and former OpenAI chief analysis officer Bob McGrew, who additionally labored at Palantir.

Palantir’s present merch retailer seems to capitalize on this vibe change and talk that the corporate is doubling down on its popularity, branding, and mission. In an April letter to shareholders, Karp wrote that its mission “was for years dismissed as politically fraught and ill-advised.”

“We, the heretics, this motley band of characters, were cast out and nearly discarded by Silicon Valley,” Karp wrote. “And yet there are signs that some within the Valley have now turned a corner and begun following our lead.”