Palantir partners with Microsoft to sell AI to government

“This is a first-of-its-kind, integrated technology stack that will enable critical national security missions to deploy Microsoft’s best-in-class large language models (LLMs) through Azure OpenAI on Palantir AI Platforms (AIPs) across Microsoft’s government and classified cloud environments,” the announcement reads.

Palantir is a data analytics company that consumes vast amounts of personal data to help governments and companies with surveillance. It’s not clear from the announcement what services Palantir and Microsoft will offer. We do know that Microsoft’s Azure cloud services will integrate Palantir products. Azure previously included OpenAI’s Chat-GPT4 in a “top secret” version of its software.

Despite its long list of customers, Palantir didn’t post its first annual profit until 2023. But the AI ​​hype cycle has caused “Palantir’s commercial business to explode in ways we don’t know how to handle,” CEO Alex Carp said. Bloomberg in February. Most of its business comes from governments, including Israel — although the risk factors section of its annual report notes that it does not and will not work with the “Chinese Communist Party.”

At the time of this writing, Palantir’s stock price is up more than 75 percent in 2024.