Palantir grew 93% last quarter as Europe and India build its rivals

A letter with 120 signatures and one target

On 28 September, more than 120 unions and campaign groups from 30 countries published an open letter demanding European governments tear up every public-sector Palantir contract↗, ban the company from future tenders, and make public finance institutions sell their shares ¹². The stated reason is sovereignty: dependence on a single US company looks unwise, the letter argues, when the US president has shown "such willingness to weaponise US economic and trade relationships" ².

Four governments found the exit

France set the pattern in June. Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu said the domestic intelligence service, the DGSI, would swap Palantir for the French company ChapsVision; Palantir countered that its contract, renewed at the end of 2025, "remains fully in force", and the transition is likely to take years ³. Lecornu framed the swap as doctrine, "France must have its own tools", and announced €655 million of state investment in artificial intelligence↗ ³.

Germany's military has said it will no longer use Palantir, and Sadiq Khan, London's mayor, blocked a proposed £50 million police contract, which drew a legal threat from the company ³. This month Thales launched HexaForce, an AI command-and-control system built to NATO standards↗, and says talks with NATO countries are "quite advanced"; the alliance already runs a Palantir system of its own ⁴.

On 27 September, Louise Haigh, the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, told Labour conference that Britain would refuse "to be in hock to foreign giants"↗, a line understood to be aimed at Palantir ⁵. India went further: its defence secretary said officials weighed "somebody like Palantir" for the armed forces' "AI spine"↗ and shelved the idea because the data was "too critical" to share ⁶.

The engine has not noticed

Second-quarter revenue rose 93% year on year to $1.94 billion↗, and the full-year guide went up to about $8.15 billion ⁷⁸⁹. The growth is American: $809 million from the US government, up 90%, and $764 million from US commercial customers, up 149% ⁷⁸. Those two segments account for $1.57 billion of the quarter, which leaves roughly $360 million for every market outside the United States ⁷⁹.

The contest is over that remainder, and a queue of sovereign challengers, from ChapsVision and Thales to Quantexa, Siren and Octostar, is forming to take it ²³⁴.

The other side is real

More than half of England's NHS trusts run Palantir technology, credited with 110,000 extra operations since the Federated Data Platform began in 2023, and the company holds about £670 million of UK public-sector contracts in all ⁵¹¹. The health department says the NHS owns the platform's data models and could migrate them ¹⁰.

The cost is showing anyway: James Frith, the health innovation minister, told MPs that mistrust of Palantir has added roughly 60,000 data opt-outs in four months↗ ¹⁰. No filing puts a number on the governments now building rivals instead of buying; that figure does not exist.

December is the tell

Andy Burnham, the British prime minister, decides within weeks whether to trigger the break clause on the £330 million, seven-year NHS deal↗ covering up to 240 organisations; he would have to notify Palantir in December, before the contract auto-renews ⁵⁷¹¹. Whitehall sources put the real deadline earlier, by the autumn, or the changeover risks being botched ¹¹. The commercial review lands first, and standard procurement timelines make a successor unlikely by March ¹⁰.

Sovereignty is the one product Palantir cannot sell, and every government that builds its own disappears from the guide.