Palantir Raises $2 Billion in Revenue from Aid Trump Administration’s ‘Unusual’ Operations
Palantir received a record $1.855 billion in revenue from the US government in 2025, the company said in an earnings report that beat market expectations.
“We’ve also done this while supporting, in a critical way, some of the most interesting, complex, unusual projects that the US government has been involved in, many of which we can’t comment on, but it’s been a highlight of the past year and very encouraging for all of us at Palantir,” CEO Alex Karp said on the investor call.
Palantir’s “incentive” business with the US government is set to grow 55% year-on-year through 2025. In just the last three months of the year, Palantir generated $570 million in revenue, up 66% year over year.
Most of that money is being driven by the company’s Department of Defense work, “and accelerating the pace at public institutions,” said Palantir chief revenue officer Ryan Taylor.
Palantir’s close relationship with at least one of these public entities has been at the heart of increased public scrutiny, and that is the Department of Homeland Security.
DHS has been relying on Palantir software in its bid to turbocharge the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigrants. Last year, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency paid Palantir $60 million to build a surveillance platform called ImmigrationOS to track deportations. A few months later, an Amnesty International report said that Palantir’s AI software was used to identify non-citizens speaking for Palestine.
ICE also uses Palantir tech to determine which areas to target for deportation raids. The program is called ELITE (short for Enhanced Lead Identification and Targeting), and it was first revealed in a 404 Media report last month and was later confirmed in a DHS report on cases of AI use in the Department.
The same report also says that ICE is using Palantir AI to review, summarize, and classify tips sent to the agency.
Karp himself has spoken out in favor of Trump’s immigration policy, even saying that he will use “all of his influence to ensure that this country remains skeptical of immigration.”
But Palantir’s partnership with Washington goes beyond immigration. Many parts of the government rely on Palantir software, most notably the Pentagon and most notably with a $480 million deal for an AI-powered target identification system called Maven.
“Our weapons software is in all combat situations [that] I know,” said Karp.” In fact, the CEO says it’s worked so well that its chief technology officer Shyam Sankar “can’t hold his nose all day, and what they’re asking him is ‘how can I do the same thing across the government?'”
Karp’s standard defense to allegations that Palantir is aiding executives in immoral (and some say illegal) behavior is that the company’s software is the only way the public can ensure that government actions remain constitutional. He used this reasoning when he defended the use of Palantir software in the Caribbean submarine strikes that many experts believe were war crimes, and he used it again in an investor call to allay fears of mass surveillance conducted by Palantir.
Karp says Palantir is building technology that will hold the government accountable to the legal limits of its surveillance, and ensure that “every agency that uses our product is doing so in accordance with the law and with American ethics.”
But what happens when those “rules and ethics” themselves become questionable? However, Palantir continues to be paid.
Take Palantir’s work for the Department of Health and Human Services. About a year ago, Palantir provided AI tools to attack government programs, contracts, and grants that did not conform to the Trump administration’s views on gender, the environment, and race, according to a recently published report on the use of AI at HHS.
The Department has been using Palantir AI to make sure all grants and jobs comply with Trump’s directives targeting DEI and “gender bias.”
Since they were signed last year, both executive orders have led to numerous cuts in government, including targeting positions unrelated to DEI, and significant cuts to critical research funding. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention even had to scrub any mention of words like “gender,” “LGBT,” or “environmental justice,” withdrawing and pausing research submissions, while Trump cut more than 1,600 research grants from the National Science Foundation.
