Armies, healthcare systems and intelligence services: 11 European countries already have multimillion-dollar contracts with Palantir

“The growth sucks.” That’s how Alex Karp, the CEO and co-founder of Palantir Technologies, described the company’s performance in Europe. He said this on August 3 to shareholders, while his colleagues defended an “incredible” quarter in the United States.

Palantir sells software that cross-references massive amounts of data from very different sources. And Karp argued that the European continent would be worse off without his company: “We’re supporting lots of institutions in Europe. Without our products, they would have rampant terrorism and migration problems… and the results would be 10 times worse.”

Europe is a drop in the ocean for Palantir’s business, which expects to generate more than $8 billion in revenue this year. Karp asserts that the firm maintains its European dealings only because its founders deeply believe in its mission.

Thanks to contracts with public bodies, this company has brought its software to the heart of many countries. And Palantir’s presence is increasingly unsettling. This is due to its ties to the White House, the political positions taken by Karp and co-founder Peter Thiel (who have declared U.S. interests to be a priority), as well as accusations about the firm’s involvement in serious human rights violations in the Palestinian territories, in Iran and in operations conducted by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

A team led by the investigative outlet Follow the Money – made up of journalists from 18 countries (with EL PAÍS being the media partner from Spain) – has compiled dozens of public documents that confirm the tech company’s contracts with national and regional governmental institutions across Europe. This has allowed for the first comprehensive analysis of Palantir’s power across the continent.

At least 11 European countries have contracts with Palantir, ranging from defense and intelligence services, to healthcare and customs management. But the true extent of its reach is even greater: in March of 2025, NATO acquired the Maven Smart System (MSS) program from the tech company, which it now uses as its central command system. And countries participating in allied operations have access to the software, even if they don’t have their own contracts with the firm.

In eight European countries — Spain, the United Kingdom, Italy, the Netherlands, Sweden, Finland, Denmark and Ukraine — Palantir has contracts with either the defense ministries or the armed forces. However, Spain’s relationship with Palantir could soon end: when questioned by EL PAÍS, government sources confirmed that the contract expires at the end of this year and won’t be renewed. Instead, a Spanish company will work to develop alternative technology, a decision similar to the one announced by the UK at the beginning of October.

Palantir has even extended its reach to the intelligence services of countries such as Denmark, France, the UK and Ukraine. The following table shows the governmental institutions that currently have contracts in place with the American firm.

Furthermore, up to 2023, the European Union Agency for Law Enforcement Cooperation (Europol) and the European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) spent €8.8 million (or $9.87 billion) on contracts with the company. Outside of Europe, meanwhile, Palantir has been collaborating with the Israeli armed forces in the Gaza war since 2024, following the signing of an agreement.

Based on known figures, European countries and institutions have contracts with Palantir totaling approximately €264 million (or $296 million). When including the United Kingdom — where Palantir has signed contracts worth £992 million (or around $1.3 billion) — the total exceeds €1.4 billion (nearly $1.6 billion).

Many experts see a risk in Palantir’s presence in key parts of Europe’s digital and defense infrastructure. “It’s dangerous that [their] software is present in the very heart of our society and processes the data of millions of Europeans,” notes Francesca Bria, an honorary professor at University College London and director of the EuroStack Project, an initiative to promote European digital sovereignty.

This past September, in an open letter, more than 120 NGOs, unions and institutions from 30 European countries called on their governments to sever their ties with the company. They cited, among other things, issues with dependency and accusations of human rights violations (which Palantir has always denied). Some governments have already begun to reconsider their relationship with the firm.

America First

Palantir, founded in 2003, has been linked to U.S. intelligence agencies and the Pentagon since its inception. With Donald Trump’s return to the White House, those ties are closer than ever before. The company has secured billions of dollars in U.S. government contracts. Its software is used – among other things – to enforce Trump’s anti-immigration policies through ICE. And, earlier this year, Palantir allegedly played a key role in facilitating U.S. attacks on Iran, allowing them to take place more quickly and effectively. Several investigations have also linked the company’s software to the bombing of an Iranian school that killed more than 120 children.

The company and Karp have made no secret of their desire for the United States to be the world’s dominant power. Earlier this year, the CEO even stated that, if there are capacity issues, Palantir will always put the interests of the U.S. military above everything else.

Palantir’s best-known programs are Foundry and Gotham. The former helps manage business processes, while the second is designed for criminal investigations, defense and intelligence services.

Another key product is the Maven Smart System (MSS), the U.S. military’s primary software platform. NATO acquired it in March of 2025. The Alliance uses it to enable member countries’ weapons systems to communicate more quickly and effectively during joint operations. It has NATO’s highest security accreditation and operates across its entire network.

What do European countries use Palantir for?

In Spain, the Board of the Joint Chiefs of Staff awarded Palantir a €16.5 million contract ($18.51 million) in October of 2023 (without a public tender) to manage the databases of the Armed Forces Intelligence Center (CIFAS). A year earlier, they had commissioned a “proof of concept” for €256,000 — a preliminary trial to test the program’s functionality. Exactly what the CIFAS uses it for remains unknown. In a response to Gerardo Pisarello, a member of Spain’s Congress of Deputies for the left-wing Sumar party, the Ministry of Defense mentioned “data fusion and analysis” and asserted that Palantir has no access to Spanish citizens’ data, nor to the Ministry’s information, data or servers.

However, as government sources told EL PAÍS as part of this European investigation, the single Spanish contract with Palantir won’t be renewed after it expires at the end of this year.

They add that, if the current government remains in power — led by incumbent Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, who has called a snap election for November 29 — a Spanish company will work to develop an alternative that fulfills the same function as Palantir and depends exclusively on domestic industry.

Palantir’s Spanish headquarters is in Madrid. This is one of its offices in 14 European countries. It began as a sales support subsidiary of its U.S. parent company and, since 2023, has acted as a reseller of the firm’s products in Spain: it invoices Spanish clients for licenses, subscriptions and services, while paying the parent company for those licenses. In 2025, it billed €23.6 million ($26.5 million), five times more than in 2022. It works with large private sector companies, such as Mapfre and Ferrovial — insurance and infrastructure giants respectively — as reported by La Vanguardia.

Palantir has also attempted to enter the Spanish healthcare system. During the Covid pandemic, it approached the Ministry of Health, but its informal overtures were unsuccessful. And talks with some regional health departments have also not yet resulted in contracts, according to sources who spoke to this newspaper about how the firm pitched its products to them. In at least one case, the proposed price was too high.

In other countries, more information has come to light about Palantir’s activities in the public sector. In the Netherlands, for instance, the Ministry of Defense uses Gotham and Foundry in its special forces’ covert operations. Follow The Money revealed that Palantir employees had access to this classified data. And, as a result, the Ministry barred foreign Palantir personnel from its facilities. Minister for Arms Procurement Derk Boswijk promised Parliament that the company would be replaced with a European alternative within two years, although he failed to disclose that his department had been testing MSS for months, looking to purchase it.

In Denmark, the National Police extended the use of MSS to Greenland (as the newspaper Børsen discovered) just as Trump was threatening to annex the island. Subsequently, the Danish Defense Intelligence Service (DDIS) labeled the U.S. a threat and the military was ordered to abandon talks to purchase MSS and instead pursue a European alternative. In the UK — Palantir’s largest market outside the U.S. — the company signed contracts worth nearly £1 billion ($1.3 billion) between 2012 and 2025 with the Ministry of Defense, the National Health Service (NHS), the Atomic Energy Authority and the Financial Conduct Authority. This is according to The Nerve, an independent media outlet, whose security experts deemed the idea that such sensitive data was safe to be “woefully naive.”

When contacted for this report, Palantir emphasized that it “does not own its customers’ data, nor does it sell or reuse it for other purposes: customers control what data is processed and how.” They added that “our technology is designed to give institutions more control over their most sensitive information, period.”

But several countries are questioning the tech company’s business dealings in Europe. In early October, the new prime minister, Andy Burnham, announced his intention to replace Palantir in the NHS and the Ministry of Defense with a domestic alternative. Furthermore, following Karp’s public espousal of controversial political stances, a parliamentary committee noted that the company can no longer be considered apolitical.

EU members have also been reviewing relations with the company. In France, back in June, Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu announced that the DGSI would not renew its existing contract with Palantir, in order to avoid strategic dependence on a company that’s so closely tied to another country’s government. In Germany, where the regional police forces are major Palantir clients, the head of the military’s cyber and information command noted back in April that the German military would “absolutely not” do business with the company, to prevent the firm’s employees from having access to sensitive defense data. The Norwegian Police Service also decided not to renew its contract with Palantir, which expires in 2027.

But it’s not all bad news for Palantir’s future in Europe. In 2025, Poland’s Ministry of Defense signed a letter of intent with the company to develop artificial intelligence. And Lithuania’s Ministry of Defense has a memorandum of understanding with Palantir, to create a central data management platform. This past September, during the UN General Assembly in New York City, the presidents of both countries met with Karp to discuss how to transform their countries into hubs for military technology development, so as to protect NATO’s eastern flank.

“It’s part of Trump’s mission”

Elke Schwarz, a professor of political theory at Queen Mary University of London, researches the development of military artificial intelligence and autonomous weapons. For her, European countries’ dependence on Palantir is problematic, especially given the company’s close ties to the White House and Trump’s “America First” agenda. It’s particularly delicate, she explains, to depend on a company for national security when it openly states that another country — in this case, the United States — should be prioritized. And, as more government institutions work with such a company, the problems grow.

“The other side of the coin of data interconnection is that you become increasingly dependent and, therefore, more vulnerable,” she points out.

Schwarz highlights how, in the U.S. and the UK, Palantir hired numerous civil servants on leave or former public officials. The firm subsequently secured contracts with these individuals’ former employers: “The question, then, is this: does Palantir manage to exert influence on decision-making? And, if so, how far does that influence extend?” she adds.

Francesca Bria from EuroStack believes that there’s a deliberate strategy behind this hiring: “Palantir tries to alter the DNA of public institutions to obtain new contracts, but also to push its leaders’ political positions. I call this ‘political capitalism.’”

Bria understands that national security concerns limit what can be disclosed. Still, she maintains that a society has a right to know who its government is working with and how contracts are awarded, in order to hold it accountable. And she sees a fundamental problem when critical infrastructure becomes dependent on private companies: “Companies serve the interests of shareholders, not the interests of citizens. In the case of Palantir, this is compounded by the fact that it’s so intertwined with the U.S. government and its mission of American supremacy. It’s no longer simply a commercial enterprise: Palantir is part of Trump’s mission.”

This work was coordinated by Follow the Money (Netherlands) with the collaboration of journalists from the following media outlets: Der Standard (Austria), De Tijd (Belgium), Børsen (Denmark), Delfi Meedia (Estonia), Helsingin Sanomat (Finland), Telerama (France), Netzpolitik.org (Germany), Inside Story (Greece), Haaretz (Israel), Domani (Italy), Siena (Lithuania), Morgenbladet (Norway), Frontstory.pl (Poland), EL PAÍS (Spain), Dagens ETC (Sweden), Republik (Switzerland), WAV Recherchekollektiv (Switzerland) and The Nerve (United Kingdom).

If you have any further information about Palantir or its contracts, please write to dgrasso@elpais.es