{"id":337,"date":"2018-03-12T17:22:56","date_gmt":"2018-03-13T00:22:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/stopthecrime.net\/wp\/?p=337"},"modified":"2018-03-12T17:48:00","modified_gmt":"2018-03-13T00:48:00","slug":"peter-thiels-palantir-wins-876-million-u-s-army-contract","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stopthecrime.net\/wp\/2018\/03\/12\/peter-thiels-palantir-wins-876-million-u-s-army-contract\/","title":{"rendered":"Peter Thiel\u2019s Palantir Wins $876 Million U.S. Army Contract"},"content":{"rendered":"

https:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/news\/articles\/2018-03-09\/peter-thiel-s-palantir-wins-876-million-u-s-army-contract<\/a><\/p>\n

Billionaire investor Peter Thiel got\u00a0a fresh victory in Washington. His data-mining\u00a0startup,\u00a0Palantir Technologies Inc.<\/a>, won a much-contested contract to provide software to the U.S. Army.<\/p>\n

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Palantir will work with\u00a0Raytheon Co.<\/a>\u00a0to replace the troubled\u00a0Distributed Common Ground System now in effect. They beat out seven other proposals for a decade-long, $876 million contract, according to the U.S. Defense Department. Terms of the partnership between Palantir and Raytheon weren\u2019t disclosed, and the companies didn\u2019t immediately respond to requests for comment.<\/p>\n

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Thiel, the co-founder and chairman of Palantir, approved the company\u2019s move in 2016 to\u00a0sue<\/a>\u00a0the Army over what it called an unfair bidding process. A judge found in Palantir\u2019s\u00a0favor<\/a>\u00a0and ordered the Army to revamp the way it solicits\u00a0bids for the Distributed Common Ground System. The U.S. Government Accountability Office determined that the Army\u2019s current system was over-budget and underperforming.<\/p>\n

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Since the election of President Donald Trump, Thiel has gained significant influence in Washington. He was the most prominent supporter of Trump from Silicon Valley and contributed money to the campaign. Thiel helped fill positions in the Trump administration with\u00a0former staff<\/a>, including Trae Stephens, a onetime Palantir\u00a0employee. Although he recently\u00a0told<\/a>\u00a0the\u00a0New York Times<\/em>\u00a0that Trump\u2019s presidency had \u201cfallen short\u201d in\u00a0some ways, Thiel said he has no regrets about supporting him.<\/p>\n

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In addition to the Army deal, Palantir has been making inroads elsewhere in the U.S. government. After the company made a similar legal challenge to\u00a0the U.S. Navy, officials\u00a0agreed<\/a>\u00a0to revamp its technology procurement process last year.<\/p>\n

Founded in 2004, Palantir\u00a0is used by dozens of federal, state\u00a0and local law enforcement agencies to aggregate far-flung data, find patterns and present results in colorful, easy-to-interpret graphics. Its use by police in Los Angeles, Chicago,\u00a0New Orleans<\/a>\u00a0and elsewhere\u00a0has raised ethical concerns about the potential for unfairly targeting minorities.<\/p>\n

Alex Karp, who started the company with Thiel and serves as chief executive officer,\u00a0said the 2,000-person company would turn its first-ever profit in 2017, based on performance early in the year. The company has declined to say whether it met that goal. Karp has also raised the possibility of an initial public offering or some other kind of transaction to let existing shareholders cash out. A research report from October suggested Palantir would\u00a0struggle<\/a>\u00a0to retain the $20 billion valuation private investors had given it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

https:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/news\/articles\/2018-03-09\/peter-thiel-s-palantir-wins-876-million-u-s-army-contract Billionaire investor Peter Thiel got\u00a0a fresh victory in Washington. His data-mining\u00a0startup,\u00a0Palantir Technologies Inc., won a much-contested contract to provide software to the U.S. Army. Palantir will work with\u00a0Raytheon Co.\u00a0to replace the troubled\u00a0Distributed Common Ground System now in effect. They beat out seven other proposals for a decade-long, $876 million contract, according to the U.S. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-337","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hot-topics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stopthecrime.net\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/337","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stopthecrime.net\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stopthecrime.net\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stopthecrime.net\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stopthecrime.net\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=337"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stopthecrime.net\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/337\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":338,"href":"https:\/\/stopthecrime.net\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/337\/revisions\/338"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stopthecrime.net\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=337"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stopthecrime.net\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=337"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stopthecrime.net\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=337"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}