Palantir’s military AI is seeing demand they call ‘unprecedented’

Palantir, the Peter Thiel-co-founded data analysis firm that’s always had a cozy relationship with defense and intelligence agencies, is seeing what they’re calling “unprecedented” demand for their new AI platform. Shares shot up as much as 21% Tuesday after they gave investors a preview.

This thing is called AIP, which stands for Artificial Intelligence Platform. Original, I know. But what it does is actually interesting: it lets militaries tap into the same kind of large language models that power ChatGPT, but for battlefield intelligence and decision-making.

There’s a demo video floating around that shows the platform analyzing intel on enemy targets, flagging potentially hostile situations, proposing battle plans, and even sending those plans to commanding officers for approval. The video makes a point of emphasizing that it’s “safe and secure” — the client gets to decide what data the models can see and what actions they can or cannot take on behalf of humans.

CEO Alex Karp, never one for understated language, said on the Monday analyst call: “If you wheel these technologies correctly, safely, and securely, you have a weapon that will allow you to win, that will scare your competitors and adversaries.” He described the boom in large language models as a revolution “that will raise ships and sink ships.” And the demand for AIP? “Nothing I’ve ever seen in 20 years of being involved in Palantir.”

Karp also mentioned they’ve had conversations with “hundreds” of potential partners, though pricing and terms are still being worked out. Palantir has been reorganizing engineering teams and shifting resources around AI to keep up. He said they’re “running hard” at the opportunity.

It’s not just military stuff, though that’s clearly the headline-grabber. Another demo shows a manufacturing company using AIP to prepare for a hurricane — analyzing distribution center operations and deciding whether to accelerate, delay, or cancel orders, with forecasts on how it impacts customer orders and revenue.

An insurance client got early access and described it as “years ahead” of other solutions. Within days, they built a “collaborative AI agent” to automate claims processing. That’s either genuinely impressive or a reflection of how mediocre most enterprise AI tools still are. Probably both.

Palantir is planning to share more detail at a June 1 event in Palo Alto. I’ll be curious to see how much of this is real capability versus vaporware dressed up in military-grade marketing. The stock surge suggests investors are betting on the former, but Palantir has always been better at selling vision than delivering clean products.