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What Does Palantir Actually Do?
Palantir is often called a data broker, a data miner, or a giant database of personal information. In reality, it’s none of these—but even former employees struggle to explain it.
Juan Sebastián Pinto, who worked as a content strategist at Palantir and also signed the open letter, says it sells software to other businesses, a category commonly referred to in Silicon Valley as B2B SaaS. It calls these workers “forward deployed software engineers,” a term that appears to be inspired by the concept of forward-deployed troops, who are stationed in adversarial regions to deter nearby enemies from attacking. Palantir began gaining steam in the 2010s, a decade when corporate business discourse was dominated by the rise of “ Big Data.” Hundreds of tech startups popped up promising to disrupt the market by leveraging information that was now readily available thanks to smartphones and internet-connected sensors, including everything from global shipping patterns to the social media habits of college students.
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