Palantir: The Most Mysterious Company in Silicon Valley
Uncanny Valley | WIRED
WIRED
4.1 • 571 Ratings
🗓️ 14 August 2025
⏱️ 36 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Palantir Technologies is arguably one of the most notorious American corporations. Cofounded by tech billionaire Peter Thiel, the company has worked with ICE, the US Department of Defense, the Israeli military and sparked numerous protests in multiple countries. But what do they 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. Luckily, WIRED staff writer Caroline Haskins joins us to decode Palantir for us.
Join us LIVE in San Francisco on September 9th
Articles mentioned in this episode:
- What Does Palantir Actually Do?
- Palantir Is Helping DOGE With a Massive IRS Data Project
- ICE Is Paying Palantir $30 Million to Build ‘ImmigrationOS’ Surveillance Platform
- Lauren’s latest article: Lisa Su Runs AMD - and Is Out for Nvidia’s Blood
Join WIRED’s best and brightest on Uncanny Valley as they dissect the collision of tech, politics, finance, and business, from Alexis Ohanian's newest tech venture to the effects of inaccurate information from artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots on social protests.
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| 0:00.0 | Hey, this is Mike. Before we start, I want to share some exciting news with you. We're doing a live show in San Francisco on September 9th in partnership with the local station KQED. |
| 0:14.0 | Lauren and I will sit down with our editor-in-chief, Katie Drummond, and we'll have a special guest joining us for a conversation that you will not want to miss. |
| 0:22.7 | You can use the link in the show notes to grab your ticket and invite a friend. We cannot wait to see you there. |
| 0:36.8 | Hey, Lauren, how you doing? |
| 0:38.7 | I'm pretty good, Mike. I'm a little tired because we just published a big story I've |
| 0:43.8 | been working on for a long time. Oh, do tell us. Well, now that you've asked, we have a series |
| 0:51.5 | here at Wired called The Big Interview. Every so often, we get to interview the most interesting people in tech and beyond. |
| 0:57.9 | And we do this very long Q&A. |
| 1:00.6 | A lot of research goes into it. |
| 1:02.3 | Original photography. |
| 1:03.8 | It's a really cool series. |
| 1:05.2 | And the most recent one I interviewed Lisa Sue, the chair and CEO of AMD. |
| 1:10.3 | Lisa Sue from AMD? |
| 1:11.8 | That's correct. |
| 1:12.6 | Nice. |
| 1:13.3 | Yeah. |
| 1:13.7 | Did you fly to Texas? |
| 1:15.4 | Austin, Texas. |
| 1:16.6 | I was there to spend some time with Lisa Sue and tour the labs, their chip testing labs down |
| 1:22.1 | there. |
| 1:23.0 | And it was a fascinating conversation. |
| 1:25.3 | She is a super smart lady, and she has managed a pretty remarkable turnaround of AMD over the past dozen years. |
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