“Let’s be honest, Palantir’s product is very good and addictive, it’s pretty much like the sugar in Coca-Cola,” said French digital sovereignty advocate, Philippe Latombe. “Palantir can treat massive amounts of data with great precision and with their experience, they had time to improve their algorithms with many clients and adapt them to many use cases.”
Still, the drive to break free from Palantir is sweeping around the continent, from Madrid, where the government of Pedro Sánchez has instructed state-backed companies to block Palantir from future public procurement contracts, to France’s domestic intelligence services (DGSI) selecting French company ChapsVision over Palantir. In Britain, the next test may come in February 2027, when the new Labour government of Andy Burnham will face a choice of whether to cut off Palantir’s £330 million National Health Service Federated Data Platform contract.
Last month’s decision by the French and German intelligence agencies to choose ChapsVision was a double-blow for Palantir’s leadership. CEO Alex Karp showed little patience for the sudden turn away from his company’s wares, declaring that he wasn’t worried about European competitors. “We have a model of what doesn’t work,” he quipped last week on Fox Business. “It’s called Europe.”
Olivier Dellenbach, ChapsVision’s chief executive, told POLITICO that his company has benefited from what he calls a “visceral rejection of Palantir” in Europe.
But he also cautioned that he did not want ChapsVision reduced to an anti-Palantir way out. Digital sovereignty, he argues, will remain an empty phrase unless governments turn it into industrial policy. “We need more public procurement,” Dellenbach said.
Belgium, Germany, Luxembourg, Romania, the Netherlands and Canada have already shown interest in the French Army’s Artemis AI, according to Patrick Moreau, one of the architects of the solution built by French aerospace and defense company Thales.