[Volume.8 Ontology-Driven Intelligence Platform - Palantir Technologies]

Paul
5 days ago
8 min read

Updated: 4 days ago

TARGIS BUSAN Integrated Platform Real-time Monitoring Dashboard

Palantir Technologies - AI-enabled data integration, analytics, and decision intelligence platform for complex organizational challenges.

Why are people so enthusiastic about Palantir? I believe that individual words meaningfully combine to form context, which then creates useful information for decision-making judgment, constituting an ontology framework. The ability to collect and analyze diversified analyses and unpredictable risks occurring in multi-domain environments is what I consider Palantir's strength.

People often assume that information is automatically generated by AI systems. However, the reality is that data collection is ultimately performed by humans, and final analysis and acceptance are also done by humans. Multi-domain environments particularly demonstrate this fact - the complexity requires human expertise to define what data to collect, how to interpret relationships between disparate sources, and most critically, how to make actionable decisions based on the integrated intelligence.

That's why I created TARGIS BUSAN to build a Korean-style Palantir MVP. During TARGIS development, I implemented a 4-stage real-time risk monitoring and decision support system using AI ensemble (GPT 5, Claude 4) that tracks static data from 470 army, air force, navy, marine corps, and missile command bases across South Korea, North Korea, China, US Indo-Pacific, and Russian Far East regions, along with real-time tracking of over 300 aircraft approaching and within the Korean Peninsula KADIZ (Korea Air Defense Identification Zone), and approximately 3,000 aircraft around the Korean Peninsula in real-time. This was an actual implementation of Palantir's pursuit of real-time integrated analysis of complex domain data and situation-awareness-based decision support.

My Palantir benchmarking experiment was designed for defense purposes, but such complex multi-domain real-time data integration, risk assessment, and AI-based decision support frameworks could be useful in various civilian sectors such as financial market monitoring, smart city control, global supply chain optimization, and medical emergency response.

Research Date: September 9, 2025

Company: Palantir Technologies Inc.

Website: https://www.palantir.com/

Business Domain: AI-powered data analytics, ontology-based intelligence platform, government & commercial decision intelligence

Key Solutions: Palantir Gotham (defense & intelligence), Palantir Foundry (enterprise data platform), Palantir Apollo (continuous delivery), Palantir AIP (AI Platform)

Core Technology: Ontology-driven semantic data layer, multi-domain risk analysis, real-time data integration and predictive analytics

Headquarters: Denver, Colorado, USA

Founded: 2003

Employees: Approximately 4,164

IPO: NYSE listing on September 30, 2020 (PLTR)

CEO: Alex Karp

Market Cap: $371.20B (as of September 8, 2025)

Major Clients: US Intelligence Community, Department of Defense, Morgan Stanley, Merck KGaA, Airbus, Ukrainian military, HD HYUNDAI, KT, LIG Nex1

Competitors: C3.ai, Alteryx, Leidos Holdings, CACI International, Raytheon Technologies

Founding Story and Philosophy

Palantir is a big data collection and analysis company founded in 2003 by Peter Thiel, the early Facebook investor and PayPal CEO. The company name is derived from the mystical crystal ball 'Palantír' appearing in The Lord of the Rings, chosen by the Tolkienist Peter Thiel, meaning "to see far." Starting with financial fraud prevention software, it now serves major clients including the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and National Security Agency (NSA). The company became famous for utilizing its big data in the operation to eliminate Osama bin Laden.

Core Business Model

Palantir's business model is built around three main pillars:

1. Government Sector

US government revenue increased by 45% this year's second quarter, exceeding 76% of total government sector revenue. Palantir Gotham is an intelligence tool used by police in many countries as a predictive policing system and by military and counter-terrorism analysts, including the United States Intelligence Community (USIC) and Department of Defense. Its Software as a Service (SaaS) is one of five offerings authorized for Mission Critical National Security Systems (IL5) by the U.S. Department of Defense.

2. Commercial Sector

US commercial revenue in the second quarter increased by 71% year-over-year, exceeding $1 billion (approximately 1.38 trillion won). The number of US commercial customers increased by 65% compared to the previous year, reaching 432. Palantir Foundry is used for data integration and analysis by corporate clients such as Morgan Stanley, Merck KGaA, Airbus, Wejo, Lilium, PG&E, and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles.

3. AI Platform (AIP)

In April last year, Palantir launched the new product 'Palantir AI Platform (AIP)' that combines ontology with Large Language Models (LLM). While LLMs often generate incorrect information, combining them with ontology can minimize this issue.

Palantir Solution Architecture

Palantir's platform architecture consists of four core operating systems:

Palantir Gotham

An intelligence tool for government agencies and defense/intelligence sectors, serving as a predictive policing system used by the US Intelligence Community (USIC) and Department of Defense. It's designed to identify malicious activities hidden in complex networks, used for tracking terrorist organizations, preventing money laundering, tracking smuggling, and disease outbreak tracking. It's one of five SaaS solutions approved for Mission Critical National Security Systems (IL5) by the U.S. Department of Defense.

Palantir Foundry

A data integration and analysis platform for private enterprises, operating under the concept "Run your business as code" as an ontology/AI-powered operating system for modern enterprises. It provides integrated functionality including Data Engineering, MLOps, Code Repository, and CI/CD, offering capabilities similar to combining open-source tools that constitute the current Modern Data Stack.

Palantir Apollo

A "continuous delivery system" that manages and deploys Palantir Gotham and Foundry. It automatically deploys and manages software across various server environments including on-premises and cloud, providing an extensible framework for continuous deployment across multiple environments end-to-end. It supports system testing, resource management, latest features, and security updates.

Palantir AIP (AI Platform)

A platform that converts structured and unstructured data into objects that LLMs can understand, transforming organizational tasks and processes into tools for both humans and LLM-based agents. It provides integrated access to open-source, self-hosted, and commercial large language models (LLMs), combining ontology with LLMs to minimize the generation of incorrect information by LLMs.

Palantir's Proprietary Data Methodology

Data Definition

Unlike traditional schema-centric approaches, Palantir adopts ontology-centric data modeling. Data is not viewed as simple tables or fields, but as real-world entities and their relationships. This is called the "Semantic Data Layer," which stores data along with the context and meaning of how it was generated.

Key elements defined in ontology:

Objects: Real-world entities (people, places, events, assets, etc.)
Properties: Attributes and characteristics of entities
Links: Relationships and connections between entities
Actions: Business processes and decision flows
Functions: Complex business logic and calculation rules

Data Ingestion

Palantir's data collection follows the "Forward Deployed Engineering" approach, where Palantir engineers are directly deployed to customer sites to identify and integrate data sources.

Multi-source Data Integration:

Structured databases (Oracle, SQL Server, PostgreSQL, etc.)
Unstructured data (documents, emails, social media, sensor data)
Real-time streaming data (IoT, APIs, web crawling)
Legacy systems and siloed databases
External public data and commercial data feeds

Data Pipeline Characteristics:

Schema-on-Read: Applying schema at analysis time, not at data ingestion
Incremental Processing: Processing only changed data
Data Lineage: Complete tracking of data sources and transformation processes
Real-time & Batch: Hybrid approach of real-time and batch processing

Data Analysis

Palantir's analysis methodology is based on the "Human-in-the-Loop Intelligence" concept, combining human domain knowledge with AI computational power rather than fully automated AI.

Analysis Process:

Exploratory Analysis: Intuitive data exploration based on ontology
Pattern Recognition: Pattern discovery through AI and machine learning
Hypothesis Testing: Human analyst hypothesis verification
Collaborative Intelligence: Collaborative analysis between humans and AI

Unique Analysis Features:

Object Resolution: Identifying and integrating identical entities from different systems
Link Analysis: Complex network analysis and visualization
Temporal Analysis: Time-based pattern and trend analysis
Geospatial Intelligence: Location-based analysis and geographic information integration
Anomaly Detection: Ontology-based anomaly detection

Data Governance and Security

Access Control: Granular permission management at the ontology level Data Lineage: Complete traceability of all data transformations and analysis processes Audit Logs: Detailed records of all user activities and data access Privacy Protection: Automated PII detection and masking

Lock-in Effect and Sustainability

One of Palantir's most powerful characteristics is the "Network Effect" and "Lock-in Effect." Once customers start using the Palantir platform:

All organizational data becomes integrated into Palantir's ontology
Business processes become deeply embedded in the platform
Switching to other systems requires enormous cost and time
Rebuilding accumulated ontology and analytical assets is necessary

Due to these structural characteristics, Palantir transcends being a simple software vendor and becomes the "Data Operating System" for customer organizations.

Revolutionary Ontology Technology

Palantir's true competitive advantage lies in its Ontology technology. Foundry ontology serves as an operational layer for groups. The ontology sits on top of digital assets (datasets and models) integrated into Foundry, connecting them to real-world counterparts (from physical assets like plants, equipment, and products to concepts like customer orders or financial transactions).

Palantir's ontology technology is a data modeling and management framework that structures data, defines meaningful relationships, and maximizes organizational data utilization. Beyond simple data catalogs, ontology serves as a shared source of truth for decision-making and decision capture in large-scale organizations. By providing a single source of truth, ontology enables users to easily discover and understand data across the organization, allowing local decisions to be viewed in a more global context, providing large-scale connectivity.

Impressive Growth Trajectory

Palantir reported outstanding growth in both government and commercial sectors in its Q1 earnings announcement, raising guidance for annual revenue and operating leverage (profit increase relative to fixed costs). Palantir Tech's Q2 2025 earnings per share (EPS) of $0.16 exceeded the expected $0.14, with revenue increasing 48% year-over-year to $1 billion.

From a data analysis software developer perspective, what's particularly impressive is the 'Rule of 40' metric reaching 83%, recording industry-leading levels in both growth and profitability. Rule of 40 is a software industry metric where companies with combined revenue growth rate and operating margin exceeding 40% are considered financially very sound.

Strategic Partnerships and Expansion

Palantir Technologies Inc. and Microsoft Corporation announced today a significant advancement in their partnership to bring the most sophisticated and secure cloud, AI, and analytics capabilities to the US Defense and Intelligence Community. Through this partnership, Palantir will deploy its suite of products – Foundry, Gotham, Apollo, and AIP – in Microsoft Azure Government and Azure Government Secret (DoD Impact Level 6) and Top Secret clouds.

Former US President Donald Trump recently announced plans to pursue the 'Golden Dome' missile defense project worth $7.5 trillion. Palantir's role is expected to expand in such large-scale defense projects.

Challenges and Future Outlook

Challenges exist, of course. In 2025, The Economist called Palantir possibly the most overvalued company of all time, with a market value of $430 billion—over 600 times its 2024 earnings. Securities firms suggest cautious approaches to investment considering overvaluation issues.

However, Palantir management expects 2025 total revenue to increase 35.9% year-over-year to $3.89 billion (approximately 5.36 trillion won), with US commercial revenue expected to grow 68%. 2025 operating profit is expected to be $1.71 billion (approximately 2.36 trillion won), with an operating margin of 44%. By 2027, revenue is projected to reach $6.6 billion (approximately 9.1 trillion won) with an operating margin of 56.4%.

Developer's Perspective

As a data analysis software developer, Palantir's approach is very impressive. Foundry shows how to achieve the "integration of analysis and business operations" and "business operations digital twin" that many data organizations dream of but ultimately fail to fill, as an actual implementation. Particularly at this point when AI agents emerge as new data consumers, the ontology approach provides many hints.

Palantir's software products are data analysis tools that integrate big data into unified visualizations. These tools are based on ontology technology that structures and integrates relationships between various data sources. Palantir leads in ontology technology competition compared to competitors.

In this era where AI and data analysis are transforming all industries, Palantir is building a platform that innovates organizational decision-making capabilities themselves, beyond being a simple technology provider. Through an ontology framework where words and contexts are meaningfully combined into useful information and can systematically analyze unpredictable risks, Palantir is leading in realizing the true value of data.