In Silicon Valley, where startups often burn bright and vanish fast, Palantir Technologies has defied the odds. Over the past year, the software company’s stock has soared more than 600%, making it the best-performing AI name in the S&P 500 and one of the decade’s biggest tech-success stories. On August 9, shares closed a record $186.96, pushing the company’s market cap north of $443 billion.

At the centre of this rise is Shyam Sankar, Palantir’s Mumbai-born Chief Technology Officer. On July 25, his net worth crossed $1.3 billion as the company’s stock soared. Raised in Orlando, Mr. Sankar earned a BS in electrical and computer engineering from Cornell University and an MS in management science and engineering from Stanford University. Known as a “slayer of bureaucracy”, he has spent over two decades building disruptive software and AI solutions for government and private clients.

Mr. Sankar first learned about Palantir when a friend mentioned a small, stealthy, yet exciting software start-up looking for its first business hire in a largely technical role. The friend introduced him to one of the founders, and after seeing version 0.7 of the app, meeting a team of “brilliant” people, and hearing about the company’s mission, Mr. Sankar knew exactly where he wanted to be.

Founded in 2003 by Peter Thiel — a crucial backer of Donald Trump’s first presidential campaign — along with Alex Karp, Joe Lonsdale, and Stephen Cohen, the Silicon Valley unicorn was initially funded by In-Q-Tel, the CIA’s venture capital arm. It built its early reputation serving the U.S. government, particularly national security agencies, with a founding vision of harnessing man–machine symbiosis to help American and allied intelligence communities share data securely and prevent another 9/11 without compromising civil liberties. Since joining Palantir in 2006 as its 13th employee, Mr. Sankar has pioneered the “forward deployed engineer” model — embedding engineers directly with clients to tackle urgent, real-world challenges in real time. This approach was key to the success of Palantir’s business model. Now headquartered in Denver, Palantir’s platforms include Gotham, Foundry, and its Artificial Intelligence Platform (AIP).

Its name, drawn from J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, refers to “seeing stones” that reveal hidden truths. Inside the company, the unofficial motto — ‘Save the Shire’ — reflects its mission in plain terms: protect America from threats. Palantir’s technology centralises and analyses large and disparate datasets, with applications ranging from tracking enemy drones for soldiers to monitoring ship parts for sailors, to assisting health officials in processing drug approvals. In 2020, it went public via a direct listing on the New York Stock Exchange. When the company’s profile and operations expanded, so did Mr. Sankar’s role.

Leadership role

In January 2023, he was made the CTO and executive vice-president. “Under his leadership, Palantir transformed from a Silicon Valley start-up to a global, industry leading software and AI company,” reads Mr. Sankar’s profile on his Substack page. Today, Palantir counts more than 30 U.S. federal agencies and a group of Fortune 500 companies as clients. In the second quarter of 2025, it posted $1 billion in revenue — up 48% from a year earlier — beating Wall Street forecasts. In the first half of 2025, it pulled in more than $322 million from federal contracts, a 12% increase from two years earlier. The U.S. Army, once an adversary in a contracting dispute, has become one of its biggest customers. In June, Mr. Sankar himself was commissioned into the Army Reserve, a symbolic move that underscored Palantir’s alignment with military priorities. Some Pentagon officials have voiced concern about over-reliance on a single contractor for core data-processing needs.

Palantir’s reputation as a rapid-response problem solver was cemented during crises. At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, it built systems to track the virus and vaccine distribution. After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Palantir’s technology got integrated into multiple Ukrainian government and military agencies. Similarly, days after the Hamas-led attack on Israel in October 2023, Mr. Karp — who is Jewish — flew with senior executives to Tel Aviv. Following a January 10 meeting with Israel’s Defence Ministry officials, Palantir entered a strategic partnership with Israel to provide technology to aid its war efforts. The move drew criticism from pro-Palestinian activists in the U.S. At home, Palantir drew flak for a government contract to build an app that integrates data from across the government to assist with immigration enforcement. With debates still simmering, Palantir is looking beyond U.S. borders. It is pursuing lucrative contracts in Saudi Arabia, from overhauling the country’s healthcare system to helping build Neom, a futuristic megacity in the desert that has collided with practical and financial challenges.

But for Mr. Sankar and Mr. Karp, controversies are part of Palantir’s DNA.

Regarding working with different government agencies on data processing and other projects, Mr. Sankar once said, it’s like “shining a light on the battle space”. “The things that you couldn’t see before, you could see now…”