The UK government has announced a new strategic partnership with Palantir to unlock up to £1.5 billion investment in the country to deliver new jobs, growth, and national security.
The new partnership, signed on Thursday (18 September) by Defence Secretary John Healey, will help the UK military develop the latest digital tools and harness AI technology to accelerate decision-making, improve targeting, and keep the British people safe from evolving threats.
The arrangement will also support the growth of British Defence Tech companies across the supply chain, with Palantir helping to mentor and develop UK companies.
This will include helping British defence start-ups and SMEs to expand into US markets, including an offering on a pro bono basis, the government said.
Palantir has also announced plans for London to become the base for Palantir’s European defence business, establishing Britain as a hub for defence technology innovation across Europe.
Palantir Technologies is a software company that specialises in big data analytics, helping businesses integrate, analyse, and visualise large and complex datasets.
The company has been the subject of controversy in recent years due to its work with intelligence agencies and law enforcement, which has raised concerns about privacy, surveillance, and civil liberties. Critics argue that Palantir’s technology can be used to track individuals or groups in ways that are opaque and difficult to regulate.
“This partnership reflects our deep commitment to the UK. It will see up to £750 million invested in the most advanced AI-enabled defence technology, honed on the battlefield in Ukraine and used extensively by the US and NATO,” said Palantir CEO Alex Karp.
“It will reinforce the UK’s position as a major military force protecting the West from our adversaries. And it will underline the UK’s status as our largest presence outside of the US.”
What is Palantir offering?
In an accompanying statement, the government said that Palantir and the UK military will work together to transform lethality on the battlefield, supporting the development of data and AI-powered capabilities across data analysis, intelligence, decision support, and targeting systems.
This will see the government delivering on a key theme of the Strategic Defence Review and Defence Industrial Strategy: to make the UK the leading edge of innovation in NATO.
Some of these new capabilities will support the development of what is known as the ‘kill chain’, whereby military planners fuse a wide range of information and data sources from open source and military platforms to provide military commanders with faster options for attacking an enemy target.
This would form an element of the Digital Targeting Web, announced in the Strategic Defence Review, which will have a large and diverse supplier ecosystem.
Cutting-edge data and AI tech, which is already being proven on the battlefield in Ukraine, speeds up this planning by fusing sensitive information to rapidly produce a plan to target and attack the enemy.
The partnership will also identify opportunities with UK Defence, which could be worth up to £750 million over the next five years, showing that the UK is in a strong position to be a digital, data, and AI world leader.
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