Palantir Is Bad-Mouthing Big Tech While Taking Its Tech Public

Almost since Palantir Technologies Inc.’s founding in 2003, controversy has followed it. The company, which is named for the all-seeing orb of Sauron in The Lord of the Rings and produces software that helps big organizations make sense of large datasets, has been accused of eroding privacy even as it’s won praise from the U.S. military. It’s sparred with the media, the American Civil Liberties Union, and activists who’ve complained about its work for President Trump’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.

As it prepares to go public, Palantir has added a new adversary: its former hometown. After Chief Executive Officer Alex Karp complained about the liberal “monoculture” in the Bay Area, the company announced its relocation from Silicon Valley to Denver—the better to communicate that it doesn’t care about the outcry over its ICE work. In a letter attached to the Securities and Exchange Commission filing, Karp all but said the big tech companies are traitorous identity thieves who’ve been willing to do business with the Chinese government while profiting by selling users’ personal data. (Co-founder Peter Thiel made a similar claim last year, suggesting the FBI investigate Google for potentially helping Beijing. Google denied the charge.) “Our company was founded in Silicon Valley,” wrote Karp. “We seem to share fewer and fewer of the technology sector’s values and commitments.”