Coles signed a three-year contract in early 2024 with Palantir Technologies to deploy its data analytics and AI platforms across more than 840 supermarkets. The partnership integrates billions of rows of operational, supplier, and workforce data to streamline supply chains, rostering, and inventory planning.
Palantir has the ability to merge every piece of information it can source about you and develop a wide-ranging personal profile available to governments and possibly the private sector.
Every time you use a card for a purchase Palantir can find it and add it to you profile. We advise readers to pay for everything with cash.
From Michael West Media
In November 2025, Palantir Technologies was assessed as meeting the protected level under the Australian Information Security Registered Assessors Program (IRAP). This protection is a key requirement for companies seeking to handle sensitive government information.
The assessment enables a broader range of Australian government agencies and commercial organisations to use Palantir’s Foundry and artificial intelligence platform, AIP.
In a statement, Palantir said the assessment was conducted by an independent third-party assessor in line with requirements set by the Australian Signals Directorate (ASD), and demonstrated its ability to meet “stringent national security and privacy standards”.
The company described Australia as an “important market”, saying the clearance would open “new opportunities” across the public and private sectors.
In April 2025, CEO Alex Karp dismissed accusations that Palantir’s technology had been used to target and kill Palestinians in Gaza, saying those killed were “mostly terrorists”.
The UN Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Francesca Albanese, has said there are “reasonable grounds” to believe Palantir has “provided automatic predictive policing technology, core defence infrastructure for rapid and scaled-up construction and deployment of military software, and its Artificial Intelligence Platform, which allows real-time battlefield data integration for automated decision-making”.
In the United States, Palantir has long worked with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). An investigation by 404 Media revealed that the company was developing a tool that generates detailed dossiers on potential deportation targets, maps their locations and assigns “confidence scores” to their likely whereabouts.
The company has also attracted attention in Australia for its work with private sector clients, including Coles, where they were hired to cut costs and “optimise” the company’s workforce.
“We kill enemies”
Karp has been blunt about Palantir’s mission. Speaking to shareholders and investors last week, he described the company’s purpose as helping the West “scare enemies” and, “on occasion, kill them”.
Karp also joked about “getting a drone and having light fentanyl-laced urine spraying on analysts that tried to screw us”.
Millions in government contracts
Despite the controversy, Palantir has quietly built a substantial footprint in Australia. According to Austender data, the company has secured more than $50m in Australian government contracts since 2013, largely across defence and national security-related agencies.
The 2024 financial report of its Australian subsidiary, Palantir Technologies Australia Pty Ltd, show $25.5m in revenue from customer contracts in 2024, though the company’s local financial reports are not audited.
In 2020, Palantir recommended that the Australian government consider “expanding the exemption from public access to disclosure documents”, arguing that filing financial reports with ASIC “is expensive” and “gives competitors access to confidential information”.
