Europe’s biggest banks and asset managers have dramatically increased their investment in tech company Palantir over the past year despite growing concerns of involvement in human rights violations and potential threats to European security, an analysis of company records show.
Palantir has come under fire for supplying the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) with its software to help cracking down on irregular migration and collaborating with the Israeli army.
Experts and politicians also warn that Palantir’s close ties to the Trump administration make European countries vulnerable to potential anti-democratic influences, as many of them rely on the company’s technology.
Allegations of involvement in human rights violations have been around for years. Amnesty International called out Palantir for allegedly failing to fulfill its human rights due diligence obligations under international standards in 2020, and US consultancy firm MSCI rated it 2 out of 10 on “civil liberties” and “human rights concerns” in a recent report.
“If Palantir chooses not to change, then they need to identify ways they can terminate that relationship”
But that hasn’t deterred investors. At the end of last year, more than 100 major European banks, asset managers, insurers and pension funds increased the aggregate number of Palantir shares they held by almost 70% compared to the year before. Together, they were worth at least $27 billion at the end of 2025, a cross-border investigation led by Follow the Money – together with Belgium’s De Tijd, Danish Børsen, Der Standard in Austria, Swiss Republik, Norway’s Morgenbladet, British The Nerve, and Spain’s El Pais – shows.
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Experts told Follow the Money that by investing in Palantir, banks and other institutional investors run the risk of violating international human rights standards.
Most of the 20 largest European investors in Palantir say they endorse the OECD guidelines that require due diligence when investing in companies linked to human rights abuses, particularly in conflict zones or in areas where Artificial Intelligence is used.
Tara Van Ho, an associate professor at St. Mary’s University in Texas and an expert on companies’ due diligence obligations, argued that the companies should potentially divest from Palantir.
“When there are credible concerns about human rights violations that Palantir is implicated in, the financial actors have a responsibility to use their own leverage against Palantir to try to effect change in its conduct,” she said. “If Palantir chooses not to change, then they need to identify ways they can terminate that relationship.”
But most investors aren’t stepping away:Norges Bank, French asset manager Amundi, and British insurer Legal & General, for example, all increased their stakes in Palantir – and so did major banks like London-based Barclays, Deutsche Bank, and France’s BNP Paribas, an analysis of financial reports shows.
Palantir rejects allegations that it might be contributing to human rights abuses or pushing for an anti-democratic agenda.
Booming investment
Co-founded in 2003 by US billionaire Peter Thiel and entrepreneur Alex Karp, amongst others, Palantir’s software can process large amounts of raw data in minimal time and helps clients uncover patterns for example on battlefields, where it helps to process data in near to real-time which can be used for targeting.
As a top-performing AI company, it has attracted investors from around the world – including from Europe.
From 2024 to 2025, Norges Bank upped its investment in Palantir by 60% to 29 million shares – worth $5.1 billion at the end of December 2025, FTM’s analysis shows.
Asked about the controversies surrounding Palantir, Norges Bank’s investment arm NBIM – which manages the government pension fund (the so-called oil fund) – said that it operated under a “mandate from the Ministry of Finance [of Norway] ”. The ministry said that the “fund’s ethical framework is currently being reviewed by a commission appointedby the government”.
These investments have been extremely profitable for the companies: the share price exploded in 2025, and the total value of the stake held by main companies almost quadrupled to $27 billion. (The value of the stock took a hit in 2026 of around 15%, despite peaking after the war in Iran flared up last month).
“Palantir takes seriously these allegations of fundamental rights harms”
Other companies also hold significant shares. French Amundi’s investments were worth nearly $3 billion by the end of 2025 after having bought another 9 million shares in the past year.
Amundi declined to comment.
Methodology
British Legal & General’s investment, meanwhile, was worth some $2.5 billion by the end of 2025. Barclays’ shareholding at the time stood around $2 billion, as did Deutsche Bank’s, whilst that of France’s BNP Paribas was just over $1 billion.
Legal & General and Deutsche Bank did not respond to requests for comment. BNPand Barclays told FTM’s media partners that they execute orders on behalf of their clients. However, according to experts – and the UN – this does not absolve them of their international human rights responsibilities.
Palantir spokesperson Nikolaj Gammeltoft said that the company was “proud of the European investments in the company”.
“Palantir takes seriously these allegations of fundamental rights harms and repeatedly addresses reporting on these topics,” he said, pointing to multiple publications on the matter. He added that Palantir “invests significant resources in meeting with entities from the human rights space”.
US influence
Palantir’s ties to US authorities extend beyond cooperation with ICE.
The US secret service CIA was one of the first investors in the company through its investment vehicle In-Q-Tel. Palantir has a high security clearance, giving the company access to data from US security services and the military.
Co-founder Thiel contributed to Trump’s campaign in 2016. He was also involved in the early stages of current vice-president JD Vance’s political career. About a dozen of the White House’s staff members have financial interests in the company, according to an analysis of White House disclosure documents. That includes senior adviser Stephen Miller – one of the architects of the US’s immigration policy. Overall, of the 1,500 people appointed by Trump, almost 150 hold Palantir shares, a ProPublica database suggests.
“It is one club, with one anti-democratic agenda, in which America becomes the dominant force”
Since Trump began his second term last year, Palantir has also secured major government contracts, including a deal with the US military that could be worth up to 10 billion dollars.
Palantir spokesperson Gammeltoft said that Palantir had also been working with the Obama and Biden administrations, implying that it wasn’t supporting specific parties or politicians.
Still, the apparent close alignment between the US government and secret service and Palantir has experts and politicians worried – especially because European governments rely on Palantir in critical areas, such as defence, intelligence, healthcare, and policing.
“You can no longer see them as separate entities. Trump and JD Vance on the one hand, and Peter Thiel, Alex Karp and Palantir on the other, are intertwined: business, political and ideological, and they move in the same circles,” said Sophie in ’t Veld, who was an EU lawmaker until 2024.
“It is one club, with one anti-democratic agenda, in which America becomes the dominant force to which the rest of the world bows,” she said.
Co-founder Thiel, for example, declared in 2009 that he believes that freedom and democracy are incompatible.
“[This] stands in direct contradiction to the values that Germany and Europe represent”
In ‘t Veld is not the only one with concerns: in Switzerland, the army rejected Palantir’s offers of collaboration multiple times, Swiss research platform and media partner Republik reported. The Danish intelligence services is seeking ways to part ways with Palantir, on which it heavily relies for data processing, according to Intelligence Online. (Danske Bank invested more than $250 million in the company between December 2024 and December 2025.)
Marietje Schaake, a fellow at the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered AI, sees yet another drawback to European investment: “It seems that Palantir is being viewed purely from an economic perspective,” she said. “Europe can no longer afford this. Investments in such American companies widen the gap with European alternatives. Thus, these parties are investing against the interests of Europe – and their own.”
Concerns over data security have prompted the cyber section of the German army to issue warnings about the company.
The use of Palantir is banned on the national level – but still, its tools are used by various police forces in some federal states.
This should be cause for worry, said Konstantin von Notz, a German lawmaker and vice-president of the parliament’s oversight committee over the country’s secret service.
“Against the backdrop of the anti-democratic views [of Palantir’s management] … we are astonished by the fact that financial involvement has not decreased in recent years, but has actually increased significantly,” von Notz said. “[This] stands in direct contradiction to the values that Germany and Europe represent.”
Italian economist Francesca Bria echoed the assessment. She leads the Eurostack initiative for European digital sovereignty, and mapped the links between American tech giants, tech billionaires, politicians and US and European government institutions in The Authoritarian Stack.
Europe is the next target
Her research showed that more and more critical state infrastructure is being privatised by these companies and their leaders, thus, she argued, eroding the basis of democratic power.
“These parties are constructing a post-democratic order, led by a small group of tech oligarchs who do not want to defend liberal democracy, but dismantle it,” she said. “Public [government] contracts and access to critical state infrastructure are the instruments they use to enforce American dominance onto the world. Europe is the next target.”
Palantir rejected the allegations of contributing to anti-democratic movements, spokesperson Nikolaj Gammeltoft said.
“Candidly, this is an absurd statement,” he said, arguing that its software helped European institutions in the healthcare, defence, law enforcement, and national security sectors.
“Palantir’s founding, and enduring, mission centers on supporting Western liberal democracies and their essential institutions. This is the cornerstone of our business and any “expert” describing our founders, and therefore our company mission, as anti-democratic, consciously neglects the mountain of evidence to the contrary.”
Researcher Bria, however, believes it is precisely Europe’s reliance on Palantir’s technology that made the continent vulnerable.
“Palantir is not a private company in any meaningful sense. It is an arm of the US national security state: a private instrument of geopolitical power. When European governments buy its tools, they are not just procuring software. They are surrendering sovereignty,” she said.
“Palantir has made itself indispensable and that is exactly the point. When you invest in that, you’re financing the war against European democracy,” she said.
