Germany's military just told Palantir no. Vice Admiral Thomas Daum, head of the Bundeswehr's Cyber Force, made it clear the German armed forces won't use Palantir's Maven software to build their military cloud and AI infrastructure. The reason is simple: data sovereignty. At NATO, Palantir employees actually operate the software and access the data. For Germany's own national security systems, that's a dealbreaker. "It's unimaginable right now to allow industry employees access to national data holdings," Daum told Handelsblatt.
Instead, the Bundeswehr picked three European providers. German companies Almato (a Datagroup subsidiary based in Stuttgart) and Berlin startup Orcrist, plus French firm ChapsVision, will build the system. Their software gets tested this summer, with a contract awarded by year's end. All three handle data analytics and secure processing, keeping everything within European jurisdictions to meet GDPR and German security rules.
The Palantir rejection also reflects broader unease with co-founder Peter Thiel's influence, a dynamic that has also sparked controversy in the public sector similar to the tensions seen in the UK's healthcare system. Defense Minister Boris Pistorius voiced concerns in February about Thiel's minority stake in German drone maker Stark Defence. That deal eventually went through after parliamentary approval, but the wariness lingered. Meanwhile, tensions between governments and AI companies keep escalating across the Atlantic. Reports indicate the Pentagon pushed back on Anthropic for resisting unrestricted military use of its AI, while OpenAI moved in with its own defense deal. Germany's choice shows at least one NATO member drawing a hard line on who gets to touch their intelligence data.