Evaluating a company's impact (the case of Palantir)

This week’s read time: 3 minutes

You are reading Green Digest Impact, a bi-weekly newsletter that provides in-depth analyses of companies’ environmental and social impact.

OUR APPROACH

Central to our narrative is the principle of double-materiality, which recognizes that a company's impact is twofold: it affects both the environment and society at large, and in turn, these external factors influence the company's financial and operational performance.

While traditional ESG assessments focus on the latter, we aim to examine companies' direct impacts on these factors. In pursuit of this, we introduce a unique scoring system that quantifies a company's impact.

The insights and analyses presented in Green Digest Impact are brought to you by a partnership between Green Digest and Impaakt, a Swiss-based impact data provider. Contact Impaakt here to explore how they can assist you.

THIS WEEK’S COMPANY

Palantir

This week, we dive deep into Palantir’s environmental and social impact.

Palantir Technologies is a US-based software company that specializes in big data analytics and decision intelligence tools for governments, financial institutions, and large corporations.

Some interesting facts:

• Known for its secrecy, Palantir operated in stealth mode for years, with very little public information about its clients or capabilities.

• Palantir’s earliest and largest clients were US intelligence agencies, especially the CIA, which was also one of its earliest investors through In-Q-Tel (the CIA’s venture arm).

COMPANY’S IMPACT

Palantir’s overall impact score

Palantir has a general impact score of -0.09 (on a scale from -5 to +5). Its impact is spread across six European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS) topics, split between positive and negative analyses.

In the socio-economic sphere,

Palantir enhances productivity and informed decision‑making across business and government through its big-data platforms, Gotham and Foundry. Gotham is widely used by defense and intelligence agencies to detect patterns across vast, fragmented datasets—such as criminal networks or terrorism threats. Foundry, on the other hand, powers operational decisions in industries from logistics to healthcare, helping organizations optimize supply chains, manage risks, and deploy AI tools at scale. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Foundry enabled governments to track infections, manage resources, and improve vaccine distribution. Through contracts with the US federal government, UK’s NHS, and other institutions, Palantir provides infrastructure that centralizes data and accelerates decision-making.

However, Palantir’s surveillance technologies have been deployed in high-conflict zones in the Middle East, where they are believed to enable intrusive tracking and population monitoring. Critics argue these tools contribute to systemic overreach and raise serious concerns about discrimination, civil liberties, and compliance with international humanitarian norms.

Moreover, the company’s longstanding partnership with US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) - has also drawn backlash. The company’s software is believed to aggregate and analyze personal and biometric data across various government systems, enabling ICE to build detailed migrant profiles and track their movements. Critics argue that this enhances the agency’s capacity for deportation raids and erodes due process by automating complex, high-stakes decisions, such as identifying “targets” through probabilistic analytics. Amnesty International warns the tech may be “contributing to serious human rights violations.”

Environmentally,

Palantir reported 23,018 tonnes of CO₂e emissions in 2024, with Scope 3 emissions accounting for nearly 90% of its total footprint. The company provides limited transparency on broader environmental metrics and has stated that it does no physical manufacturing, so they have minimal water usage.

_{*The impact score is current as of June 2025 and may be subject to changes as it is continuously updated.
**You can find details about the scoring methodology here and the information sources here.}

CONCLUSION

Materiality Map & Final Words

So, Palantir’s key social and environmental impact lies in …

its ability to enhance data-driven decision-making across governments and industries. Its platforms, Gotham and Foundry, power operations in over 150 countries, supporting missions from public health to supply chain optimization and national security. These tools offer significant productivity gains and real-time insights for complex challenges.

However, this impact is counterbalanced by serious human rights and privacy concerns, particularly around its work with immigration enforcement and surveillance in high-conflict zones. On the environmental side, while Palantir’s physical footprint is limited, it provides minimal transparency beyond emissions reporting.

Palantir’s overall impact score of -0.09 reflects its dual role as a powerful enabler of institutional efficiency, weighed against the ethical implications of its technologies and the need for greater oversight.

If you’d like to delve deeper into Palantir’s impact, you can explore it here.

If you'd like to learn more about the scoring methodology, you can do so here.

Do you have a specific company you'd like us to cover? Send your suggestions to [email protected]

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