Palantir hires ex-Sen. Tester as Democrats plan to probe the firm

Palantir Technologies has hired former Sen. Jon Tester, a Montana Democrat, as the software company prepares for oversight from a Democratic-led Congress that takes office in January, NPR reported on Nov. 9.

Tester, who lost his 2024 re-election race, told NPR his role is “advisory in nature, it is not lobbying.” He said he will focus on the government services side of Palantir’s work. NPR reported that other technology companies are also hiring former Democratic lawmakers and aides to make their case to the incoming House and Senate majorities.

“Perception is reality in Washington, D.C. and in politics in general,” Tester told NPR. “But the fact is, I think Palantir has got a good story to tell, and they need to tell it.”

Tester was an outspoken critic of the PATRIOT Act during his 18 years in the Senate. Asked by NPR whether his privacy concerns still hold, he said Palantir is different because it does not build “big databases” or trade in private data. “This is an organization that believes in privacy,” he said. He also called the midterm results a blue “tidal wave” and said he does not expect “the kind of aggressive tactics that were taken forth by ICE moving forward.”

Palantir is valued at more than $350 billion and holds about $2 billion in federal contracts, according to government records cited by NPR. Most are with the Departments of Defense, Homeland Security and State. The company also works with the Departments of Agriculture, Veterans Affairs and Health and Human Services.

NPR reported that more than a dozen former Palantir employees criticized the company last year over a $30 million contract with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to build a tool giving “near real-time visibility” into the movement of migrants. They argued the company broke its own code of conduct.

Palantir has denied that it aids mass surveillance. The company says it does not gather or manipulate data and instead builds tools that let government agencies and private companies organize their own information, NPR reported. It has said it is committed to “protecting privacy and upholding liberal democratic values.”

On April 16, Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and Reps. Dan Goldman, D-N.Y., and Nydia Velázquez, D-N.Y., led 30 lawmakers in a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin and Acting ICE Director Todd Lyons. It asked for Palantir contracts since Jan. 1, 2020, the datasets fed into its systems, data retention safeguards and how the tools are used on people who observe or protest enforcement. The lawmakers asked for answers by April 24.

Wyden will chair the Senate Finance Committee next year. His staff told NPR he “has a number of questions about Palantir’s work to facilitate the Trump-Vance abuse of government data that he intends to ask again as chairman of the Finance Committee.” The statement added: “If Palantir is not responsive next year, compulsory processes will be on the table.”

NPR said Wyden was not fully satisfied with Palantir’s earlier response, according to his Senate office. Palantir had told lawmakers it is “neither conducting nor enabling mass surveillance of American citizens.”

Aya Ibrahim, a senior fellow at the AI Now Institute and a former State Department official, told NPR the hiring is no coincidence. “I think at the end of the day, these companies have an inordinate amount of money and they will try and put it wherever they can in order to stave off any real accountability,” she said.

Palantir CEO Alex Karp, who describes himself as a liberal, has criticized Democrats on immigration and artificial intelligence. In a 2025 Axios interview quoted by NPR, he said: “You have to grow a spine because a lot of these people actually agree with me in private.”