A new Guardian report indicates that sensitive financial data in the U.K. will soon be handed over to Palantir. It’s not an auspicious moment for the U.K. government to make such a deal.
To be absolutely clear from the jump, there is no evidence that Palantir has anything whatsoever to do with the scandals around convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, but the vibes around this deal are very much off right now. The Epstein scandal seems poised to tear the two-party system in the U.K. to shreds, and Epstein is tied to Palantir co-founder Peter Thiel. Labour, the massively unpopular ruling party, has a very big Epstein problem, and seems enamored with Palantir lately.
If you’re an American and you don’t follow this stuff, just know that when MP Jeremy Corbyn mentioned “this ghastly company Palantir” on the floor of Parliament last month in the context of Palantir’s deal with the National Health Service (NHS), he probably only got away with it because he was already ejected from Labour long ago.
And now Palantir suddenly has a deal with the U.K.’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), according to the Guardian, and the deal involves the American data analytics company sniffing around in internal intelligence data in order to root out white collar crime. On a trial basis for three-months, Palantir will get access to something called the FCA’s “data lake.”
One anonymous FCA agent who talked to the Guardian had misgivings, asking, “Once Palantir understands how we detect money-laundering threats, how do we know that they are ethically reliable enough not to go to share that information?”
Palantir CEO Alex Karp blurts his opinions out seemingly as much as possible, as is fashionable for tech CEOs right now. In doing so, he has not made it easy to dispel worries like the ones expressed by that anonymous FCA agent. He thinks, for instance, Americans should tolerate privacy invasions in pursuit of U.S. AI dominance over China, and that tech companies should not take moral stances in opposition to whatever the United States government wants them to do.
But on social media, it’s not Karp whose involvement with the U.K. government seems to trigger concerns about untrustworthiness the most. That would be co-founder Peter Thiel, who appears in the Epstein files 2,281 times according to Wired.
Oh ffs.
Tentacles everywhere.More palantir hell:https://t.co/nNLRQji5eN pic.twitter.com/7KZMlDl5da
— tern (@1goodtern) March 22, 2026
Again, no specific accusation against Palantir has been made, but Thiel’s ties to Epstein, and those of former U.S. Ambassador Peter Mandelson, who is accused of feeding sensitive information to Epstein, have nonetheless created a tangled mess. Al Jazeera put it this way:
“Scrutiny over Mandelson, Palantir, and its relationship with the UK government gained new urgency after the ex-ambassador’s arrest in late February over allegations contained in the Epstein files – millions of documents detailing the disgraced financier’s activities – that Mandelson had maintained a relationship with Epstein after his 2008 sex offence conviction and may have shared with Epstein market-sensitive information of financial interest to him.”
According to the Guardian, the data Palantir will mine for evidence of financial malfeasance includes phone recordings, social media posts, and emails. It will reportedly use its AI system called Foundry to police the 42,000 firms regulated by the FCA.
In response to another deal Palantir secured with the U.K. government last year, a motion was put forward in Parliament last month and signed by 33 members. Signatories are “concerned about reports of serious allegations of complicity in human rights violations and the undermining of democratic processes made against Palantir Technologies,” and request that the government “publish all material and records relating to the December 2025 contract award decision.”
Gizmodo reached out to Palantir for comment. We will update if we hear back.
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