Palantir Took a Swiss Courtroom Loss and a European Credibility Hit – Moby THE GIST
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Palantir took another credibility hit in Zurich after the city’s commercial court allowed only one of 23 counter-statements filed by the U.S. data analytics company to be published.
The loss, about SFr9,000 ($11,000), is pocket change compared to the stock’s slide. Since its all-time high of $207 last November, shares are down nearly 45%, wiping roughly $210 billion from its market cap.
The Swiss effectively telling CEO Alex Karp and Chairman Peter Thiel to take their rebuttals to X and elsewhere is unusual for a company that, for the past couple of years, seemed to do whatever it wanted. It’s one of many signs its pull in Europe and beyond may be waning.
WHAT HAPPENED
In December, the digital magazine Republik published two articles arguing that Palantir’s relationship with Switzerland would be risky for the neutral state.
The first focused on the geopolitical and strategic risks of the Swiss government adopting Palantir’s tech, especially how it would handle its data given how closely Palantir is tied to the U.S. Defense Department. President Trump has not been particularly friendly with the Swiss lately, recently raising tariffs on the country after stating he “didn’t really like the way she (Karin Keller-Sutter, President of the Swiss Confederation in 2025) talked to us,” describing her as “very aggressive.”
The second piece appears to have been the one that set Karp and co. off, revealing how Swiss government agencies had repeatedly rejected Palantir’s software.
Together, the articles were a one-two punch. Heise Online, a German technology and digital-news site, defines the saga as “seven years of largely unsuccessful acquisition efforts by Palantir with Swiss federal authorities.” Palantir responded by suing the publication in an effort to force it to print 23 specific “counter-statements” (rebuttals) alongside the two articles. The company lost in court, leaving only one counter-statement to run.
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To save face, Palantir, in an effort to “clarify the facts,” “dispel misunderstandings,” and “ensure that decision-makers and the public are informed,” posted the 23 counter-statements in a Medium blog post titled “Correction: How the online magazine Republik distorted a government report on Palantir.” It did something similar when Alex Karp’s manifesto, The Technological Republic, was published, writing out 22 points outlining tech’s role in national defense.
WHY IT MATTERS
The loss and subsequent wave of bad press hit Palantir exactly where it feared most.
The company has been bleeding public-sector credibility across the European Union and the United Kingdom for months. If Zurich isn’t interested, Brussels and London are watching. In some cases, they’re acting on it, replacing Palantir with companies like the French ChapsVision, which competes with Palantir in key areas. France ditched Palantir altogether on the basis of “strategic dependency,” Defense Minister Sébastien Lecornu said on June 16, adding that he hopes to build “real strategic autonomy.” Germany is on board too, partnering with the country’s domestic intelligence agency, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution. London’s mayor blocked a proposed Metropolitan Police contract for Palantir in May, a potential 50 million-pound loss, according to Reuters, citing “value-for-money” and those pesky “ethical concerns.”
That leaves Palantir with one country it can rely on to keep those government contracts rolling: the United States. On Monday, the federal government announced the company will be used for the U.S. military’s “Next Generation Command and Control common data layer baseline,” or NGC2. Built on Foundry and Anduril’s Lattice as the “tactical data layer,” Palantir will do what it does best: serve as the backend for the entire military enterprise.
WHAT’S NEXT
On its face, this looks like yet another win for the company, but in light of the E.U. and U.K. viewing Palantir as a liability rather than a necessity, we are starting to view the U.S. military as ever more existentially important to the company — if not an outright crutch. Worse, what happens if the Democrats get back into office and suddenly revoke all those military contracts? What then?
One person who’s been shockingly quiet through PLTR’s nearly 45% drop is Michael Burry. He built a block of long-dated puts on the stock for June 17, 2027, with a strike price of 50, and December 19, 2026, with a strike price of 100, per his Substack post back in April. He’s not in the money yet, but given how the stock is moving, Burry is close.