Palantir's $30,599,032.18 Relationship with George Mason University
Spreadsheets produced in response to a FOIA request to George Mason University reveal a multimillion-dollar relationship between the university and prominent surveillance firm Palantir.
As part of my survey of surveillance technologies paid for by Virginia government entities, I’ve focused so far on the company Dataminr and its rather unimpressive First Alert service purchased by the Virginia State Police and, until recently, James Madison University.
Read the Dataminr reporting here:
Using the same public search function of Virginia’s eProcurement Marketplace that revealed some of the Dataminr purchase orders, I decided to check for any government entities potentially doing business with Palantir.
Palantir, a sprawling software and now surveillance firm founded in part by billionaire Peter Thiel, has been in the news recently. See, for example: “Palantir Is Helping DOGE With a Massive IRS Data Project,” “ICE Just Paid Palantir Tens of Millions for ‘Complete Target Analysis of Known Populations’,” “Leaked: Palantir’s Plan to Help ICE Deport People,” and “Trump Taps Palantir to Compile Data on Americans.”
The Virginia eProcurement Marketplace search revealed purchase orders and amendments between George Mason University and Palantir USG Inc., one of Palantir Technologies Inc.’s many subsidiaries.
All entries seem to concern a $1,211,106.13 purchase order and amendments in 2023 for software licenses and “One (1) optional Centralized Experimental Capability (CEC).”
George Mason University FOIA Request
On April 25, 2025, I submitted a FOIA request to George Mason University seeking “any records, including but not limited to communications, mentioning or concerning the company Palantir or to/from any employee of Palantir” from January 1, 2023 until that day.
On May 2, 2025, GMU informed me that they found “92,611 item(s) (61.73 GB)” of responsive records and asked if I’d like to refine my request. I then truncated my request to “records from April 1, 2025 until April 7, 2025,” a week that included the nationwide “Hands Off” protests.
GMU responded: “University staff estimates that your request will cost $634, with 906 responsive records found.” So I refined my request to just records from April 5, 2025, the day of the protests.
GMU then reported 28 responsive records which they refuse to turn over due to an ongoing dispute about a FOIA fee from another request. They did, however, turn over five records, including these two fascinating spreadsheets containing “a report of total POs issued to Vendors by FY” and “a report of total spend by Vendor by FY” sent to key GMU staff on April 5, 2025.
The $30,599,032.18 Relationship
The Orders By Vendor spreadsheet contains over 6,500 rows of vendors and details the number and amount of purchase orders submitted by each vendor from FY2020-25.
On this sheet, Palantir USG Inc. doesn’t even crack the top 100 vendors by total invoiced amount, and the sheet shows a single PO amount of $1,211,106 from FY2023 that constitutes the only entry for Palantir USG Inc. from FY2020-25. This matches the PO records in the public Virginia eProcurement Marketplace database.
Yet the Spend by Vendor spreadsheet, which contains over 89,000 rows of vendors and the total spend on each for FY2020-25, paints a different picture of the relationship between GMU and Palantir.
On the Spend sheet, Palantir USG Inc. makes the top 15 vendors, joining the ranks of Dominion Virginia Power, the Department of the Treasury, the Bank of New York, and the Whiting-Turner Contracting Company.
While there are no amounts for Palantir USG Inc. from 2020-22, in 2023 we see $1,929,453.07. In 2024, the amount jumps to $5,986,823.80, and it skyrockets in 2025 to $22,682,755.31. The sheet displays the total as $30,599,032.18.
We know that since 2023, GMU has over 90,000 Palantir-related records. We know that two of the 14 members of Palantir’s Council of Advisors on Privacy and Civil Liberties are GMU professors (Missy Cummings, Priscilla Regan). We know that two Fellows at the National Security Institute at GMU’s Antonin Scalia Law School are Palantir employees (Samantha Clark, Geof Kahn).
And as Palantir is reportedly assisting ICE with surveillance and deportations, Maggie Roth just reported in Northern Virginia Magazine:
In the first five months of 2025, ICE has arrested more than 2,500 people in Virginia. And roughly twice as many arrests have happened in Fairfax County than in any other Virginia county.
But I can’t yet explain that $30,599,032.18 figure, and until I break the GMU FOIA logjam, I’m left with way more questions than answers.
Wow!
Thank you so much for your efforts here, Josh. Saw Roth's lying copaganda piece this morning in Northern Virginia Magazine, repeating & not challenging Youngkin's easily refuted lie that people being kidnapped at our courthouses are violent criminals. The problem is systemic criminalization & deportation. Chilling but unsurprising to learn GMU and Palantir are conmected; look fwd to hearing what you uncover on this!