The little-known French company trying to unseat Palantir in Europe

A little-known French software group is seeking to position itself as the European answer to Palantir as governments across the region try to cut their reliance on US tech companies.

ChapsVision, which won a French government contract in June to replace Palantir at the country’s domestic intelligence agency, is in talks with governments across the EU and competing for major German defence and police contracts.

Its pitch is that Europe’s sovereignty concerns, combined with growing unease over Palantir’s political ties and operating model, have created an opening for a European-owned data platform.

“We are not, and we do not wish to be, a black box . . . Our algorithms, our architecture, and our code are transparent. They are open,” ChapsVision group general manager Silvano Sansoni told the FT.

The French project also includes contracts to create the data infrastructure for all government ministries and about 50 public agencies, setting up a wide-ranging test case for whether a sovereign solution can be deployed at this scale.

Palantir, whose software is widely used by US defence and intelligence agencies, has faced growing scrutiny in parts of Europe as governments reassess their dependence on US technology companies.

Germany’s armed forces have excluded Palantir from contracts, while officials in Denmark and the Netherlands have also said they want to uncouple from the US-based software group.

Swiss authorities have declined to adopt its software, while in the UK a £330mn deal for the health service has faced significant scrutiny and London’s mayor vetoed a £50mn contract with the city’s Metropolitan Police.

Beyond the sovereignty argument, ChapsVision is also challenging Palantir’s business model. Sansoni said ChapsVision’s software did not require the long-term dependence on embedded engineers that has become a hallmark of Palantir’s approach.

“Our goal is to transfer the skills to the client and then move on to the next project. We, as a software publisher, don’t aim to stay with the client for 10 or 40 years and, so to speak, take over their business. This is somewhat different from Palantir’s approach.”

Paris-based ChapsVision, whose name derives from the first initials of founder Olivier Dellenbach’s children, first started out in 2019 developing tools for financial services.

It has since grown to about €200mn in annual revenues, with much of that growth coming from acquisitions. It has made nearly 30 acquisitions to date, buying in expertise in areas including translation AI, defence software and semantic search as it tries to become a European data champion.

While half of its business is from the public sector, it also works for large companies such as Pfizer, LVMH, L’Oréal, Airbus, Safran, ExxonMobil, Total and AstraZeneca. With backing from investors including Bpifrance, Tikehau, Jolt and Qalium, ChapsVision is considering a potential initial public offering by the end of the decade.

Europe’s drive for tech sovereignty has already helped the company win a German intelligence contract this year. It is also competing with Palantir for two major German contracts, covering North Rhine-Westphalia police and the Bundeswehr.

The rollout of ChapsVision’s software across France’s domestic intelligence agency will test whether the country can replace a critical US software platform with a domestic alternative after years of mixed success with state-backed digital projects.

Under French President Emmanuel Macron, France has sought to champion domestic technologies, though several state-backed digital projects have suffered from fragmented procurement, technical flaws or limited adoption.

“The move from Palantir to ChapsVision is first and foremost a political manoeuvre,” said Charles Thibout, an expert in digital transformations and technology at the Institute for International and Strategic Relations.

“The question we can ask ourselves is whether this is truly a strategic choice, informed by a clear awareness of the stakes and ChapsVision’s technological capabilities, or rather a public relations move to silence criticism about the government’s close ties with major American tech companies,” he added.

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The migration from Palantir to ChapsVision’s tools in French intelligence is expected to take up to two years while the government expands computing capacity, transfers intelligence data and trains officials.

“The product is ready, we have worked on it for four years . . . but it is the client who determines the timeline,” said Sansoni, adding that the company’s “goal” now was to secure other large-scale public projects on the back of this one.

But ChapsVision faces an uphill battle against its much bigger rival Palantir, which has a market cap of $418bn and reported annual revenues of $4.5bn in 2025.

Sansoni noted that “humility is important”, given ChapsVision is up against a company with “much larger investments”.

“But we have still managed to position ourselves on differentiating factors for customers. We have mainly looked for the areas where one would say Palantir is less effective.”