“Accelerating the transformation, and making lots of money.”
That’s how Palantir CEO Alex Karp described his company’s new partnership with Lumen Technologies.
On October 23 2025, Bloomberg reported that Lumen had agreed to spend more than $200 million over several years on Palantir’s software, citing people familiar with the matter. The two firms later confirmed a multi-year strategic partnership, combining Palantir’s Foundry and Artificial Intelligence Platform (AIP) with Lumen’s Connectivity Fabric to accelerate enterprise AI adoption.
The companies said they will offer a “connected ecosystem” that lets businesses move and manage data securely across multi-cloud environments while adding real-time intelligence. Lumen CEO Kate Johnson called it an “incredible partnership,” adding in the official press release, “Palantir frees data, while Lumen moves it.”
Lumen Becomes “Customer Zero” for Palantir’s AI
For Lumen, the agreement deepens a year-long collaboration. In September, the telecom firm had begun using Palantir’s platforms internally to streamline operations, finance, and network management. Johnson told TechCrunch that the deployment became “customer zero” for proving AI’s value, contributing to $350 million in cost reductions in 2025 and helping Lumen target $1 billion in expense cuts by 2027.
For Palantir, the deal extends a commercial pivot already underway. Long defined by its defense and government contracts, the company has spent the past year building alliances across aviation, automotive, and telecom sectors, nineteen partnerships in total, according to TechCrunch. Each partnership embeds Palantir’s software inside another company’s products and distribution network.
The Lumen arrangement pushes that logic further. Rather than a conventional client-vendor contract, it positions Lumen as both customer and channel, using Palantir’s software to modernize its infrastructure and then offering joint AI services to enterprise clients. In effect, Palantir is replicating its operating model inside other companies, turning its technology into a framework they can resell: a form of AI franchising rather than software licensing.
Karp framed the collaboration as a formative step. Speaking on Fox Business after the announcement, he called it “a very large deal” and said that Lumen’s modernization could make it “the backbone of every AI use case in the country.” He described the United States as being in an AI “arms race,” arguing that “we’re going to either have AI and determine the rules, or our adversaries will… determine the rules”.
Turning Clients Into Channels, and AI Into an Operating System
The structure of the Lumen partnership suggests how Palantir intends to scale its business.
Historically, the company’s growth depended on bespoke, high-touch deployments for governments and large enterprises. Each new customer required extensive integration and oversight by Palantir engineers. That model limited volume, even as demand for enterprise AI surged.
Through partners like Lumen, Palantir gains access to existing enterprise relationships without expanding its own sales force. Lumen manages the infrastructure and customer base; Palantir provides the data logic that turns those networks into AI-ready systems. Together they market a co-branded service that others can adopt.
This structure resembles franchising more than licensing. Palantir supplies the Ontology, its proprietary framework for mapping data, context, and decision rules, while partners handle local delivery and support. If replicated across industries, the approach could multiply Palantir’s reach while keeping its intellectual core intact.
The commercial upside is clear. Palantir’s enterprise revenue has been growing faster than its government segment this year, and investors see partnerships like Lumen’s as proof the company can scale beyond defense. Lumen’s share price rose about 3.7 percent in pre-market trading after the announcement, according to.
But the model carries risk. Analysts at Reuters Breakingviews and investor forums warn that Palantir’s valuation, already among the highest in enterprise software, assumes flawless execution. Rolling out embedded systems through large industrial partners introduces integration lag and revenue recognition delays, and success depends on partners maintaining Palantir’s standards of implementation.
Still, the partnership reflects a broader shift in the AI economy. Power is moving from the companies building the biggest models to those controlling where and how those models run. Palantir’s software governs data movement and orchestration; Lumen provides the bandwidth and physical network to carry it. Together they control two of the most expensive layers of AI deployment: intelligence and infrastructure.
The deal also aligns with Karp’s national-security framing. By embedding American-made AI infrastructure into major domestic networks, Palantir extends its “arms-race” logic into the private sector. The result is a commercial alliance built on the same premise as its defense contracts: whoever builds and operates the infrastructure, sets the rules.
For Lumen, the agreement signals a decisive turn from legacy telecom toward AI-driven connectivity. For Palantir, it signals a company beginning to replicate itself through others.
Palantir used to sell software. Now it’s also selling the system, and the instructions for running it. That, as Karp put it, is how you accelerate the transformation, and make lots of money.
