2003 – 2026 · PLTR · CIK 1321655
Palantir Leadership
Who founded Palantir, who runs it today, who sits on the board, and how the founder voting structure keeps effective control of the company in the hands of the same three people who started it. Sourced from the most recent DEF 14A proxy statement filed April 24, 2026 with the SEC.
Sibling page: Palantir Financials · Roster row: Palantir on /orgs/.
The 2003 co-founders — in order of current involvement
Palantir was incorporated in 2003 with five co-founders. “Palantir was founded by Peter Thiel” is a common oversimplification — Thiel funded the lab and chairs the board, but the operating CEO from the start has been Alex Karp, and the engineering co-founders Stephen Cohen, Joe Lonsdale, and Nathan Gettings built the product. Three of the five remain at Palantir as of the April 2026 proxy; two left to start other ventures more than a decade ago.
Operating CEO from incorporation in 2003; per the company's latest proxy, has held the CEO title since 2005 and the director seat since 2003. Stanford Law classmate of Peter Thiel; the unusual founder-CEO continuity at Palantir's scale is itself one of the more distinctive things about the company's leadership.
Funded the initial work via the early Founders Fund and has chaired the board since 2003. Co-founded PayPal in 1998; served on the Meta Platforms board from 2005 to 2022 and the AbCellera Biologics board from 2020 to 2024. President of Thiel Capital since 2011, partner of Founders Fund since 2005.
Engineering co-founder. Per the proxy, has held the President and Secretary titles “in various positions” since 2005, and the director seat since 2005. The lowest-public-profile of the three on-staff co-founders, but one of the two named officers (with Karp) on most company filings.
Engineering co-founder. Left day-to-day Palantir around 2009 to found Addepar, a wealth-management platform; later founded 8VC in 2015, the venture firm where current Palantir director Alexander Moore is now a partner.
Engineering co-founder; the original CTO. Has the lowest public profile of the five co-founders. Left Palantir around 2010 and has worked on subsequent technology startups since.
The five-person co-founder roster above is the one Palantir has named consistently since the 2020 direct-listing S-1. Karp, Thiel, and Cohen are the three Founders party to the Founder Voting Agreement described under Voting structure below; Lonsdale and Gettings are not.
Current executive officers
Listed in the “Executive Officers” section of the 2026 proxy statement filed April 24, 2026, current as of April 6, 2026. Click any row for the bio detail. The same five executive officers are the company's named executive officers (NEOs) for fiscal year 2025.
Alexander Karp
58
Co-Founder, Chief Executive Officer, and Director
2003 (founding)
One of Palantir's five co-founders; per the proxy, has served as CEO since 2005 and on the Board of Directors since 2003. Public commentary makes him one of the more visible US-listed software CEOs; the page intentionally does not catalogue that commentary — for the financial backdrop the operating CEO is steering, see the sibling Palantir Financials page.
Stephen Cohen
43
Co-Founder, President, Secretary, and Director
2003 (founding)
Engineering co-founder. The proxy lists his board tenure as starting in 2005, and his combined officer titles (President + Secretary) as held “in various positions” since the company's founding. Holds a B.S. in Computer Science from Stanford University. The lower-public-profile half of the on-staff co-founder pair, but a named signatory on the company's SEC filings.
Shyam Sankar
44
Chief Technology Officer and Executive Vice President
2006
Has held “various positions” since 2006; the most recent is CTO and Executive Vice President. Holds a B.S. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Cornell University and an M.S. in Management Science & Engineering from Stanford University. The longest-tenured non-founder executive on the current officer roster.
David Glazer
42
Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer
2013
Has held “various positions” since 2013; current titles are CFO and Treasurer. Holds a B.A. in History from Santa Clara University and a J.D. from Emory University School of Law. The proxy notes Mr. Glazer received refresh equity grants (RSUs and SARs) during 2025 after his 2024 grant fully vested.
Ryan Taylor
44
Chief Revenue Officer and Chief Legal Officer
2010
Has held “various positions” since 2010; current titles are CRO and CLO. Holds a B.S. in Computer Science and an M.S. in Management Science & Engineering from Stanford University, and a J.D. from Harvard Law School. The unusual CRO + CLO double-title pairs the customer-facing revenue-leadership role with the company's chief legal officer.
Ages, positions, and tenure are as listed in the most recent DEF 14A proxy statement filed with the SEC; the “At Palantir since” column is the year each officer first joined per the proxy bio. Unlike the shrinking list of consumer-tech companies that publish full executive bios on their own websites, Palantir's site does not maintain an officer-bio page — the proxy is the canonical source.
Board of directors
Seven directors, four of whom are independent under Nasdaq listing rules. Three (Karp, Cohen, Thiel) are co-founders. The board is currently elected annually for one-year terms; under Palantir's amended and restated certificate of incorporation, the board will become classified into three staggered classes once all Class F common stock has been converted to Class B (the “Class F Conversion”).
Alexander Karp
58
Co-Founder, Chief Executive Officer, and Director
2003
One of three Founders party to the Founder Voting Agreement. Selected to the board, per the proxy, “because of the perspective and experience he brings as our CEO and as one of our co-founders.” Not independent.
Stephen Cohen
43
Co-Founder, President, Secretary, and Director
2005
Engineering co-founder. One of three Founders party to the Founder Voting Agreement. Not independent.
Peter Thiel
58
Co-Founder and Chairman
2003
Has chaired the board since 2003. Co-founded PayPal in 1998 (served as CEO, President, and Chairman from 2000 until eBay's acquisition in 2002); president of Thiel Capital since 2011 and partner of Founders Fund since 2005. Previously on the boards of Meta Platforms (2005 – 2022) and AbCellera Biologics (2020 – 2024). One of three Founders party to the Founder Voting Agreement. Not independent. Designated Founders Excluded Shares (DFES): the proxy notes a special category of shares held by Mr. Thiel's affiliates — 55.1M Class A and 3.0M Class B as of the record date — that vote outside the Founder Voting Agreement.
Alexander Moore
43
Director (independent)
Jul 2020
Joined Palantir in February 2005 as a founding employee and served as director of operations until March 2010. Co-founded NodePrime, a cloud-automation company, in February 2013, where he served as Chief Operating Officer until its acquisition by Ericsson in April 2016. Joined 8VC — co-founder Joe Lonsdale's venture firm — as a partner in May 2017. Holds a B.A. in Economics from Stanford. Member of the Audit Committee and the Compensation, Nominating & Governance Committee.
Alexandra Schiff
45
Director (independent)
Jul 2020
Reporter for The Wall Street Journal from June 2004 – March 2005 and again from April 2013 – June 2020; staff writer and contributing editor at Condé Nast Portfolio from 2006 to 2009; her bylines have appeared in The New York Times, Vanity Fair, and Bloomberg Businessweek. The proxy notes she is currently working on her second book for Simon & Schuster. Holds a B.A. in English from Duke University. Member of the Compensation, Nominating & Governance Committee.
Lauren Friedman Stat
42
Director (independent)
Jan 2021
Per the proxy, brings “over two decades of experience in healthcare and technology” and was a senior advisor to Fortune 100 companies for fifteen years. Member of the Audit Committee.
Eric Woersching
42
Director (independent)
2022
The most recent addition to the board. Member of the Audit Committee.
Ages and committee memberships are as listed in the April 2026 proxy statement, current as of April 6, 2026. The proxy lists four directors as independent under Nasdaq listing rules: Moore, Schiff, Stat, and Woersching. Karp, Cohen, and Thiel are not independent.
Voting structure — how the founders keep effective control
Palantir has three series of common stock with different voting rights. The structure was put in place at the 2020 direct listing and has remained materially unchanged through 2026.
- Class A common stock — one vote per share. The shares that trade on Nasdaq under the ticker PLTR. Held by the public, employees, and most insiders. As of the April 6, 2026 record date, 2,295,915,766 shares were outstanding.
- Class B common stock — ten votes per share. Held by the Founders, certain affiliates, and a small number of other holders. As of the record date, 100,236,343 shares were outstanding.
- Class F common stock — the founder super-voting stock. All 1,005,000 outstanding shares are held in the Founder Voting Trust.
The Class F shares are the load-bearing piece. Subject to an Ownership Threshold (defined in the certificate of incorporation as the Founders and their affiliates collectively holding at least 100 million Corporation Equity Securities), the Class F stock has a variable number of votes per share — calibrated so that the Class F together with shares subject to the Founder Voting Agreement and certain Designated Founders Excluded Shares control 49.999999% of the total voting power on any given matter. As of the April 6, 2026 record date, the Ownership Threshold was satisfied, and the Class F shares had approximately 1,259.5 votes per share for Proposal 1 (the director election), representing roughly 27.7% of the voting power on that proposal.
The three Founders party to the Founder Voting Agreement — Alex Karp, Stephen Cohen, and Peter Thiel — vote the Class F shares by majority instruction: any two of the three control how the trust votes. If no two Founders agree, the trust votes withhold (for director elections) or abstain (on most other proposals). The Trustee exercises no independent voting discretion.
The 49.999999% cap is the structural punch line. It is high enough that, on any contested matter where a meaningful share of the public votes alongside the Founders, the Founders' bloc plus a sliver of public support is sufficient to carry the matter; it is low enough that the structure is not a literal majority-vote dictatorship. The arrangement is more aggressive than a typical dual-class structure but slightly less than an outright permanent control block, and the Class F shares automatically convert to Class B (collapsing the super-voting layer) once the Ownership Threshold is no longer met.
What changes after the “Class F Conversion”. The certificate of incorporation provides that, once all Class F has been converted to Class B, the board becomes classified into three approximately equal classes (Class I, II, III) serving staggered three-year terms instead of the current annual one-year terms. As of the April 2026 proxy, that conversion had not occurred and the board continues to be elected annually.
Notable departures
Senior departures with timing and (where stated) reason. Compared to the AI labs covered on this site, Palantir's executive turnover has been low — the founder-CEO continuity since 2003 is itself unusual at Palantir's scale. The most prominent departures are the two co-founders who left to start other ventures more than a decade ago.
The departures table is deliberately short. Palantir has not had the cluster of senior departures and re-entries that frontier-AI labs have produced; the company's executive officer roster has been stable for years. New departures, when they happen, will be added here in the same matched-set shape as the ChatGPT and Claude leadership pages' departures tables.
Read these primary sources
Most of the page's content is paraphrased from the URLs below. They are the authoritative places to read what Palantir has said in its own SEC filings, what the company posts on its own About page, and what contemporaneous reporting has covered.
Palantir SEC filings
DEF 14A is the canonical source for officers, directors, and voting structure. The 10-K supplements with “Directors and Executive Officers.” The 2020 S-1 has the founder bios and original voting structure.
# Most recent DEF 14A — officers, directors, voting structure
https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1321655/000132165526000019/pltr-20260423.htm
# Most recent 10-K (FY2025, filed 2026-02-17)
https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1321655/000132165526000011/pltr-20251231.htm
# Palantir on EDGAR — full filing history
https://www.sec.gov/cgi-bin/browse-edgar?action=getcompany&CIK=0001321655
# EDGAR submissions JSON — full filing index for Palantir
https://data.sec.gov/submissions/CIK0001321655.jsonPalantir's own pages
Palantir does not maintain a public officer-bio page; the most relevant company-side page is the About page, which describes the company's mission framing.
# Palantir About page
https://www.palantir.com/about/
# Palantir Investor Relations — SEC filings landing
https://investors.palantir.com/
# Sibling co-founder ventures
https://addepar.com/ # Joe Lonsdale, Addepar
https://8vc.com/ # Joe Lonsdale, 8VC
https://foundersfund.com/ # Peter Thiel, Founders FundLong-form reporting
For founder-history detail and contemporaneous coverage of the 2020 direct listing, the post-listing executive arrangements, and Palantir-related governance commentary.
# NYT, WSJ, Bloomberg, FT, Reuters, The Information — archive search
https://www.nytimes.com/ # search: "Palantir"
https://www.bloomberg.com/ # search: "Palantir"
https://www.theinformation.com/ # subscription, deepest reporting
https://www.wired.com/ # on Palantir's defense / intelligence workSources: Palantir's own SEC filings — specifically the April 2026 DEF 14A proxy statement for officers, directors, and voting structure; the FY2025 10-K filed February 2026; palantir.com/about for the company's own framing; contemporaneous reporting in NYT, WSJ, Bloomberg, FT, Reuters, The Information, and Wired. Reporter coverage is cited under fair use (linked, not republished). Last updated April 2026.
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