Palantir AIPCon 11: Ondas, Zeta, Tampa General, Nvidia, Cisco, and more!

SUMMARY

Industry leaders and forward deployed engineers convened at Palantir’s 11th AIPCon to discuss the company’s evolving partnerships, technological advancements, and the impact of AI across sectors such as healthcare, cybersecurity, and defense. Key participants from Zeta, Cisco, Tampa General Hospital, NVIDIA, Ondas, and Method Security highlighted the significance of data ontology, institutional sovereignty, and collaborative innovation in driving outcomes and shaping the future of enterprise AI.

MAIN POINTS

• Tom and Joanna discuss their decade-long journey as forward deployed engineers at Palantir, highlighting the company's evolving culture and mission-driven work. [1:00]
• The engineers recount their experience deploying Palantir Foundry for the NHS during the COVID-19 crisis, emphasizing the tangible impact of their work on healthcare logistics and outcomes. [6:00]
• Tom and Joanna explain Palantir's partnership with Ondas, detailing how Foundry is deployed at both the parent and operator levels to unify and optimize operations. [11:01]
• The interview wraps up with rapid-fire questions, revealing personal insights and misconceptions about Palantir’s products and culture. [15:00]
• David Steinberg, CEO of Zeta, describes the strategic partnership with Palantir, focusing on integrating Zeta’s data cloud with Foundry to enhance marketing intelligence and client outcomes. [17:00]
• Steinberg elaborates on the cultural alignment between Zeta and Palantir, noting their shared commitment to outcome-based business models and deep client relationships. [22:00]
• Steinberg discusses Zeta's evolution from a marketing platform to an intelligence infrastructure company, referencing a pivotal 2017 board meeting and recent Harvard case study. [28:01]
• He highlights the growing institutional investor interest in Zeta, attributing it to the company’s strong performance metrics and expanding market recognition. [31:00]
• Jeetu Patel, President and Chief Product Officer at Cisco, reflects on the current AI revolution and Cisco’s role in providing secure, observable, and resilient infrastructure. [33:01]
• Patel outlines Cisco’s partnerships with AI leaders, including Palantir and Nvidia, and discusses the exponential growth in AI agent usage and its implications for the workforce. [36:01]
• He details the Secure AI Factory collaboration with Nvidia and Palantir, designed to offer validated, secure AI infrastructure for enterprises. [41:00]
• Patel addresses the accelerating pace of cybersecurity threats, the importance of machine-scale defenses, and Cisco’s approach to integrating security into network infrastructure. [47:00]
• Patel shares his personal journey from India to leading Cisco, emphasizing the opportunities provided by America and the importance of using one’s platform for positive impact. [52:00]
• Jamie and Jasmine from Tampa General Hospital discuss their collaboration with Palantir, focusing on operational and clinical use cases that have transformed patient care and hospital efficiency. [57:01]
• They address public concerns about AI in healthcare, emphasizing transparency, partnership with frontline staff, and the positive impact on patient outcomes. [1:02:00]
• Jamie details the development and results of their sepsis detection tool, which has saved over a thousand lives by enabling earlier intervention and streamlined workflows. [1:11:00]
• Sam and Dan, founders of Method Security and former Palantir employees, explain their mission to deliver cyber deterrence and resilience through AI-driven security solutions. [1:19:00]
• Method Security announces the Cardinal program, a free autonomous red teaming service for critical infrastructure, developed in partnership with Palantir. [1:23:01]
• Justin Boitano of NVIDIA discusses the company’s AI infrastructure buildout, the importance of open source models, and the partnership with Palantir to optimize supply chain management. [1:30:00]
• Boitano explains how Palantir’s ontology enables unified data models for complex supply chains, enhancing decision-making and operational efficiency at NVIDIA. [1:37:01]
• Ryan Hartman, CEO of Ondas Sentinel, describes the company’s focus on autonomous defense technologies and its integration with Palantir’s software for mission autonomy. [1:41:00]
• Hartman discusses the impact of the Ukraine conflict on defense innovation, the importance of low-cost autonomous systems, and the competitive landscape with China. [1:48:00]
• Sid, a forward deployed engineer at Palantir, recounts his journey from intern to leading the NVIDIA partnership, emphasizing the mission-driven culture and focus on institutional sovereignty. [1:53:01]
• Sid explains the technical process and strategic value of fine-tuning AI models with proprietary data, protecting organizational alpha in collaboration with NVIDIA and Dell. [1:59:01]
• Sid reflects on the positive, outcome-oriented approach to AI at Palantir, advocating for value-driven innovation over doomerism and highlighting the collaborative company culture. [2:07:02]

DETAILED ANALYSIS

Palantir’s 11th AIPCon brought together a diverse group of industry leaders, engineers, and executives to discuss the company’s expanding influence across sectors and the transformative role of artificial intelligence in modern enterprises. The event opened with Tom and Joanna, two veteran forward deployed engineers, who reflected on their decade at Palantir. They described a dynamic environment where the company’s mission and culture have evolved in response to global events and customer needs.

Their work with the NHS during the COVID-19 pandemic was highlighted as a pivotal moment, where Palantir’s Foundry platform enabled rapid, outcome-driven solutions for ventilator and PPE allocation, demonstrating the tangible impact of close collaboration between engineers and end users.

The conversation shifted to Palantir’s partnership with Ondas, a rapidly growing conglomerate in the defense and industrial sectors. Tom and Joanna explained how Foundry is deployed both at the parent company and individual operator levels, integrating previously siloed operations and enabling real-time data sharing and decision-making. This approach mirrors Palantir’s broader strategy of embedding forward deployed engineers within client organizations to drive digital transformation from within.

David Steinberg, CEO of Zeta, provided insight into the strategic partnership between Zeta and Palantir. Zeta, originally known for its marketing platform, has repositioned itself as an intelligence infrastructure company. By integrating Zeta’s data cloud with Palantir Foundry, the partnership aims to deliver enhanced business intelligence and marketing outcomes for clients.

Steinberg emphasized the cultural alignment between the two companies, both of which prioritize outcome-based business models and deep, trust-based client relationships. He noted that the partnership has already yielded rapid results, with three major enterprise clients adopting the integrated solution and a robust pipeline of future opportunities.

Steinberg also referenced a transformative 2017 board meeting, documented in a recent Harvard case study, which marked Zeta’s pivot toward intelligence and AI infrastructure. He highlighted Zeta’s strong performance metrics, including high growth and retention rates, which have attracted increasing interest from institutional investors. This shift reflects a broader trend of enterprises seeking to leverage AI not just for marketing, but as a core driver of business intelligence and operational efficiency.

Jeetu Patel, President and Chief Product Officer at Cisco, offered a macro perspective on the AI revolution. He described the transition from chatbots to autonomous agents, noting that agents now consume significantly more computational resources than human users. Patel underscored the importance of secure, observable, and resilient infrastructure, areas where Cisco has deep expertise.

He detailed Cisco’s collaborations with AI leaders such as Palantir and Nvidia, including the development of the Secure AI Factory—a validated reference architecture designed to simplify and secure enterprise AI deployments.

Patel addressed the escalating pace of cybersecurity threats, emphasizing the need for machine-scale defenses to counter increasingly automated attacks. He explained that Cisco’s approach integrates security directly into network infrastructure, leveraging the company’s vast telemetry data to prevent lateral movement by attackers. Patel’s personal journey from India to leading Cisco illustrated the opportunities enabled by the American innovation ecosystem and the responsibility of using one’s platform for societal benefit.

In the healthcare domain, Jamie and Jasmine from Tampa General Hospital shared their experience collaborating with Palantir. Initially focused on operational challenges such as scheduling and patient placement, the partnership quickly expanded to encompass over 55 use cases across clinical, operational, and revenue cycle domains. A standout achievement was the development of a sepsis detection tool, which leverages real-time data integration to enable earlier intervention and has saved over a thousand lives.

The hospital’s approach to AI emphasizes transparency, collaboration with frontline staff, and a commitment to augmenting rather than replacing human roles. Both Jamie and Jasmine highlighted the importance of consolidating data across departments, enabling more effective change management and continuous quality improvement.

The discussion with Sam and Dan, founders of Method Security and former Palantir employees, focused on the evolving landscape of cybersecurity. Method Security’s mission is to deliver cyber deterrence and resilience to both government and enterprise clients, leveraging AI to simulate and defend against advanced threats. The Cardinal program, launched in partnership with Palantir, offers a free autonomous red teaming service to critical infrastructure providers, addressing the growing need for accessible, high-quality cybersecurity solutions.

Sam and Dan emphasized the importance of ontological data modeling—a core Palantir capability—in enabling organizations to map, monitor, and defend their digital assets in real time.

Justin Boitano, VP of Enterprise AI at NVIDIA, discussed the unprecedented demand for AI infrastructure and the company’s commitment to both frontier and open source models. The partnership with Palantir centers on optimizing NVIDIA’s complex supply chain, which involves thousands of suppliers and millions of components. By leveraging Palantir’s ontology, NVIDIA has unified disparate data systems, enabling rapid, AI-assisted decision-making and more efficient allocation of resources.

Boitano noted that post-training open models with proprietary data allows NVIDIA to achieve domain-specific performance that rivals or exceeds frontier models, while maintaining data privacy and control.

Ryan Hartman, CEO of Ondas Sentinel, provided an overview of the company’s role in the defense sector, particularly in autonomous systems ranging from ground robots to stratospheric balloons. Hartman described how the Ukraine conflict has accelerated innovation in low-cost, attritable, and software-enabled defense technologies. Ondas’ partnership with Palantir focuses on developing a mission autonomy stack that connects diverse platforms and enables machine-to-machine coordination, reducing the need for human operators and enhancing operational effectiveness.

Hartman highlighted the company’s aggressive M&A strategy and its ambition to become a $20–30 billion market cap business, driven by both organic growth and technological leadership.

Sid, a forward deployed engineer at Palantir, shared his personal journey from intern to leading the NVIDIA partnership. He emphasized the company’s mission-driven culture and the centrality of institutional sovereignty—the idea that organizations should retain control over their data, compute, and AI models. Sid detailed the technical process of fine-tuning and post-training models with proprietary data, a strategy that protects organizational alpha and enables tailored, high-impact AI solutions.

He also discussed the growing trend of on-premises AI deployments, facilitated by partnerships with NVIDIA and Dell, which address concerns around data privacy, cost, and latency.

Throughout the event, participants repeatedly addressed the broader societal and philosophical implications of AI. While acknowledging public concerns about automation and job displacement, speakers consistently advocated for a value-driven, outcome-oriented approach to AI adoption. They argued that AI should be viewed as a tool for augmenting human capabilities, driving efficiency, and solving previously intractable problems—from healthcare and supply chain management to national defense and cybersecurity.

The collaborative, cross-industry partnerships showcased at AIPCon 11 exemplify a model of innovation that prioritizes customer outcomes, data sovereignty, and ethical stewardship of technology.

LINKS

• Official website of Zeta Global, discussed as a Palantir partner.
• Cisco's homepage, referenced in the discussion of AI infrastructure and security.
• NVIDIA's homepage, central to the supply chain and AI partnership discussions.
• Tampa General Hospital, featured as a healthcare case study.
• Ondas Holdings, parent company of Ondas Sentinel.
• Method Security, cybersecurity company founded by former Palantir engineers.

KEYWORDS