France drops Palantir for homegrown intelligence software

France’s domestic security agency, the DGSI, is preparing to end its long-standing partnership with Palantir, replacing the American company’s data-analysis software with a homegrown alternative from the French firm ChapsVision. Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu announced the shift on Tuesday, characterizing it as part of a broader effort to embed sovereign technology at the core of French state operations.

The timing of the announcement raises questions. Palantir had renewed its three-year contract with the DGSI in December 2025, extending a collaboration that had lasted nearly a decade. Now, just six months later, the agency is moving to abandon that deal. The French government has not clarified how these two decisions align, leaving an awkward sequence of events without explanation.

The replacement platform is ChapsVision’s ArgonOS, an AI-driven data-processing system built by the company controlled by entrepreneur Olivier Dellenbach. ChapsVision had been positioning itself for this moment, having participated in a French procurement process launched in 2022 for a heterogeneous-data-processing tool, competing against the Thales-Eviden joint venture Athea and others. As of late 2025, none of the domestic candidates had reached operational maturity, which was a key reason Palantir retained the contract.

This gap between ambition and operational readiness has been a recurring theme in France’s relationship with Palantir. Sovereignty was always the stated objective, but the lack of a homegrown tool capable of matching Palantir’s performance repeatedly delayed the transition. The current announcement effectively signals that the government now considers the domestic alternative good enough to commit to, even if the procurement record does not fully support that conclusion.

The move is part of a broader European shift away from Palantir. Germany’s domestic intelligence service, the BfV, recently selected ChapsVision over Palantir for its data analysis needs, while the Bundeswehr has been pushing for a secure cloud with no foreign structural access. Palantir has thus faced both German military rejection and investor unease simultaneously. In Britain, the government is reviewing its £330 million NHS contract with the firm. Across Europe, governments are reassessing how much of their most sensitive infrastructure should rely on American software.

France has been deliberately cultivating a class of beneficiaries from this reconsideration. The ChapsVision decision came on the same day Lecornu confirmed that French civil servants would receive an AI assistant powered by Mistral, the company the government frequently cites as Europe’s sovereign answer to American AI labs. Mistral’s CEO, Arthur Mensch, has argued for two years that Europe must own and operate its own AI infrastructure rather than rent it. The DGSI switch applies that argument to the most sensitive corner of government.

What remains undisclosed is the timeline for the handover, the value of the ChapsVision contract, or the fate of the Palantir agreement renewed only months ago. Migrating an intelligence service from one analytical platform to another is not a simple process, and the practical transition is likely to extend well beyond the announcement. Palantir did not immediately comment on the French decision.