A leading progressive member of Congress representing Silicon Valley has reported multiple investments on his financial disclosure forms in the controversial technology company Palantir throughout 2025, as the company racked up billions of dollars in government contracts and growing criticism from human and civil rights advocates.
U.S. Rep. Ro Khanna, D-San Jose, has reported nine trades of Palantir stock between Jan. 17 and Aug. 26 this year and two trades in October 2024. The trades include 10 purchases and one sale. The financial disclosure forms are required by law and show investments made by either a member of Congress, their spouse, or a trust benefiting themselves or their dependents.
The purchase made in late August came weeks after a $10 billion contract was announced between the company and the U.S. Army, and came just days after the nonprofit human rights advocacy organization Amnesty International called on Palantir to “immediately cease” working with the administration of President Donald Trump on immigration enforcement, citing a range of concerns, including that the technology was being unconstitutionally used to spy on pro-Palestinian activists.
The August purchase also came shortly before the U.S. Department of Homeland Security planned a rollout in September of a $30 million new software program to manage the Trump administration’s immigration policies, ImmigrationOS, that has been criticized by legal and immigration rights groups for synthesizing private data and empowering the government to use AI to make decisions on immigration enforcement, including who to detain and deport.
Palantir is a software company that specializes in integrating data and machine-assisted analysis with artificial intelligence, essentially helping large organizations make their data usable with AI applications. It has found large customers in the U.S. and Israeli governments for uses including financial data management, immigration management, and by the military.
It was co-founded by Peter Thiel, a billionaire who frequently opposes progressive causes.
Khanna is the vice chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus and co-chaired Sen. Bernie Sanders’ 2020 presidential primary campaign.
The company’s work building data management tools for the Internal Revenue Service raised privacy concerns from Congressional Democrats after the Trump administration ordered the agency to share data with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and after Trump issued an executive order in March ordering all federal agencies to make their data sharable across departments.
Critics, including lawmakers and civil rights watchdogs worried about the government’s handling of data, accused the company of building a “master database” merging federal data on U.S. citizens, which the company has denied.
The ImmigrationOS software will help the Trump administration find, monitor, detain and potentially deport immigrants it deems necessary to target. The nonprofit, nonpartisan American Immigration Council warned of its use in immigration enforcement less than a week before Khanna reported on his forms that the stock had been purchased on behalf of a trust benefiting his children.
“Similar to Palantir’s other systems, ImmigrationOS will pull together vast amounts of data, detect patterns, and flag individuals who meet certain criteria, raising concerns about potential impacts on civil liberties in America,” Steven Hubbard wrote for the American Immigration Council in August. “Those concerns are amplified by the revelation that Stephen Miller, the Trump administration’s chief architect of immigration policy, holds a substantial financial stake in Palantir — underscoring the potential conflicts of interest in the government’s embrace of the company’s technology.”
Amnesty International also criticized the administration’s use of Palantir’s technology in immigration enforcement that has been initiated by the U.S. State Department and involves combing through online communications to find students and others it deems hostile to the administration’s policies.
“It is deeply concerning that the U.S. government is deploying invasive AI-powered technologies within a context of a mass deportation agenda and crackdown on pro-Palestine expression, leading to a host of human rights violations,” said Erika Guevara-Rosas, a senior director at Amnesty International.
“These technologies enable authorities to swiftly track and target international students and other marginalized migrant groups at an unprecedented scale and scope. This has led to a pattern of unlawful detentions and mass deportations, creating a climate of fear and exacerbating the ‘chilling effect’ for migrant communities and for international students across schools and campuses,” Guevara-Rosas said in a statement.
The company has been criticized by a range of rights and privacy advocates, including the American Civil Liberties Union, which has warned about possible intrusive applications of the company’s technology since at least 2011.
Palantir has also drawn criticism for its contracts with the Israel Defense Forces as Israel’s military continues its campaign in Gaza that has been declared a genocide by a United Nations commission.
There had been roughly 42,000 people killed in Gaza by Israel’s military between October 2023 and the date of the first recent trade listed on Khanna’s disclosure forms in October 2024. As of the most recent trade, there had been roughly 64,000 people killed, with about half of them being women, children, or elderly civilians, according to the U.N.
According to the U.N. Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, “There are reasonable grounds to believe Palantir has provided automatic predictive policing technology, core defence infrastructure for rapid and scaled-up construction and deployment of military software, and its Artificial Intelligence Platform, which allows real-time battlefield data integration for automated decision-making.”
Khanna has previously pushed for legislation banning members of Congress or their spouses from trading stocks while in office but continues to report a high volume of investments made by his spouse or on behalf of a trust benefiting his children.
A spokesperson for his office, Sarah Drory, declined to answer whether any potential trustee had any guidance or restrictions from Khanna. But she said it was not the congressman making the trades.
“Rep. Khanna has been a leading voice calling for legislation to protect privacy, has vehemently called out the Trump Administration’s building of a national database, and has voted against military sales and supplemental funding to Israel,” Drory wrote in a statement.
“He has a clear record of standing for human rights in Palestine and for the privacy of Americans. Khanna doesn’t trade stocks, has pushed for years for a ban on trading and for the TRUST in Congress Act requiring independently managed trusts, and his voting record shows he is bold and principled in standing up for his values,” she wrote.
Khanna responded on X in June to a post critical of his financial disclosures involving Palantir, distancing himself from the stock purchases and saying that the investments did not represent a conflict as defined by law.
“The fact is that is my wife’s money from before marriage in an independent diversified trust that is like an index fund & eliminates conflicts according to government ethics. I have also championed banning stock trading with Trust act,” he posted on June 6.
Congressional financial disclosure forms don’t require an exact purchase or sale amount to be reported, just what range they fall into given several options, making a total number hard to ascertain.
Nearly all purchases of Palantir reported on Khanna’s forms were for a range of $1,000-$15,000. One purchase was between $15,000-$50,000.
The lone sale reported in the last two years, in March 2025, was for $1,000-$15,000.
Drory did not address a question about what the total amount invested in Palantir was.
The stock was trading at about $43 on the date of the first recent purchase, on Oct. 11, 2024. It was trading at about $112 when the largest recent purchase was made in April of this year.
The stock was trading at about $160 as of the most recent purchase on Aug. 26, a return of nearly 400% from the first trade.
The company did not respond to a request for comment about lawmakers trading its stock while it was being awarded federal contracts or to a request for a response to the myriad criticisms of how its technology was being used.
In a blog post on its website rebutting some of the allegations that have been raised about constitutional violations by the federal government aided by its technology, the company said it had worked with the IRS across multiple administrations, that its work with the agency was centered on helping with criminal investigations, and that it believed the government would adhere to privacy laws.
Palantir pointed to its work with federal health agencies fighting measles outbreaks and with COVID-19 tracking as ways its technology was being positively implemented.
This article was written by Thomas Hughes for Bay City News.
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