France's spy agency drops Palantir for local alternative, says it can't rely on foreign powers

The French domestic intelligence agency DGSI has decided to terminate its contract with the US tech firm Palantir in favour of a French rival, ChapsVision, Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu said on Tuesday.

The move reflects growing wariness by European governments about dependency on US tech platforms, and particularly on Palantir Technologies' suite of products. Founded by billionaire Peter Thiel with backing from the CIA, Palantir sells military-grade AI data integration tools to governments and businesses.

"We must use our own AI models; we cannot accept new strategic dependencies in the digital sphere," Lecornu said in a video posted on X. "We cannot rely on tools developed by foreign powers. France must have its own tools."

Palantir and ChapsVision did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

US President Donald Trump's unpredictability on the global stage has led European allies to question whether decades of US support in areas including security and technology can still be taken for granted.

Palantir has been among the US tech firms most affected, although last week Anthropic said it ​would "abruptly disable" its most advanced AI models for ⁠all users after the US government ​ordered it to exclude foreign nationals from access, citing national security concerns.

Germany's military has said it will no longer use Palantir, while Britain is reviewing the National Health Service's £330 million ($440 million) data contract with Palantir following political and parliamentary pressure.

London Mayor Sadiq Khan also blocked a proposed £50 million Palantir contract with the capital's police, citing value-for-money and procurement grounds. Palantir threatened legal proceedings in response.

Lecornu said France plans to invest €655 million ($760 million) in artificial intelligence, and set up a shared chatbot for all state services.

It will also create a public health chatbot for the state-owned health insurance agency Ameli, and a new digital platform to simplify access to public data.

Ditching Palantir isn't the first time France has turned to a local alternative. Cybernews previously reported that the French government plans to replace Microsoft Teams and Zoom with the domestic videoconferencing platform Visio across all government departments by 2027.

In April, the country also chose French cloud provider Scaleway to host its Health Data Hub, replacing Microsoft Azure.

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