AI Investors
2003
2003-05-06 Palantir was founded by Peter Thiel after 9/11 for defense intelligence agencies. It is a data mining and surveillance company. On the upside, it is a very powerful tool for security. On the other hand, nearly anyone could potentially pay to misuse its technology for things like AI-driven warfare, predictive policing, beta-testing on civilians, and warfare. In 2025 alone, the Department of Defense paid a $113M contract for defense on top of the existing $795M it had, and ICE paid $30M to get real-time data on tracking immigrants.
https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/amr51/3124/2020/en/
https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/amr51/0211/2025/en/
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/apr/03/israel-gaza-ai-database-hamas-airstrikes
https://www.wired.com/story/ice-palantir-immigrationos/
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/30/technology/trump-palantir-data-americans.html
https://www.wired.com/story/palantir-government-contracting-push/
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/palantir-secures-795m-us-army-180040461.html
2025 January
2025-01-01 Larry Ellison, OpenAI Sam Altman, and Masayoshi Son of Softbank announced The Stargate Project to invest $500B in AI infrastructure in the U.S. by 2029.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stargate_LLC
2025-01-21 Trump announced a $500 billion private sector investment for AI infrastructure by Stargate
https://www.cnn.com/2025/01/21/tech/openai-oracle-softbank-trump-ai-investment
2025 September
2025-09-16 Microsoft announced plans to invest $30B in AI infrastructure in the UK.