Who is Shyam Sankar? The billionaire technologist driving Palantir's AI-boom

Shyam Sankar, the son of Indian immigrants who once ran a souvenir shop in Orlando, is now a billionaire at the helm of one of the most influential AI companies in the world.

Palantir CTO Shyam Sankar reacts as President Donald Trump delivers remarks during the 'Winning the AI Race' Summit in Washington.(Reuters)

As Palantir Technologies Inc. continues its meteoric rise, with its stock up more than 500% in the past year, Sankar, the company’s Chief Technology Officer, has emerged as a key architect behind its success. On July 25, the data analytics giant's shares hit an all-time high of $158.80, lifting Sankar’s net worth to $1.3 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.c and defence innovation but has become one of its most important public voices.

Mumbai to Silicon Valley

Born in Mumbai and raised in Orlando, Florida, Sankar’s life mirrors the quintessential American immigrant success story. His father, born in a mud hut in Tamil Nadu, was the first in the family to attend college. After a brief stint in Nigeria, the Sankars moved to the US, where they ran souvenir and dry-cleaning businesses - the latter eventually went bankrupt.

Despite these ups and downs, Sankar pursued academics rigorously, earning an undergraduate degree in electrical and computer engineering from Cornell University and a master’s in management science and engineering from Stanford. Early in his career, he turned down a consulting job to join a startup on his father’s advice, before signing on at Palantir as employee #13 in the mid-2000s.

Building Palantir from the inside

Founded in 2003 by Peter Thiel, Alex Karp, Stephen Cohen, and Joe Lonsdale, Palantir started as a stealthy defence-focused software startup. Sankar joined during these early days and played a critical role in shaping its culture and technology.

He pioneered Palantir’s "forward deployed engineer" model — sending engineers to embed with clients on-site to solve complex problems in real-time. This customer-centric approach became a cornerstone of Palantir's government and commercial business and helped distinguish it from other Silicon Valley software firms.

Over the years, Sankar's role expanded, culminating in his appointment as Chief Technology Officer and Executive Vice President in January 2023.

Sankar and Palantir's meteoric rise

Sankar’s ascent has coincided with a period of explosive growth for Palantir. The company, once considered a dark horse among defence contractors, has benefited immensely from the global AI arms race.

In Q2 2025, Palantir reported a 48% jump in revenue to over $1 billion, citing the “astonishing impact” of artificial intelligence. Sales in the US surged 68%, while revenue from US commercial contracts nearly doubled. The company’s stock has skyrocketed over 500% in the past year - making it the best-performing stock on the S&P 500 by percentage growth.

Sankar himself has become more vocal, pushing for a renaissance in US defence innovation. In 2024, he authored a widely discussed treatise arguing for the breakup of dominant military contractors to allow more agile and technologically advanced firms to thrive.

He was recently inducted into the US Army Reserve’s Executive Innovation Corps - a unit designed to integrate private-sector expertise into national defence initiatives. The aim: make the military “leaner, smarter, and more lethal.”