US Navy pledges $448 million to test if Palantir is seaworthy
Summary
The US Navy has signed a two-year, $448 million deal with Palantir to pilot a programme called “ShipOS” that will deploy Palantir Foundry across shipbuilders, shipyards and around 100 suppliers in the Maritime Industrial Base (MIB). The aim is to digitise and optimise shipbuilding and repair workflows, reduce schedule and cost risk, and accelerate production of new ships — a top budget priority for the Navy.
Palantir says early deployments already cut manual scheduling work from hundreds of hours to minutes at some sites and trimmed material review from weeks to under an hour at another. The company must now prove measurable cost savings and productivity gains during the two-year pilot to justify longer-term sustainment and wider roll-out.
Key Points
- Two-year, $448 million US Navy pilot (ShipOS) will use Palantir Foundry across shipbuilders, shipyards and ~100 suppliers.
- Initial rollout covers two major shipbuilders and three shipyards within the Maritime Industrial Base revitalisation effort.
- Palantir claims dramatic efficiency improvements in earlier work: schedule planning reduced from ~160 hours to under 10 minutes at one contractor; material review reduced from weeks to under an hour at another.
- Foundry will aggregate ERP, legacy databases and operational sources to identify bottlenecks, streamline engineering workflows and enable proactive risk mitigation.
- Palantir must demonstrate measurable cost savings, improved schedules and increased production efficiency; sustainment costs are expected to transfer to industry partners if targets are met.
- Deal carries wider implications: it could modernise US shipbuilding capacity but raises questions around vendor dependence, data integration, security and contractual guarantees of value.
Why should I read this?
Quick take: this is big money and a bellwether for how AI/data platforms get stitched into national defence supply chains. If you care about defence tech, industrial policy, or how private software reshapes critical manufacturing — read it. If you don’t, skim the key points and move on.
Context and relevance
The programme ties directly to the Secretary of the Navy’s 2026 priorities and a $292.2bn budget push that prioritises shipbuilding and revitalising the Maritime Industrial Base. Modernising scheduling, logistics and supplier visibility addresses chronic bottlenecks in US naval procurement and could speed delivery of new vessels, including submarines.
For industry and policymakers this is a test of whether a commercial data platform can deliver measurable returns at scale in a highly regulated, security-sensitive environment. Success could accelerate digital transformation across defence manufacturing; failure would exacerbate scepticism about private-sector-led modernisation and raise questions about procurement risk and long-term vendor lock-in.
Author style
Punchy: this isn’t just another software award — it’s a high-stakes experiment to digitise a crucial part of America’s defence supply chain. Worth paying attention to if you follow defence industrial policy, enterprise AI for manufacturing, or Palantir’s growth trajectory.