Before LLMs, Palantir was competing with Snowflake and Databricks.
Post-LLMs, they do not believe they have any competitors. Why? Snowflake/Databricks optimized for SQL and query throughput: get raw data into tables, run fast analytical reads, ship dashboards and models on top. Palantir made a different bet: an ontology, a world model where data is represented the way humans actually reason about it (objects, relationships, properties; nouns/verbs/adjectives). Back then, that was built for government analysts trying to make sense of messy, interdependent systems.
Then LLMs arrived and the ontology suddenly looked like the perfect interface because models don’t want a trillion rows. They want a structured, language-shaped substrate: named entities, typed relationships, constraints, and “what interacts with what”, something you can linearize into a coherent prompt, traverse, and act on.
The bigger implication for decision traces is that the “context graph” problem we wrote about has multiple architectural solutions:
Platform-first (example: Palantir): prescribe the unified world model upfront. Pay the integration + ontology + embedded-team tax (months of use case discovery / workflow decomposition / “process mining”), and in return you get a substrate that can connect data to decisions because everything now lives inside the same model for an extremely absurd price.
Workflow-first (decision traces): don’t start by rebuilding the world. Instrument the moments where the world changes. Capture decision receipts at commit surfaces: inputs referenced, policy/constraints, exception path, approvals, action taken, outcome. Over time (not day 1), that write-time provenance becomes its own world model, learned from trajectories rather than imposed upfront (there will be many different methods here)
And importantly: this is still an ontology approach, just a different kind. Palantir prescribes the ontology first. Our take is that startups can learn it bottom-up from traces. You start by capturing what people actually do at the decision surface: what evidence is referenced, which approvals happen, what exceptions recur, what actions are taken, what outcomes follow and over time, infer the minimal set of entities + relations that explain those trajectories.
The missing piece is decision traces: without them, you have state, but not the legible “why”!! Cc @akoratana
Secondary markets are rife with fraud and bad actors, and it pains me to see these bottom feeders profiting off Anduril's growth while fleecing retail investors through unreasonable or opaque fee structures.
In this week's episode of nonsense, @teamignitevc (a fund we've never taken a meeting with or had any contact with whatsoever) founded by @brianrbell (who we've never met) is soliciting investors via a public Google Doc to invest in an SPV that will in turn invest in another SPV that will in turn potentially enter into a Forward Contract with a (supposedly, though unnamed) early Anduril employee: https://t.co/33d3lRCxTr
Few problems here.
First off, so-called "Forward Contracts" are notoriously hard to settle in private companies, and counterparty risk is extremely real (e.g. what about the many complicating corner cases like acquisitions where shares don't "trade" or marriages/divorces/deaths where ownership of underlying shares is complicated)... just generally a risky structure to close that I don't think most folks actually understand.
Second, this "Deal Memo" includes basically no details about Anduril's performance, no revenue figures whatsoever, no product specifics... almost as if it's soliciting investors to invest on hype and momentum and not fundamentals. Generally I'd advise folks to be skeptical of any "deal memo" lacking basic details.
Third, Forward Contracts are explicitly disallowed by Anduril's stock plan and bylaws, as we detail here: https://t.co/laVUsB1kfR ... which means that Anduril will never consent to Team Ignite's SPV actually taking possession of these shares while we are privately held. Zero chance.
And finally, the memo spends most of it's time talking about the structure and fees... which are INSANE. A double-layered SPV with all legal and administrative costs passed through, in addition to an 8% upfront fee, 3% annual fee for two years, 20% carried interest, and... the craziest part... an implied price per share that is completely insane (in this case, the implied pps is ~115% higher than the most recent preferred raise from like 9 months ago). Flattered, I suppose, but also puts these investors in an almost absurd position by paying more than double the pps of our most recent transaction. 😬
As stated at the top, I don't know Brian or Team Ignite at all, maybe they're kind wholesome people and this is all a big misunderstanding... but if I were an investor looking at this "opportunity," I'd run for the hills.
I AM IN TEARS! THE 1ST OPEN-SOURCE NIGERIAN LANGUAGE TEXT CLASSIFIER ON @pypi.
Please try it out! I’ll spend the next week improving it and merging contributions.
Catch any errors? Let me know so I can fix them.
https://t.co/hx0Fg9DV79
@angelonuoha7 Hi Angel, im Championing the case for Daniel Adama across , all platform he has applied and you give him, a chance- you get a full stack engineer in him. The best guy for the job, trust me.
I will no longer hide my hunger, my talent, or my story.
I will build loudly, lead boldly, and pursue greatness without shame.
Every season of my life — struggle or success — will testify to the God who sent me
Excited to share that we raised $2.1M to build the future of CX and back-office operations in financial services.
For fintechs and banks, customer service back-office work remains a maze of manual processes, including quality assurance, dispute investigations, and fraud and compliance checks.
At @RulebaseHQ, we built Coworker to work alongside CX and ops teams to:
- Review 100% of interactions for compliance and quality assurance
- Automatically file and track fraud and dispute cases end-to-end across CX, case management, and back-office platforms
- Proactively follow up with teammates and third-party partners to keep SLAs on track
- Flag compliance risks in real time and generate audit-ready reports.
Coworker bridges CX and back-office ops, automating the most manual tasks so nothing slips through the cracks and every customer issue is resolved quicker and more effectively.
A massive thank you to our investors, customers, and the growing @RulebaseHQ team for believing in our vision and being part of this journey!
Our round was led by @LorenStraub from @BoweryCapital, with participation from @ycombinator, @CommerceVC, @transposevc, and founders of t3 chat, Atrium, Cron (now Notion Calendar): @theo, @raphaelschaad, and more.
Incredibly grateful to have the support of the @ycombinator community and mentors, @dflieb and @koomen.
Thank you all for being incredible partners on this journey!
We’re hiring a Founding Engineer at https://t.co/KBZs2z4P0w – the AI-native workspace that executes financial analysis, not just assists.
Tackling $500B+ in wasted workflows across finance.
Building agentic AI, Excel-native integrations, audit-first compliance.
10–15% equity.
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