By Nate Wolf
A majority of Palantir Technologies' outside investors voted last week to demand the software company commission an independent probe into the company's human rights policies, though a complex voting structure favoring insiders means the probe won't move forward.
Palantir's annual meeting last Wednesday featured two separate shareholder proposals raising concerns about how government clients use the company's software. Both proposals immediately failed, but full vote tallies published this week reveal strong support for at least one of them.
The most-publicized proposal, filed by Catholic religious order Sisters of St. Joseph of Peace, received just 12.5% support. After stripping out votes by Palantir insiders and early investors, support surged to 56%, according to the filers' calculations.
Palantir declined to comment.
The company has a three-tier stock structure that gives CEO Alex Karp, co-founder Stephen Cohen, and Chairman Peter Thiel 49.99% of voting power. Other officers and directors hold Class B shares, which have 10 times the voting power of ordinary Class A shares. Still others own Class A shares.
In their calculations, organizers assumed insiders with any type of share voted against the proposal. Other high-profile institutional investors supported the votes, however, including Norwegian sovereign-wealth fund Norges Bank, California public pension fund CalPERS, and New York City's five public pension plans.
"The non-insider vote of 56% represents a resounding call by Palantir investors for the company to meaningfully address the human rights violations it is connected to," said Investor Advocates for Social Justice, a group that backed the Sisters of St. Joseph.
Palantir has drawn criticism for its lucrative contracts with the Israeli military, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and local police agencies in the U.S. and abroad. Its software, the shareholder proposals warned, is linked to surveillance, deportation efforts, and government database projects.
The other stockholder proposal focused on human rights, filed by the Presbyterian Church of the U.S., received support from just over 8% of votes. It wasn't immediately clear whether the vote would have cleared 50% after excluding insiders.
The Palantir board strongly urged shareholders to vote down the proposals, saying they were "predicated on misunderstandings and inaccuracies about Palantir's work."
Write to Nate Wolf at nate.wolf@barrons.com
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June 12, 2026 14:22 ET (18:22 GMT)
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