In matters of intelligence, the government chooses sovereignty. By separating from the American Palantir in favor of the French ChapsVision, Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu intends to build “real strategic autonomy”, he announced Tuesday June 16, 2026. After more than ten years of use, the General Directorate of Internal Security (DGSI) will therefore have to do without the tools of the American company’s analysis software.
Peter Thiel, a close friend of Donald Trump at the head of Palantir
The idea of moving away from this company, co-founded in the early 2000s by Peter Thiel, close to Donald Trump, is not new. Created in the fold of the American CIA, the controversial Palantir is particularly singled out for its central role in the action of the American immigration police, ICE.
Since 2016, it has provided the DGSI with Gotham software, which it uses to sort immense quantities of data. France signed its first contract with the company the day after the attacks of November 2015. At the time, French companies developing data analysis systems were “not yet capable of meeting our needs,” explained Patrick Calvar, then director of the DGSI.
Since then, the contract has been renewed three times, in 2019, 2022 and 2025. The current one runs until 2028, and remains “fully in force,” Palantir recalled on June 16. It had been renewed at the end of the year in order to “not suffer from a capacity gap in this sensitive area essential for our national security”, the process of selecting his successor being “not completed” at that time, Matignon had specified. The transition to ChapsVision should therefore take place gradually until 2028, although the migration schedule is not yet known.
A solution already chosen by Germany
Founded in 2019 by polytechnician Olivier Dellenbach, this start-up which generated 200 million euros in turnover in 2025 is developing a tool for collecting, preparing and analyzing massive quantities of data. Less experienced than Palantir, which completely built the Gotham software, ChapsVision built its own via multiple acquisitions in the areas of machine translation, monitoring, Osint (open source intelligence) and language processing. So many technologies that we had to take the time to integrate into our ArgonOS program.
ChapsVision now offers businesses and public services solutions to analyze large volumes of data using artificial intelligence, including the automatic extraction of information from documents, images and videos. Above all, the French program offers a solution that can be deployed completely isolated from the public Internet network. To date, the company claims more than 2,000 customers in more than 40 countries, including government organizations.
Defense of sovereignty VS partnership with a Chinese company
In a press release, ChapsVision specifies that it “now aims to become the technological base on which, beyond the Ministry of the Interior, many public administrations will rely for their critical data processing needs”. Its creator, Olivier Dellenbach, defends a sovereign approach to its development. It relied on French investment funds to grow, but nevertheless entered into an unexpected partnership in September 2025 with the Chinese company Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise.
Already in May, ChapsVision had already been chosen by the German domestic intelligence agency, which refused to deal with Palantir. According to the German Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, the ArgonOS product has been tested and is operational, in particular for the fight against terrorism and for counter-espionage.
