'Big Data' promised better decisions. Palantir is one of the first companies to operationalize that promise.

I've spent a good part of my career working in data governance, business architecture and analytics. About 10-15 years ago, everyone was talking about Big Data. The promise was simple: if organizations could harness all of their data, they could make better decisions.

The problem was that they couldn't. The data were scattered across dozens of systems, definitions were inconsistent, governance was weak, and nobody really trusted the numbers. The bottleneck wasn't collecting data - it was making it usable.

That's why I've always liked Palantir - they're a company that finally delivered on the promise Big Data made all those years ago.

Big Data promised better decisions. Palantir is one of the first companies to operationalize that promise; enabled through their Ontology solutions.

I know Palantir has become politically toxic because of its government work today, and I understand/respect why. But the story that first got me interested was reading about Palantir's use by U.S. intelligence agencies during the hunt for Osama bin Laden under Obama. That struck me as an incredible example of taking fragmented information and turning it into actionable intelligence.

Regardless of industry, I've always believed the real value wasn't "AI" specifically.

It was helping organizations make better decisions. That's why I bought the stock then, and that's still why I own it today.