(Bloomberg) -- Palantir Technologies Inc. and Anduril Industries Inc. are in talks to partner with rivals to form a consortium that would bid together for US government work, the Financial Times reported Sunday.
The effort, which includes Elon Musk’s SpaceX and ChatGPT maker OpenAI LLC, is aimed at disrupting the nation’s oligopoly of “prime” contractors, the newspaper said, citing people with knowledge of the matter.
The consortium would seek to modernize US defense procurement, the FT reported, which is often criticized as slow and inefficient. The group intends to offer advanced technologies to the US government, applying innovation from Silicon Valley.
Palantir was co-founded two decades ago by Peter Thiel as an unorthodox tech bet on the defense industry. Thiel was an early supporter of Donald Trump in his successful 2016 presidential bid. Musk, the world’s richest person, was a major campaign donor in this year’s race and has been tapped by the president-elect for a broad government cost-cutting initiative.
Representatives for the companies didn’t immediately respond to Bloomberg’s requests for comment outside regular business hours.
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