Palantir Cuts IT Headcount by 60% as CIO Pushes Decentralized Tech Model

Palantir Technologies (PLTR, Financials) slashed its IT team from more than 200 staffers to fewer than 80 full-time employees, as part of a broader strategy to decentralize technology operations and increase agility, according to the company’s Chief Information Officer, Jim Siders.

By shifting technological duties nearer to specific business units, Palantir is still working to level conventional organizational structures, as this change shows. Siders said on the Metis Strategy-hosted Technovation podcast that the redesign is driven by a cultural drive to question inflexible organizational structures and strategic dependence on Palantir’s artificial intelligence platform, Foundry.The CIO attributed the idea to a notion described in a Wall Street Journal piece by a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor advocating for the abolition of centralized IT departments. Replacing the conventional segregated IT organization, Palantir used a federated approach integrating technological operations into every operational team.Approaching $4 billion in yearly sales, Palantir has maintained its technology infrastructure using this strategy while drastically cutting staff and expenses. According to Siders, the company’s growth in government and commercial sectors has relied mostly on artificial intelligence-driven solutions and organizational flexibility.He called the internal ideology of the business a desire to “decalcify” antiquated systems blocking creativity. Palantir wants to hasten technology support and response across its worldwide operations by cutting layers of bureaucracy.

This article first appeared on GuruFocus.