France’s intelligence agency DGSI has ended a decade-long contract with US Big Data giant Palantir to work instead with French startup ChapsVision in a bid to move away from foreign technology providers for critical government services.
Prime minister Sébastien Lecornu announced the move on Tuesday, pitching it as an attempt to “build real autonomy” and avoid dependencies on partners with the ability to cut access to AI tools.
“We cannot accept new strategic dependencies in technology,” said Lecornu.
ChapsVision provides software to businesses and governments to help them analyse mass datasets, a similar technology to Palantir. Launched in 2019, the company has grown at pace, reaching more than 1,000 employees and reporting nearly €200m in revenues in 2024.
Last month Germany’s domestic intelligence agency also announced it is picking ChapsVision over Palantir in a bid to reduce the country’s reliance on US tools.
The DGSI started working with Palantir in 2016, sparking concerns that highly sensitive data would be managed by a foreign provider. Despite this, the agency has renewed the contract twice, in 2022 and in 2025.
Since 2020, however, the DGSI has been looking for homegrown alternatives to Palantir, and ChapsVision previously told Sifted the scaleup had secured part of the contract in 2024. The company is now fully replacing Palantir.
The announcement comes days after US AI lab Anthropic abruptly cut access to some of its best-performing models following orders from the US government to suspend use of the technology by any foreign national.
The restrictions have renewed concerns in Europe that the region’s over-reliance on US systems puts it at risk of a “digital kill switch”, where access to critical technologies like cloud and AI could be revoked.
AI investments
Lecornu also announced several initiatives to accelerate the deployment of AI in the French public sector, including an AI assistant for government workers.
As part of France 2030, the government’s €54bn multi-year programme dedicated to funding innovation, €655m will be dedicated to AI, said Lecornu, to back more compute infrastructure, as well as startups and research.
The funding will not come on top of the €54bn budget but from redirecting existing investments.
