The Financial Times recently reported that the Ministry of Defence has paid Palantir far more than its published contracts suggest. The data behind that story came from our research team. Here is that data in full, and what it means for public sector suppliers when payments run well ahead of published contracts.
The Financial Times recently reported that the Ministry of Defence has paid Palantir far more than its published contracts suggest. The data behind that story came from our research team. Here is that data in full, and what it means for public sector suppliers when payments run well ahead of published contracts.
The Financial Times reported that the Ministry of Defence paid Palantir £282m in the in the 11 years toMarch 2026, which is £186m more than the £95.9m of contracts the MOD had published. More than 80% of that spending ran through non-competitive awards. The newspaper built its analysis on payment and contract data collected and reconciled by Stotles.
We provide public sector spending data to newsrooms when they need accurate figures that are hard to assemble for a story. For this piece, our Research and Services team pulled the brief: every payment to Palantir in MOD's annual statistics, matched against every published contract notice.
Dallán Ryan, who leads our Research and Services team, explained to the Financial Times why the two figures diverge. The MOD "plays by slightly different rules" to other buyers, he said, because some agreements are withheld for security reasons and the published value can underplay what gets spent. As he put it, the "£282mn sits in [the MOD's] own official statistics, but you'd need to know where to look. Most procurement reporting and most data tools ... start with contract notices, so that's where people look."
If you are a journalist following a procurement story, there are two ways to work with us. You can use our MCP connector free to pull this kind of data yourself, so you have what you need to follow the thread. Or you can work with our Research and Services team, who put together briefs like the one behind this article. You will find both on our press page.
The £282m is the total MOD actually paid Palantir, and it comes straight from MOD's own records. The reason it is easy to miss is that two different public sources describe the same relationship, and they give very different answers.
MOD publishes contract notices on Contracts Finder and Find a Tender. A notice records what MOD agreed to pay on the day a contract was signed. Add up every notice naming Palantir as supplier and you reach £95.9m for services awarded between April 2015 and before April 2026. That is where most procurement reporting and most data tools start, so that is the figure most people see.
Separately, MOD publishes how much it has actually paid each supplier. Palantir's payments sit in Table 3a of MOD's annual Trade, Industry and Contracts statistics. They run across about a dozen yearly spreadsheets, each showing a single rounded total per supplier with no link back to the contracts behind it. We pulled every edition, reconciled the annual totals, and matched them against every published notice. That reconciliation is why the published number and the paid number tell different stories.
Published contract values are fixed on the day of award and rarely updated, and defence follows separate transparency rules. For MOD, the published total is best treated as a floor and checked against what it actually paid. The two sources record different things.
Year by year, the paid figure runs ahead of the published one, and in several years there is no matching notice at all.
*The £240.6m agreement was awarded in December 2025 with a term starting 1 April 2026, so advance payments cannot be ruled out. "Under £5m" reflects that MOD only names suppliers it paid £5m or more. Contract values are shown in the year awarded. Figures exclude VAT.
MOD has confirmed it withheld at least one Palantir contract, but the public record can’t show that this is the biggest factor. The evidence points to a mix of three things.
MOD paid Palantir before publishing any contract. MOD says it signed its first enterprise agreement in November 2022, “following earlier operational use” of the software (WQ 120127). Between 2015/16 and 2018/19 it paid at least £35m against a single £1.7m contract. No published contract covers December 2025 to March 2026 either, between the £75.2m and £240.6m agreements.
Contract values are fixed at signing. The £75.2m agreement allowed amendments with the price redetermined. MOD doesn’t have to publish a notice when it changes a defence contract or places a call-off under a defence framework (Cabinet Office guidance).
Some contracts are withheld. In October 2024 MOD confirmed a second open Palantir contract and withheld its details under a “UK EYES only” marking (WQ 10453).
The data can’t show overspend. In 2023/24 and 2024/25, the two years the £75.2m agreement covered in full, MOD paid £46m, in line with its value.
Three things make the paid figure easy to miss.
First, contract notices understate defence spend by design. Values are set at award and rarely revised, MOD withholds the details of some contracts for security reasons, and under the Procurement Act 2023 modifications to defence and security contracts are exempt from notice requirements. A contract can also be exempted from the Act entirely on national security grounds.
Second, MOD's monthly spending data leaves most of the picture out. Its own quality report says exclusions "result in approximately two-thirds of all spend being excluded", covering military operations, intelligence and national security, commercial confidence and supplier identity. So the monthly files rarely show the full position for defence.
Third, the annual statistics do capture almost all payments, around 95% of MOD's spend with defence suppliers, but they are hard to use. They appear once a year, each October, roughly six months after the financial year ends. Each supplier gets one rounded total, split only by competition type, with no link to individual contracts. A reader cannot trace the £282m back to the contracts behind it.
In December 2025, MOD announced a three-year software agreement with Palantir worth £240.6m, starting in April 2026. It did not go out to tender. MOD said it had not considered rival bids because "only Palantir has the design familiarity and technical expertise to fully support" its data analytics capabilities.
That award fits a wider pattern. The Financial Times found that more than 80% of the £282m paid to Palantir over the decade ran through contracts awarded without competition. Palantir is not alone here. Boeing recently secured a direct award worth up to £354m, and the state-owned National Energy System Operator has extended its arrangements with Palantir without inviting rival bids.
The lack of competition has drawn scrutiny. Dame Chi Onwurah, the Labour MP who chairs the Commons science and technology committee, said the difficulty of seeing what MOD spends on Palantir, alongside the limited competitive tendering, "fails the transparency, accountability and therefore the public trust test". Palantir has said the government encourages public sector bodies to use pilot programmes when putting new work out to tender.
If you track defence spending from contract notices alone, you undercount it. For Palantir, notices show £95.9m while payments reached £282m, so a supplier relying on notices sees barely a third of the real relationship. The same undercount can hide any incumbent's true footprint inside a department.
Two things get missed. You miss the scale of what a competitor is already being paid, which shapes how entrenched they are and how much budget is genuinely in play. And you miss how that money moves, because much of it runs through direct awards and framework call-offs rather than open tenders you could bid for. Knowing a department leans on non-competitive routes tells you where to focus, whether that means challenging an award, positioning for the next competition, or finding a route in through a framework.
For defence especially, the published value is a starting point, not the full picture. Treat it as a floor.
Start with contract notices, because they tell you what was bought, from whom, by what route and for how long. For most public bodies the value agreed at signing is a fair guide to what gets spent. Defence plays by slightly different rules, so for MOD we treat the notice value as a floor and check it against what the department actually paid.
The paid figures live in MOD's annual Trade, Industry and Contracts statistics, released each October. They reward a bit of patience: one rounded total per supplier, across years, with no link to contracts, so you have to pull each edition and reconcile it yourself. Do that and you can see the real size of a supplier relationship, not just the headline value of the latest award.
That reconciliation is the work behind that number, and the work we do across every department and supplier on the platform. If you want to see what a department is really paying an incumbent, see how Stotles pairs published notices with actual spend.
MOD paid Palantir £282m in the in the 11 years toMarch 2026, according to its own annual payment statistics. Over the same period, MOD published contract notices worth £95.9m.
Contract notices record a contract's value on the day it is awarded and exclude some defence contracts withheld or exempted for security reasons. Payments are recorded separately in annual statistics. For defence, the published value is best read as a minimum. MOD also paid Palantir for years before its first published enterprise agreement.
A three-year MOD software agreement announced in December 2025 and starting in April 2026. It was awarded without a competitive tender, because MOD said only Palantir could fully support its data analytics capabilities.
No. The payment total sits in MOD's official statistics. It is hard to find because it is published once a year, as one rounded total per supplier, with no link to individual contracts.
MOD's annual payment statistics and its published contract notices, collected and reconciled by Stotles.
Payments: Palantir's entry in Table 3a of MOD Trade, Industry and Contracts, editions 2016 to 2026. Figures are nominal and rounded by MOD to £1m. Contract notices: every notice naming Palantir as supplier, with dates and buyers, collected by Stotles from Contracts Finder and Find a Tender. Reporting: the Financial Times, "UK defence ministry spent £186mn more on Palantir than value of public contracts".
