Alex Karp, CEO of Palantir Technologies, attends the Pennsylvania Energy Innovation Summit on the campus of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, July 15, 2025.
Andrew Caballero-Reynolds | AFP | Getty Images
Palantir on Thursday expanded its lawsuit against two former employees to include the CEO of its new artificial intelligence startup, Percepta AI.
In its lawsuit, Palantir alleges that Percepta CEO and co-founder Harsh Jain, co-founder Radha Jain, and a third employee, Joanna Cohen, violated non-solicitation agreements and hired top talent to create a competitive business.
The three defendants are accused of attempting to “poach” executives and developers from their former companies and “loot Palantir’s valuable intellectual property.”
Percepta denies using Palantir’s confidential information, calling the lawsuit “baseless” and saying in a statement that the company is “conveniently picking soundbites taken out of context.”
“Palantir does not own the large, constantly evolving AI transformation space,” Percept said. “This is the latest in Palantir’s efforts to use scare tactics to bully former employees away from innovation with applied AI.”
Palantir did not respond to a request for comment.
Cohen and Radha Jain, who were named in the first lawsuit filed in October, were previously senior engineers at Palantir. Harsh Jain, an executive in charge of the company’s healthcare portfolio, was added as another defendant in the latest complaint.
Palantir said the defendants were “entrusted” with the company’s “crown jewels” including source code, customer workflows and unique customer engagement strategies.
The former employees “brazenly ignored their contractual and legal obligations to Palantir and instead chose a path of deception and unfair competition,” the plaintiffs said in a filing in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.
Cohen and Radha Jain denied the original allegations in a November filing and agreed to stop working at Percepta during the process.
The lawsuit accuses Harsh Jain, who left Palantir in August 2024, of conducting an “aggressive campaign” to bring other employees to join Percepta, and said the company already employs at least 10 former Palantir employees.
A message purportedly written by Hirsh Jain in November 2024 read, “I am going to rob Palantir’s best developers when they are at their maximum wealth.”
“I really enjoy thinking about poaching,” Radha Jain wrote in another message, according to the complaint.
Palantir, co-founded by Peter Thiel and CEO Alex Karp, builds analytics software for businesses and government agencies, including the U.S. military. The company’s stock price has increased more than 10 times since the end of 2023, pushing its market capitalization to nearly $450 billion.
Mr. Palantir also accused Mr. Cohen of sending him confidential documents shortly after announcing his resignation in March. According to the complaint, Cohen allegedly took photos of the confidential information and downloaded the files to her personal cell phone.
“At Percepta, we seek success through outright theft and deception, not through old-fashioned ingenuity and competition,” Palantir said in its filing.
Among other things, Palantir requires defendants to return confidential information in their possession and to refrain from working for Percepta or venture backer General Catalyst for 12 months after the order.
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