Australia’s Future Fund has downplayed its function in choosing its $100 million stake in Palantir amid rising stress over the controversial tech large’s function in US immigration crackdowns and the conflict in Gaza.
In a Senate estimates listening to final night time, Will Hetherton, the chief company affairs officer of the Future Fund — Australia’s sovereign wealth fund designed to handle and develop public funds — defended the funding to Greens Senator Barbara Pocock, who pressed him on whether or not Palantir’s human rights document had been thought of earlier than the investments had been made.
The reply: no. And the fund received’t be divesting from Palantir, both.
The Future Fund’s stake within the publicly listed information analytics firm Palantir Applied sciences has ballooned 100-fold since February 2023, from $1.6 million to $103.6 million as of June 2025. That’s greater than the fund’s holdings in Australian corporations like AGL, Search, or information centre proprietor NEXTDC.
Index fund investments
Hetherton advised estimates the Palantir shares are held by means of “two index-focused funding managers” the place the precise inventory choice is left to those that handle these index funds, not the Future Fund’s board. The fund doesn’t become involved in choosing particular person shares, he mentioned.
Hetherton mentioned that the fund focuses its efforts on reviewing and dealing with Australian corporations that it believes it could possibly “have interaction extra successfully”.
“Palantir is a really broadly held inventory by traders globally,” he added.
In the case of figuring out an organization is just not appropriate for funding, the Future Fund bases its choices on sanctions or treaties the Australian authorities has ratified — like cluster munitions, anti-personnel mines and tobacco. None of those applies to Palantir.
Pocock requested whether or not the fund would decide to divesting and establishing “clear moral funding requirements that exclude corporations cashing in on surveillance, from weapons and from human struggling”.
“Many Australians are horrified by what they see in America and the work … being imposed on immigrants within the US,” Pocock mentioned, referring to Palantir’s in depth work with the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
This features a US$30 million contract to offer a digital platform that helps determine deportation targets and, extra lately, a brand new device that makes use of authorities well being information to create dossiers on folks. Going through inside stress, Palantir CEO Alex Karp despatched an hour-long video to employees addressing the corporate’s work with ICE this week.
Hetherton mentioned the board would “proceed to interact with our managers” however couldn’t decide to what Pocock was asking.
“Particular person inventory choice can be a matter for these fund managers,” he mentioned.
