France Drops Palantir for Local Rival ChapsVision, Pledges €655 Million for Sovereign AI

France Cuts the Cord on Palantir

France is making one of its boldest moves yet to reclaim control over its critical technology. Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu announced on Tuesday that the domestic intelligence agency DGSI will terminate its contract with US data analytics firm Palantir and switch to French company ChapsVision. The decision is the centrepiece of a sweeping digital sovereignty drive, backed by a pledge of €655 million in new AI investment running through to 2030.

"We cannot accept new strategic dependencies in the digital domain," Lecornu said in a video posted to social media, warning that France must not depend on the goodwill of partners "capable of turning off the access tap" for AI technologies.

A Relationship Dating Back to 2016

The DGSI first contracted Palantir — the firm co-founded by Peter Thiel — in 2016 for counterterrorism data analysis. A tender for a French replacement was launched in 2022 under the codename OTDH, with ChapsVision emerging as a finalist. The transition is expected to take at least two years, with ChapsVision's data fusion software rolled out gradually. Founded in 2019, ChapsVision has positioned itself as a sovereign alternative through aggressive acquisitions, and reportedly beat Palantir to a similar contract with Germany's BfV intelligence service.

The Trigger: Anthropic's AI Ban

The timing is no accident. The decision came just days after Washington restricted overseas access to Anthropic's Fable AI model, an episode Lecornu cited directly as proof of the risks of technological dependence on the United States. The move has rippled across allied governments, with Canada also warning of systemic risks from overreliance on US providers.

A Mistral Chatbot for One Million Civil Servants

Alongside the intelligence overhaul, the government will deploy a sovereign AI chatbot powered by Mistral AI models to roughly one million state employees. Minister of Public Action David Amiel described it as "the equivalent of ChatGPT but in a sovereign and secure version." The tool was tested over eight months by 10,000 agents across eight ministries, an experiment launched in October 2025 by France's digital directorate DINUM using Mistral's Medium 3 model on French infrastructure certified under the SecNumCloud standard. Full rollout is estimated to cost around €700,000.

Mistral Eyes the Battlefield

Separately, Mistral AI is reportedly seeking access to Ukraine's DELTA combat data ecosystem, a battlefield management platform with over 200,000 users that collects millions of annotated frames from drone sorties. Mistral already partners with European defence firm Helsing and secured a framework agreement with the French Ministry of Defence in January 2026. It is a clear signal that Europe's sovereign AI ambitions now stretch from the office desk to the front line.