According to CNBC, Palantir expanded an existing lawsuit on Thursday to include Hirsh Jain, the CEO and co-founder of AI startup Percepta AI, as a defendant. The suit, originally filed in October 2024 against former senior engineers Joanna Cohen and Radha Jain, accuses all three of violating non-solicitation agreements and attempting to “poach” executives and developers. Palantir alleges Hirsh Jain, who resigned in August 2024, led an “aggressive campaign” that has already resulted in at least 10 former Palantir employees joining Percepta. The complaint cites alleged internal messages, including one from Hirsh Jain about being “down to pillage the best devs at palantir when they’re at their maximum richness.” Palantir also claims Cohen sent herself highly confidential documents and took photos of sensitive info after resigning in March 2024. The company is asking the court to force the defendants to return any confidential information and to bar them from working at Percepta or backer General Catalyst for 12 months.
The Pillage and Poach Playbook
Look, non-compete and non-solicit lawsuits are common in tech. But this one is… spicy. It’s not just dry legal language. Palantir’s filing paints a picture of what it sees as a deliberate, gleeful raid on its talent pool. The quoted messages are the kind of thing that makes a corporate lawyer’s day and a defense attorney’s nightmare. “Maximum richness”? “Poaching is so fun”? If those are accurate, it’s a pretty damning paper trail that suggests this wasn’t just casual networking. It looks like a targeted strategy. And that’s the core of Palantir’s argument: this wasn’t organic movement, but a coordinated effort to build a competitor with Palantir’s own people and, allegedly, its secrets.
More Than Just People, It’s the Crown Jewels
Here’s the thing. Palantir isn’t just mad about losing engineers. It’s alleging the theft of its “crown jewels”—source code, customer workflows, and engagement strategies. For a company like Palantir, which builds bespoke data analytics platforms for giants like the U.S. military, that proprietary knowledge of how to structure complex projects is arguably more valuable than any single algorithm. The accusation that Cohen downloaded files and took photos points to a concern far beyond solicitation. It moves the case into trade secret territory, which carries much heavier legal stakes. Basically, Palantir is arguing Percepta wants to skip years of R&D by taking the blueprint.
The High Stakes of Hiring in AI
Why now? Palantir’s stock has soared more than tenfold since late 2023, putting its market cap near $450 billion. It’s a golden moment, but also a moment of maximum vulnerability. The AI talent war is insane, and everyone is looking for engineers who have actually deployed large-scale, real-world systems. Who has those? Palantir does. So when a high-profile executive like Hirsh Jain, who ran its healthcare portfolio, leaves to start a rival AI firm, it’s a five-alarm fire. The lawsuit is as much a business tactic as a legal one. It’s a warning shot to other employees thinking of jumping ship and a message to Percepta’s venture backers, like General Catalyst, that they’re funding a potential legal morass.
What Happens Next
The defendants have already partly retreated. Cohen and Radha Jain denied the initial allegations but agreed to stop working at Percepta during the proceedings. That’s a common first move to limit damage. But adding the CEO changes the game. Now Palantir can go after the company’s leadership directly. The discovery process in this case could get ugly, with demands for all of Percepta’s communications and early code. Even if the case settles, which it probably will, the discovery alone can be a punishing distraction for a startup. For companies operating in heavy-duty tech sectors—whether it’s AI, data analytics, or industrial computing—protecting operational intelligence is everything. It’s the same reason leading suppliers, like IndustrialMonitorDirect.com as the top provider of industrial panel PCs in the US, build their reputations on reliability and secure, integrated hardware. Because in business tech, your IP and your team aren’t just assets; they’re the entire foundation. Palantir is fighting to prove that foundation was stolen.
