Company histories
Deep, sourced narratives of how a firm was built, who funded it, and what it became. Our Palantir history is cited across reference works in seven languages.
Research practice
Maus Strategic Consulting writes the long, careful histories of the companies where software, capital, and state power converge — the ones most people only meet through a headline.
What we do
No tickers, no hot takes. We trace how a company actually came to be — the contracts, the founders, the decisions — and lay it out so it holds up years later.
Deep, sourced narratives of how a firm was built, who funded it, and what it became. Our Palantir history is cited across reference works in seven languages.
Where private software meets public power — intelligence, defense, surveillance, and the procurement systems that quietly decide who builds what.
Ownership, governance, and the financial scaffolding behind the headlines — explained without jargon and without an agenda.
Flagship essay
From a post-9/11 idea inside the PayPal network to a company woven through intelligence agencies, police departments, and the S&P 500. The full arc, named after Tolkien's seeing stones — fittingly, for a firm built to make the invisible legible.
Read the essay →From the archive
The founding, the funding, and the long road from classified contracts to a public listing.
Company history Apr 2014An “Amazon for Big Data” — open, regulated data markets as a way out of the privacy trap.
Data & privacy Feb 2014How the networks we joined to share photos became contested terrain for propaganda and influence.
Conflict & info Feb 2014The same data that lets activists organize can let a regime find them first.
Surveillance