Neo4j plots Palantir alternative with GraphAware acquisition

databases

Graph database biz says on-prem, air-gapped intel stack gives governments a no-kill-switch option

"The no-kill-switch kind of thing? It's increasingly becoming a requirement," says Neo4j CEO Emil Eifrem.

This is one of the reasons behind the company's decision to buy GraphAware, an intelligence analysis software platform built on the graph database, which is positioning itself as an alternative to Palantir, the controversial US spy-tech biz.

The purchase has been in the offing for a while, but the timing of the announcement was fortuitous for Neo4j.

On the same day, the European Commission presented the European Technological Sovereignty Package, a set of measures to strengthen Europe's capacity in semiconductors, AI, cloud, and open source. It comes amid widespread concern over the dependence European companies and government agencies have on tech vendors subject to US law.

Fears over a "kill switch" for US software were stoked in June 2025, when Microsoft admitted under oath in a French court that it couldn't guarantee digital sovereignty if American authorities demanded access to data held on Microsoft servers on foreign soil. An analysis of European dependence on US technology found that one major weakness – or "kill switch" – is Identity and Access Management (IAM), where the Redmond vendor's Entra ID is a near-monopoly with few alternatives.

GraphAware has built an intelligence platform on top of the Neo4j database used by police and government agencies worldwide, and is positioned as a competitor to Palantir.

Speaking to The Register, GraphAware CEO Michal Bachman explained that users need not be dependent on any third party to keep the software running as it is based on open architecture and open standards. The system is built on the Neo4j graph database, which operates on an open-core model, and customers build queries using the Cypher query language, which is very close to the open language GQL.

"Nothing in the platform modifies the data in a proprietary way. So if you want to export it, you can export it," Bachman said.

The database and intelligence stack can also be deployed on-premises or in a private cloud. "The customer is in full control over how it's deployed, where it's deployed, where the data is stored, it doesn't call home, and you can deploy in an air-gapped environment. You don't need internet access. Nothing, no one can turn it off," he said.

Palantir is mostly run as SaaS in the public cloud, although its products can be run in the private cloud or on-prem. Its Gotham platform – which GraphAware competes with – is designed for defense, intelligence, and law enforcement agencies, helping operators connect the dots between disparate sources.

In the UK, concerns about Palantir have been growing. Last week, lawmakers warned the spy-tech vendor's increasing presence in the public sector was an "unacceptable point of weakness" and urged the government to exercise the 2027 break clause in the controversial NHS Federated Data Platform contract, based on the Palantir Foundry system.

Palantir's leadership seems willing to continue to stoke controversy. Last year, CEO Alex Karp said the founders planned to build a company that "could power the West to its obvious innate superiority." Earlier in the year, he claimed AI would mean Western economies don't need immigration.

Speaking to The Register, Neo4j's Eifrem said the "cultural transformation" in technology and politics was another motivation for buying the GraphAware intelligence platform.

"The trust in centralized institutions has been this one-way slope for decades – since the '70s – at least in the Western world. Then the internet comes around with social media and podcasts, creating decentralized media. Everyone gets a voice. Then on top of that, we have a counter-trend to the cancel culture thing; it's like the Overton window has expanded significantly."

Whether that's good or bad, Eifrem said it was Neo4j's plan to offer a viable, more open alternative to Palantir, built on graph semantics well-suited to intelligence gathering. ®