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DGSI Chooses ChapsVision to Phase Out Palantir in France
France’s Directorate General for Internal Security (DGSI) is betting on digital sovereignty and independence. After adopting Palantir in 2016, the DGSI has selected French vendor ChapsVision and its ArgonOS platform to eventually take over large-scale data analysis. It is a major sovereignty shift, but one that is expected to be long and tricky to implement.
Let’s go back a few years, to a time when the DGSI had turned to the American Palantir solution. That was in 2016, in the wake of 2015, a year marked by the Charlie Hebdo, Hyper Cacher, and Bataclan attacks. Nearly a decade later, much has changed, including the geopolitical context, and the need to regain control over a critical tool has finally become unavoidable.
And France is far from the only country dealing with Palantir. The American vendor operates well beyond US borders, where the Pentagon, the ICE immigration agency, and several federal agencies are among its long-standing customers. On the international stage, its tools are notably found in:
- the United Kingdom, the group’s second-largest market worldwide, from the NHS to military use cases,
- Ukraine, where its technology supports military operations against Russia,
- Israel, where the company provides support to the army while denying any involvement in the targeting programs used in Gaza.
- Germany, where several states, including Bavaria, Hesse, and North Rhine-Westphalia, are deploying Gotham for their police forces.
As early as 2022, a tender called OTDH (heterogeneous data processing tool) was launched to build a French alternative. In 2023, the field narrowed to three candidates: Athea (Atos-Thales alliance), Blueway, and ChapsVision. The decision has now been made.
A confirmed switch, but spread out over time
ChapsVision won the contract. The vendor secured two successive lots, one at the end of 2024 dedicated to data preparation, and another this June 2026, focused on making knowledge usable through modeling, securing, and visualization. ChapsVision’s mission is now to replace Palantir.
However, at the end of 2025, Palantir renewed its contract with the DGSI for several more years. That may seem contradictory with this new decision, but in reality, not so much. This transition from Palantir to ChapsVision is expected to take a long time, so Palantir tools will remain in service until the French solution is fully integrated.
We are talking about the DGSI, not a supermarket: this is internal security within a highly sensitive agency. It is about protecting France and its citizens. DGSI operations regularly help thwart attacks, so France cannot afford to become less effective because of a vendor change.
Matignon explains that "this phase will provide the time needed to train teams and prepare the migration to ChapsVision’s solution". That detail speaks volumes about the technical reality of such a project. In an agency as sensitive as domestic intelligence, switching platforms is not as simple as switching providers. Beyond training agents, the service must ensure continuity for ongoing investigations and make sure the solution can handle real-world workloads.
What we know about ChapsVision
Founded in 2019 by Olivier Dellenbach, ChapsVision has grown through a series of acquisitions: Coheris (CRM), Bertin IT (cybersecurity monitoring), Vecsys (speech recognition), Elektron (data intelligence), and more recently Sinequa, a long-standing search engine specialist.
At the core of what ChapsVision offers is the ArgonOS platform. It is a modular solution capable of collecting, preparing, processing, and analyzing massive amounts of data, regardless of format or source. It includes a set of features designed for intelligence missions, such as:
- Automated extraction of information from documents, images, and media,
- OSINT enrichment (gathering information from open sources),
- Search and investigation tools to uncover hidden trends.
It also includes features based on generative AI and AI agents. The DGSI will also be able to choose how ArgonOS is deployed: on-premises, in an air-gapped environment, or in a sovereign Cloud.
Meanwhile, neighboring countries are also questioning their use of Palantir solutions. For example, in Germany, the choice of ChapsVision also appears to be gaining ground, again with the goal of eventually replacing Palantir. Indeed, German domestic intelligence is also said to have selected ArgonOS to move away from Palantir.
Beyond the technology itself, this choice is part of a broader trend. European governments are now reassessing their digital dependencies, and this goes far beyond questions about the use of sovereign office suites.
