Nurses are taking their Palantir fight to the streets. National Nurses United staged protests this week in Austin, Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington, D.C., Portland, Asheville, New Orleans and other cities, targeting the data and AI firm’s expanding role in hospital operations.
In Austin, dozens of demonstrators gathered outside 8VC, the venture firm co-founded by Joe Lonsdale, who also helped found Palantir in 2003. Organizers picked that office because of the connection. As banners waved and baby-sized shoes lay on the pavement, the crowd chanted a familiar trio of targets: ICE, war, Palantir.
The core grievance is AI-driven staffing. Nurses say HCA Healthcare, the largest for-profit hospital operator in the country, runs patient assignments through a Palantir-powered scheduling app called Timpani. Monica Gonzalez, a National Nurses United member at the Austin rally, argued the tool can leave units short-staffed.
Gonzalez insisted staffing calls belong with humans, not a machine making decisions.
Attendees also cited NPR coverage describing Medicaid sharing data on millions of people with ICE, information that later reached Palantir. Representative Greg Casar of Austin joined the crowd and urged nurses to keep resisting what he called an AI oligarchy. Earlier in the week, nurses rallied at Peter Thiel’s West Hollywood doorstep, and Mission Health nurses in North Carolina protested Palantir software at HCA facilities. Palantir says its healthcare work improves efficiency, but frontline clinicians are clearly unconvinced.
