According to Palantir, this gives it a competitive advantage

Palantir (PLTR) shares are rising after announcing the company will join the S&P 500 (^GSPC). Matt Babin, head of energy and natural resources at Palantir, talks to Market Domination about the competitive software landscape and the milestone of joining the S&P 500.

“I focus more on what we do than on what other people do, because building great software requires all of our concentration,” Babin explains.

He believes Palantir's competitive advantage comes from “the depth and time we've invested in the ontology”: “Let's take the example of BP (BP), this printing system that is not just the nouns and the assets that they use. That's all the verbs in between. The actions that you take, the decisions that you make as a company. And so if you build this flexible framework for a data model for the way your company does business, then if you get that part right, you can build everything on top of it.”

Babin calls Palantir's inclusion in the S&P 500 “exciting” and explains that a few things are most important to him going forward. “I think the first thing is to keep it in the energy space. The energy space is full of standards. There are safety standards, there are construction standards, and the requirements to meet those standards are pretty high. I think the requirements for the index are just as high,” Babin says.

He continues, “I think the second reason is that as someone who has come from a government background and has worked on the government side of our company, you don't have to choose between being a mission-driven company and being a commercially successful company. We haven't sacrificed anything in our mission and our intent of what we do on that side. As a private employee, the work I have to do today and tomorrow is the same work I have to do if the announcement on Friday had been different. So that doesn't change at all.”

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This article was written by Melanie Riehl