Tech giant Palantir and London mayor Sir Sadiq Khan's office have settled Palantir's lawsuit over a decision to block a £50 million contract with the Metropolitan Police.
Palantir was suing Mopac - the Mayor's Office for Policing and Crime, which is part of the mayor's office - over its decision to block the Met from agreeing to a two-year deal with the firm to provide artificial intelligence technology to automate intelligence analysis in criminal investigations.
Both sides have now withdrawn their allegations against each other, Palantir and Mopac said in a joint statement on Wednesday, October 14, 2026. A trial had been expected in January.
The statement said that Mopac "does not have, and has never had, any policy of not contracting with Palantir." In June, Palantir filed a legal claim against Mopac at the High Court, with lawyers for the company claiming in court documents that the body introduced an "unlawful veto" by wrongly considering the firm's "values and ethics" when deciding to block the contract.
However, the joint statement said Mopac's decision to block the Palantir contract was "not based on Palantir's values or ethics or any wider reporting about the company." It added: "Mopac recognises Palantir's concerns that media reporting of a statement from the mayor's spokesperson before the decision was taken could have incorrectly created the impression that an assessment of the company's values had been a factor in that decision."
Palantir remains in the bidding process for a contract with the Met, which is set to be decided in the spring. Blocking the contract earlier this year, Mopac said Palantir was the only supplier the Met had seriously considered for the proposed deal.
Mayor of London Sir Sadiq Khan said: "London is the technology capital of Europe, and I am proud that leading software firms choose the city as their home."
The blocked contract had drawn wider scrutiny because Palantir is already deeply embedded across British public institutions, including through its £330 million NHS federated data platform agreement. Critics have argued the company uses low-cost or free pilot projects to position itself for larger follow-on awards without competition, while Palantir rejects that claim and says it follows public-sector procurement best practice for pilot programmes.
After cancelling the Unified Operational Analytics contract, Mopac agreed to let the Met extend by 12 months a pilot under which Palantir software is used to identify potential officer misconduct. The force also said this week that Palantir's Foundry platform helped alert it to misconduct by James Deller, head of its special force of volunteer officers, who has since been dismissed.
Resolving the case removes the threat of an expensive court battle that could have required extensive disclosure, including searches of the mayor's emails and text messages related to the contract. It also explicitly leaves Palantir free to bid for future deals with the Met, the UK's largest police force by officer numbers. The settlement ends one of the most politically charged procurement disputes in recent British policing - but the broader debate about the role of US tech firms in UK public services is far from over.