Cashing fat the .gov to "fight terrorism" doesn't help make US citizens any safer, but does the founder wealthy enough to buy castles & fly his Stanford undergrad floozy around the world on private jets. Nice work if you can get it.
If $750K of lobbying makes them shady, what do you think of millions of dollars spent on lobbying per-quarter by the likes of Google, Amazon, and Apple? [1]
Their VC firm was not the CIA. It was In-Q-Tel, which was founded by the CIA (yes, there is a difference). In-Q-Tel has also funded companies such as FireEye. [2] What's your opinion of them?
I don't really know how to respond to the claim about "Cashing fat the .gov", because I can't parse that sentence. I will point out that Palantir has been increasingly shifting to a corporate client base.
It's semi-public knowledge that In-Q-Tel is the investment arm of the government. They make investments on behalf of any government department that puts up the money.
But why does any of that mean they aren't a technology company?
It's as if by 'tech company' you really mean 'fashionable, liberal, consumer web startup or ex-startup', which isn't a reasonable definition of 'technology'.
Palantir getting investment from In-Q-Tel gives them more credibility. The intelligence community is clearly their target market. Getting investment from that community in an overt and legit way doesn't fire any alarms to me.
