Shyam Sankar 是 Palantir 的首席技术官，也是使其业务和技术运作的主要负责人。 他于 2006 年加入，成为第 13 位员工，当时 Palantir 是硅谷的一个怪异现象：一个小型且有些疯狂的初创公司，演示版本存在很多问题，且没有客户。在过去的 20 年里，他在幕后努力，将其打造成“国防科技”的先锋和一家价值 3200 亿美元的公司。 他与弗吉尼亚的情报分析师、伊拉克和阿富汗的特种作战人员，以及一些全球最大公司的工厂工人紧密合作——在现场构建和重建软件，有时还把手机贴在头上，以便在保持双手自由编码的同时进行反馈交流。他发明了“前线部署工程师”，这一职位后来成为了怀疑和模仿的对象。 Palantir 的多变联合创始人兼首席执行官 Alex Karp 表示，如果没有他，公司将无法存在。现代国防科技行业也可以说同样，许多创始人在为 Shyam 工作时积累了经验。 在这篇深入报道的特写中，@JeremySternLA 讲述了美国最具争议的公司的背后，最关键但又隐秘的人物的故事。他还清晰地解释了 Palantir 实际上做了什么，公司的估值是否合理或荒谬，以及这一切与公司拯救西方文明的使命有什么关系。 故事始于 The Pierre 酒店的宏伟舞厅，穿越尼日利亚和印度、佛罗里达和加利福尼亚、伊拉克和阿富汗。最后以一位拉比、一只猴子和一个关于在即将到来的火灾面前如何争取时间的教训结束。 仅在《巨人》中：

The story of 3G Capital involves Roger Federer, Sam Walton, and Warren Buffett. It includes the biggest beer company on earth, the biggest footwear deal in history, and a ketchup bottle with Charlie Munger's face on it. It also involves accusations of 'chainsaw capitalism,' CEOs driving freight trains, and billion-dollar companies being handed to kids in their twenties. Buffett called it the best management culture he'd ever seen. But, until now, the story behind the culture has never been told by the people who carry it forward. In truth, 3G would prefer you had never heard of it. The firm began in New York in 2004. But the real story starts in the seventies, off the beaches of Rio de Janeiro, when Jorge Paulo Lemann bought a brokerage for $800,000 and built a model for running businesses unlike anything else in Brazil. The model has since produced the biggest investment bank in Brazil, the world’s largest brewer, the third-largest restaurant company, and turned hundreds of employees into multimillionaires. In 3G Capital, it has also produced a rare kind of investing partnership, one where each fund holds exactly one company, the partners are the largest investors in every fund, they work the businesses themselves, and they have never lost money on a deal. Almost everything written about the firm notes that managing partners Alex Behring and Daniel Schwartz did not respond for comment. For Colossus, they sat for hours of interviews at their Manhattan office. @domcooke tells the full story of how this secretive firm with fewer than 30 employees has built some of the world's biggest companies.