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Nathan Gettings

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Nathan Dale Gettings[1]
OccupationsSoftware engineer, entrepreneur
Known forPalantir, RoboteX, Affirm Holdings

Nathan Dale Gettings is a software engineer and entrepreneur who has served as co-founder and CTO of Palantir Technologies, co-founder and CEO of RoboteX, co-founder and chief risk officer at Affirm Holdings.[2][1][3] Russian researchers also link Gettings to the military drone company Skydio as a co-founder.[3]

Early life

[edit]

Different sources list Gettings's age differently. The New Yorker says that he was 32 in 2009.[2] Chafkin notes that he was in his late twenties when Palantir was founded,[4] while Albrecht S. Reinhardt notes that he was 25 in 2003 when Palantir was founded.[5] A report by Russian researchers list his birth year as 1982.[3] In 2019, Marcus Roth notes that although it is known that Gettings is a "key mind behind the United States' current intelligence software", his past including academic records seems to be kept obscured for security-related reasons.[6] Nathan Gettings and his younger brother Adam grew up in a Southern Illinois farm.[2]

Getting graduated from University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign with a degree in mathematics in 1998.[7] Wired notes that Gettings graduated from Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy in 1995.[8]

Career

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PayPal

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Gettings worked as an engineer at PayPal as an early employee.[9][10] He served under Max Levchin, who was also from the University of Urbana Illinois-Champaign and presided over PayPal's software Igor, a fraud-detection system primarily used by the company to catch Russian cybercriminals.[4] According to Keith Rabois, at the time, Gettings had "run risk and fraud" together with him.[11][4] James da Costa writes that the solution (for combatting fraud) Levchin, Gettings, Jawed Karim and Joe Lonsdale developed at PayPal "accidentally developed another industry entirely: fraud detection."[12] Reinhardt credits Gettings as the man who constructed Igor.[13]

Palantir Technologies (2003–2012)

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Gettings was a co-founder of the defense technology company Palantir alongside Peter Thiel, Alex Karp, Stephen Cohen and Joe Lonsdale, and served as its long-time CTO.[10] Palantir was incorporated in 2003.[14] Thiel, Gettings and Stanford alumni Cohen and Lonsdale had started Palantir from the office of Thiel's Clarium Capital[15] Later, they were joined by Karp, whom Gettings, Cohen, and Lonsdale persuaded Thiel to make the CEO.[15] Thiel paid for Gettings, Cohen and Lonsdale to build a prototype for Palantir.[16][10] The technology is based on the previous work on PayPal's Igor.[4] He played an important role "in building the core data and product architecture of Palantir in its early days".[9] According to author Max Chafkin, among the three (dubbed by Chafkin as "a mix of Stanford conservatives and a genius coder"), Gettings, was considered the senior.[4] Kim Kyung-jin, on the other hand, reports that Cohen was the key engineer.[17]

Igor served as the inspiration but it could not be used to directly combat terrorism.[18][19] Chafkin notes that intelligence work is noticeably messier in comparison with preventing financial fraud, because intelligence work deals with reports written by human analysts who disagree with each other, and then are stored in different, sometimes incompatible software and hardware formats, thus requiring a large pool of personnel to clean up the data.[19] In addition, the founders had no connection with the government; the comparatively low pay and the arcane nature of Palantir's work, according to Gettings, also made it hard to attracted talented employees.[20] At the beginning, the goal set for Gettings and Cohen was modest: building a prototype that could prove the idea of Palantir as plausible.[21] When they showed the prototype, built by Gettings (or Gettings and Cohen according to Steinberg[21]), the potential customers' and investors' reaction was that it was interesting but could never work.[19] Gettings, Cohen and Lonsdale almost gave up, but Thiel pushed the company forward.[19] On 11 September 2003, Thiel and Karp met with In-Q-Tel's Gilman Louie and Chris Darby, to whom they showed a demo which was built with Gettings' help in 36 hours. With this meeting, they got In-Q-Tel's financial support.[22] The investment also led to connections with defense and intelligence communities.[23][24]

Gettings left the company in 2012 to start Affirm with Max Levchin.[25]

Affirm

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Gettings served as co-founder and chief risk officer for Affirm.[10][26] Together with Max Levchin and Jeff Kaditz, he "started Affirm on the belief that the current FICO-based credit rating system is not working for many consumers".[27][26]

RoboteX

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In 2007, he co-founded the company RoboteX with his brother Adam Gettings and Terry Izumi.[2][28] Nathan Gettings served as CEO.[3][29] The company provided remote-controlled security robots for firefighters, police and SWAT teams.[28][29] The company was the idea of Thiel.[10] Thiel and Karp also served on the board as directors and investors.[30][31][32] After Robotex presented some early robot prototypes, clients said that they wanted smaller, easier-to-carry machines, so the Gettings brothers changed their focus and built mini robots with tank treads.[2] In 2021, the company was listed as the provider of robots for the police department in Fairfield city.[33] The company later went out of business.[34]

Others

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He served as chief data advisor to Leeo, Inc., a startup that was co-founded by his brother Adam Gettings and provided smart home services and products.[35]

Gettings is president of the committee of founding at the CHiwi Foundation (Stiftung CHiwi), which is a grant-giving research foundation in Zug, Switzerland.[36][37] It backs programs such as ETH Zurich's LunarLeaper,[38] and USC Information Sciences Institute's Space Engineering Research Center's PhD program.[39]

Personal life

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Gettings is noted to have a low-profile lifestyle and has been known as the quietest of the co-founders of Palantir.[10]

[edit]

Publications of Nathans Gettings on ScholarGPS

References

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  1. 1 2 "Nathan Dale Gettings: Positions, Relations and Network - MarketScreener". www.marketscreener.com. Retrieved 6 August 2026.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 Ratliff, Evan (15 February 2009). "Shoot!". The New Yorker.
  3. 1 2 3 4 Artamonov, Sergey; Komartsov, Ilya; Prokhorova, Alina; Demeshev, Artem; Arsen, Arutyunyan (2023). Palantir Technologies Inc (PDF). p. 14.
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 Chafkin, Max (21 September 2021). The Contrarian: Peter Thiel and Silicon Valley's Pursuit of Power. Bloomsbury Publishing. pp. 137, 138. ISBN 978-1-5266-1958-7.
  5. ↑ Reinhardt, Albrecht S. (28 January 2026). L’Imperatore Ombra della Silicon Valley: La vita e il potere occulto di Peter Thiel (in Italian). BookRix. p. 24. ISBN 978-3-6952-2040-3.
  6. ↑ "Artificial Intelligence at the CIA - Current Applications". Emerj Artificial Intelligence Research. 13 February 2019.
  7. ↑ Evensen, Dave (ed.). LAS news 150 years What is the future of the liberal arts and sciences (PDF). College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. p. 6.
  8. ↑ Finley, Klint (31 May 2013). "Hogwarts for Hackers: Inside the Science and Tech School of Tomorrow". Wired.
  9. 1 2 "Palantir Founders: Where Are They Now?". Ceotoday Magazine. 19 August 2025.
  10. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Bort, Julie (9 July 2020). "These 11 people should grow from rich to richer if Palantir has a successful IPO". Business Insider.
  11. ↑ "Notion | Where teams and agents work together". Notion. Retrieved 6 August 2026.
  12. ↑ Costa, James da (3 October 2024). Fintech Wars: Tech Titans, Complex Crypto and the Future of Money - THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER. Kogan Page Publishers. p. 23. ISBN 978-1-3986-1703-2.
  13. ↑ Reinhardt 2026, p. 24.
  14. ↑ "Palantir | Big Data Analytics, Cybersecurity, & AI | Britannica Money". Encyclopedia Britannica. 2 August 2026. Retrieved 6 August 2026.
  15. 1 2 Steinberg 2025, pp. 70.
  16. ↑ Schubarth, Cromwell (13 June 2019). "Palantir co-founder calls reports of IPO plans 'fake news'". www.bizjournals.com.
  17. ↑ Kyung-jin, Kim (15 July 2026). The Valley's Heretic: Alex Karp, the Man Who Feared Fascism and Built a Surveillance Empire. 김경진 변호사 출판사. p. 69.
  18. ↑ Steinberg 2025, pp. 58, 66.
  19. 1 2 3 4 Chafkin 2021, p. 114.
  20. ↑ Steinberg 2025, pp. 58, 76.
  21. 1 2 Steinberg 2025, p. 58.
  22. ↑ Reinhardt 2026, p. 71.
  23. ↑ Rodriguez, Abel (22 April 2026). "What Is Palantir? The Company Behind Government AI Tools". Built In.
  24. ↑ Gorman, Siobhan (5 September 2009). "How Team of Geeks Cracked Spy Trade - WSJ". Wall Street Journal.
  25. ↑ Steinberger, Michael (4 November 2025). The Philosopher in the Valley: Alex Karp, Palantir, and the Rise of the Surveillance State. Simon and Schuster. p. 258. ISBN 978-1-6680-1297-0. Retrieved 6 August 2026.
  26. 1 2 Olleros, F. Xavier; Zhegu, Majlinda (30 September 2016). Research Handbook on Digital Transformations. Edward Elgar Publishing. p. 114. ISBN 978-1-78471-776-6. Retrieved 6 August 2026.
  27. ↑ "CFPB Enforcement Attorney Appointed Affirm Chief Compliance Officer". insideARM. 25 July 2014.
  28. 1 2 Wang, Jennifer (3 June 2013). "8 Companies Leading the Charge for Commercial-Use Robotics". Entrepreneur.
  29. 1 2 "NOTICE OF SALE OF SECURITIES" (PDF). Retrieved 6 August 2026.
  30. ↑ "Peter Thiel backed RoboteX raises $2.06 million - VatorNews". 23 March 2013.
  31. ↑ Murray, Peter (3 April 2013). "PayPal Co-Founder Peter Thiel Joins $5 Million Backing For Robot Security Company RoboteX". SingularityHub.
  32. ↑ Schubarth, Cromwell (22 March 2013). "Peter Thiel-backed RoboteX raises $2M of $5M round". www.bizjournals.com.
  33. ↑ "AGENDA REPORT". 16 January 2024.
  34. ↑ "RoboteX 2026 Company Profile: Valuation, Funding & Investors | PitchBook". pitchbook.com. Retrieved 6 August 2026.
  35. ↑ "Leeo Forms with $37M Funding". www.vcnewsdaily.com. 18 September 2014.
  36. ↑ "Stiftung CHiwi". Retrieved 6 August 2026.
  37. ↑ "Nathan Dale Gettings". Retrieved 6 August 2026.
  38. ↑ Kolvenbach, Hendrik; Mittelholz, Anna; Stähler, Simon C.; Arm, Philip; Bickel, Valentin T.; Fuhrer, Adrian; Gomez Jodar, Jordi; Margarit, Ramon; Church, Joseph; Krasnova, Elena; Walas, Krzysztof; Grott, Matthias; Hamran, Svein-Erik; Karatekin, Özgür; Olivares-Mendez, Miguel; Coloma, Sofia; Pagnamenta, Marco; Gumiela, Michał; Aaron, Jordan; Hutter, Marco (March 2026). "LunarLeaper–A mission concept to explore the lunar subsurface with a small-scale legged robot". Acta Astronautica. 240: 63–75. doi:10.1016/j.actaastro.2025.11.039. Retrieved 2026-08-06.
  39. ↑ "Optical-Reef". Retrieved 6 August 2026.
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