Carahsoft files and withdraws protest of Palantir's $385M VA win in 24 hours

Two unlikely competitors – Palantir and Carahsoft – came close to squaring off over a nearly $400 million contract with the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Palantir won the potential five-year, $385.4 million contract on the last day of federal fiscal year 2025 – Sept. 30 to be exact. Then the government shut down the next day.

Since 2007, Palantir has provided a software-as-a-service solution to the VA that collects and structures data to support decision-making processes.

The government reopened on Nov. 13 and Carahsoft filed a bid protest the same day at the Government Accountability Office.

Carahsoft argued that VA did not properly evaluate technical proposals and relied on unstated evaluation criteria. The IT product reseller also said VA did not conduct a proper lowest price, technically acceptable determination and did not follow applicable statutes and regulations.

The challenge had all the markings of a nice fight between two well-known companies in the market. But Carahsoft withdrew its protest on Friday and GAO formally approved the move on Tuesday. VA never even had to weigh in with its side of the story.

No officials at either Palantir or Carahsoft have responded to requests for comment on why the protest and the quick withdrawal. Companies are not required to tell GAO why they are withdrawing either.

These two companies could not be more different from each other. Carahsoft is the largest value-added distributor in the federal market, while Palantir is a major software provider specializing in data integration and analytics platforms for government agencies.

In fact, Palantir is listed as a partner of Carahsoft on the reseller's website.

Carahsoft also rarely files bid protests. GAO's docket only goes back 12 months and there are no Carahsoft protests besides this one. In searching our archives, the most recent Carahsoft protest we can find was filed in 2014.

Was filing a protest just an error that they tried to quickly correct? Or were they really competing against each other for the VA contract?

If they would just respond, we might get some answers.