Coles Drops Palantir Contract After Activist Campaign over Data Use

Coles will end its enterprise partnership with United States software vendor Palantir. The decision follows an 85,000-signature petition against deploying military-grade data systems in Australian supermarkets.

Company officials confirmed the business will let the three-year agreement expire in 2027 rather than sign an extension.

Rostering and Supply Chain Deployment

The grocer brought in Palantir in early 2024 to manage backend administration across its store network. The software scheduled shift rosters and coordinated bakery production runs. It also modelled inventory flow through distribution centres.

Community advocacy group GetUp launched a campaign against the deal shortly after the contract took effect. Activists cited Palantir’s contracts with the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency and the Israeli Defence Forces. They argued military-grade systems had no place in retail operations.

A spokesperson for the chain rejected claims that the platform ever tracked shoppers or gathered aisle surveillance feeds. “Palantir’s technology has delivered value across Coles’ operations, particularly in rostering, store operations and supply chain planning,” the spokesperson said.

The Enterprise Risk in Retail AI

Supermarket operators across the Asia-Pacific region are rushing to automate workforce management and stock replenishment. Yet vendor selection brings brand exposure that procurement teams often underestimate. When enterprise software providers run heavy defence and state intelligence divisions, consumer-facing retailers absorb the reputational fallout directly at the checkout.

Coles chose to let the contract lapse quietly at its natural term rather than terminate immediately. That approach lets the grocer run down existing IT commitments while scouting replacement platforms for store-level forecasting and labor scheduling.

A Push Toward Neutral Systems

Earlier, the company maintained Palantir never controlled internal grocer data or held rights to repurpose operational metrics. It declined to detail commercial reasons for walking away from the contract when asked for clarification.

Chains across Australia and the wider region face sharper scrutiny over in-store data management. Woolworths and Coles both encountered customer resistance in recent years when testing automated checkout monitoring and digital loss-prevention systems.

Attention now turns to how the retailer will transition its store scheduling and supply chain workflows to alternative software providers before the agreement concludes in 2027.