18, no degree – but up to 70,000 euros a year: The US data company Palantir Technologies is making school leavers an offer that suddenly makes the classic university look old.
18, no studies – but up to 70,000 euros a year: The US data company Palantir Technologies is making school leavers in the UK an offer that suddenly makes the classic university look old.
Fellowship instead of lecture hall
With the new “Meritocracy Fellowship,” Palantir founder Alex Karp is specifically targeting 18-year-olds who actually wanted to study computer science. Instead of a lecture hall, you go straight to the London office – full time, on real projects from government and business. The Sun first reported on it.
The participants work there on AI systems and are expected to be productive from day one.
The message is clear
For Palantir, this is more than an internship. It is an attack on the classic training model. The university is no longer keeping up with the speed of AI, says UK boss Louis Mosley. Instead of spending years learning theory – and possibly getting into debt in the process – it makes more sense to train directly in the company.
The fellowship runs for five months from October 2026 to February 2027. The annual salary of £60,000 is calculated over the duration of the fellowship. Anyone who convinces will receive a full-time offer.
Palantir deliberately targets exactly the talent that would otherwise have gone to elite universities. There is a larger trend behind this: tech companies are getting their people earlier and earlier – and prefer to build them themselves rather than wait for universities.
