Palantir's former IT boss just took over as CEO of Thrive-backed AI MSP platform

Former Palantir CIO Jim Siders has departed the company to join Shield Technology Partners as CEO, in a bid he says is meant to bring AI to bear in the sprawling managed services landscape.

With the new CEO announced on Monday, Thrive Holdings has pulled in Palantir talent just weeks after OpenAI took a stake in the business. Shield has described the global IT services market it's targeting as worth more than $700 billion.

Shield was announced in June as an AI-enabled platform uniting four established IT services providers, backed with over $100 million in initial funding from Thrive Holdings and ZBS Partners. The individual owners of those IT shops continue to run their businesses, while Shield provides centralized support, shared tools and capital to help scale what they’ve already built. The structure appears similar to the business structure of what are known as Master MSPs – such as ...