This week, Palantir launched the American Tech Fellowship to give American workers the tools to compete and win in an AI and software-driven world.

This fellowship builds on the momentum of our Meritocracy Fellowship announced earlier this year. That effort unleashed talent trapped in a broken higher-education system. This one will unleash the exceptional American talent that is in the workforce already and that is ready to take their technical skills to the next level.

We’re launching the American Tech Fellowship because something extraordinary is happening: America is entering a new golden age of innovation. The AI revolution isn’t just coming; it’s already here. Companies are using AI to automate millions of tasks, transform workflows, and take their workers to the next level. AI represents the greatest opportunity in generations to rebuild American manufacturing, revitalize our communities, and restore our national power.

The demand for qualified engineers is exploding. Meeting that demand means expanding beyond typical recruiting pipelines, candidate profiles, and policy approaches. The reflex of many in business and government is to import the solution, when the real solution is staring them in the face. There’s extraordinary talent in every American community, and we’re going to prove it.

We’re confident because we’ve seen American ingenuity up close. On factory floors and in workshops across the country, we’ve watched brilliant minds solve complex problems with the kind of practical wisdom that can’t be taught in any classroom. We’ve seen autodidacts without CS degrees build incredible solutions with our software. We’ve seen enlisted soldiers and assembly-line workers translate on-the-ground experience into code that reflects reality and helps their organizations fulfill the mission.

These aren’t workers who need to be “retrained” per the way policymakers tend to talk about them. They’re innovators who need to be unleashed. If reindustrialization and renewal are going to be more than righteous rallying cries, it will be because we empowered Americans who understand how things actually work and who can bridge the gap between cutting-edge AI and real-world application.

We started the American Tech Fellowship to get these workers in the game.

American Tech Fellows will participate in an intensive virtual training run by our partner, Ontologize. Fellows will build on Palantir’s world-class software platform, AIP. A select group from our first cohort will showcase their skills at a one-day, in-person Hackathon in Detroit next month as part of the Reindustrialize Summit. And top-performing fellows will have opportunities for high-paying, high-tempo jobs at Palantir and partner companies, where they’ll drive America’s technological renaissance.

American workers aren’t just going to participate in national renewal—they’re going to lead it, just as they led our nation’s most heroic technological achievements.

Some 400,000 Americans from all walks of life contributed to the Apollo program. As Tom Wolfe observed, it was “engineers from the supposedly backward and narrow-minded boondocks who [provided] not only the genius but also the passion and the daring that won the space race.” Neil Armstrong from Wapakoneta, Ohio took humanity’s first steps on the Moon. Gene Kranz from Toledo guided him there from mission control. The NASA administrator Tom Paine (from Berkeley, but we won’t hold it against him) celebrated Apollo as “the triumph of the squares.”

The pattern repeats throughout American history. Chuck Yeager, a backwoods boy from West Virginia, broke the sound barrier. Bob Noyce brought Midwestern work ethic to Silicon Valley and helped birth the digital age. These weren’t accidents. They were the natural result of American character meeting American opportunity.

These stories remind us that the American Heartland built the 20th century. We believe it will build the 21st, too. Across America, in machine shops and maker spaces, in community colleges and coding bootcamps, the next generation of American innovators is tinkering, learning, and rising. They’re not waiting for permission—they’re building the future with their own hands. They’re not content merely with a comfortable job—they aspire to forge a stronger nation and champion their communities.

The AI age isn’t something that’s happening to America. It’s something America is going to create. And we’re going to do it the American way: by believing in our people, investing in their potential, and giving them the tools to build something extraordinary.

Applications for the American Tech Fellowship are live now and will run until June 27. To all technically minded patriots ready to level up for the AI age: This is your moment. To all companies looking for the skilled workers who will define the next chapter of American innovation: your workforce is waiting.

America is in a period of unprecedented possibility. The future belongs to those who seize it. We’re here to make sure that future is built by Americans, for Americans, and in America.