I think I missed a connecting piece here, since this is a non-government contract for Palantir.

Since they've been able to do the above, I think they've developed a pretty good skillset at merging disparate data and surfacing it for analytics. Combine that with the fact that their government business is a money-printing machine, you basically end up with an analytics shop that has significant experience at scale and is extremely well capitalized. For a relatively non-tech savvy or uninformed customer, Palantir could look like a pretty attractive option.