It was over beers on an autumn evening in Zurich in 2024 that a group of journalists with an independent Swiss research collective began to discuss investigating Palantir, one of the world’s biggest tech companies.

Three years earlier, Palantir had advertised that it was setting up a “European hub” in the Swiss municipality of Altendorf, a sleepy town of roughly 7,000 people on the shores of Lake Zurich.

Press coverage of the move was positive: a Swiss national newspaper said the canton of Schwyz had “pulled off a coup” by landing a US tech company. But the journalists in the collective, WAV, were not so sure. They wondered what Swiss authorities were doing with Palantir.

WAV approached a small Swiss reader-funded magazine, Republik, to collaborate on a story. One year and 59 freedom of information requests later, their investigation, which alleged that Palantir had persistently courted Switzerland but had been rejected, made waves across Europe – prompting debate in Germany and comment from UK politicians.

Palantir was not happy. The journalists say they had interviewed company executives and sent a full list of questions before publication, but that the company demanded they print a detailed rebuttal, with a list of points that the journalists say went well beyond the scope of their investigation. When the magazine refused, Palantir filed a lawsuit in a Swiss commercial court demanding that it do so.

In a statement, Palantir told the Guardian that Swiss law recognised the right of reply “to provide the public with balanced information”. It says the details it sought to rebut are “anything but extraneous to their findings. The misstatements speak to material falsehoods about Palantir’s business, technology and operations. Palantir has sought only the publication of a concise and proportionate right of reply to correct material inaccuracies.”

In a blogpost, the company says the article paints a “false and misleading narrative” about Palantir and “sets back important discourse on European software modernisation”. It lists numerous disagreements with Republik’s article, including that it implies Palantir’s technology is expensive, and that it discusses a confidential Swiss army report that the army itself had not shared with Palantir.

“Palantir has the right to sue for a right of reply, if they wish to do so,” says Marguerite Meyer, a journalist who works with WAV. “However, we adhered to all journalistic standards, and had a thorough factcheck done. They are suing for an absurd list of changes. It does feel like an intimidation campaign.”

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By the time the journalists started their investigation, Palantir had been – at least, reportedly – based in Switzerland for nearly four years. It was unclear what the company had achieved during this time: no government contracts had been reported.

The journalists wondered why this was: they wanted to dig into “this invisible sphere of exchange and negotiation, meetings, government and companies”, says Lorenz Naegeli, who works with WAV.

“We tried to find out, is there any kind of government agency that uses this software? I mean, they are in Switzerland, eventually some government official maybe thought they could use this Palantir,” says Balz Oertli, who is also with WAV.

Their investigation, published in December, gave an account of Palantir’s years-long efforts to try to sell itself to the Swiss government. It found the company had pitched itself to Switzerland’s chancellor during the Covid-19 pandemic to help with data tracking; approached the Swiss army; and met Switzerland’s then finance minister, Ueli Maurer.

“Palantir repeatedly contacted different government agencies through different means … and tried to repeatedly get a foot into the door,” says Naegeli.

Many journalists have investigated Palantir, reporting for example on its contracts with the US federal government, or with the US’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, ICE. But Republik and WAV’s work may have struck a nerve.

“It’s the first time [anyone] has published a story about Palantir that has a failure narrative,” says Adrienne Fichter, a tech journalist with Republik. “They didn’t get through and they were not good enough for Switzerland … That’s why they’re going for us, that’s why they’re suing us, they want to fight this narrative.”

Meyer says: “I think Palantir doesn’t really mind moral criticism. That has been done heaps. But what our reporting shows is a bit of a failure to sell their products – I believe they really don’t like that.”

Palantir’s blogpost says the article “takes what any normal business would describe as routine market exploration – approximately nine meetings over seven years – and portrays them as an ‘aggressive’ and inherently nefarious sales campaign”. Palantir says the Swiss government had not been a significant focus for its regional business growth.

The European Federation of Journalists claims the legal action is “an attempt at intimidation aimed at discouraging any critical analysis of Palantir’s activities”.

“It seems like they expected a less critical approach,” says Naegeli. Fichter adds: “I think they thought, ‘Oh, this is a small publication, we can go after them.’ And also, to me, this is my purely subjective impression, but they want to make us too tired and scared to, you know, have time to do other reporting.” Palantir says Republik has repeatedly misrepresented the nature of the proceedings.

In a written response, Palantir told the Guardian that the journalists had presented “a handful of informal conversations with government representatives over a seven-year span as a conclusive portrayal that Palantir repeatedly and formally bid on government contracts and was rebuffed over technological shortcomings and ethical concerns. This is false.

Swiss law allows the subjects of a story to request a right of reply, says Dominique Strebel, an expert in media law and the editor-in-chief of Beobachter, another Swiss magazine. But this has caveats: the right of reply has to be concise and stick to the facts of the story.

“This lawsuit for a right of reply is not about whether Republik was technically inaccurate or not. It is only about whether Palantir is allowed to place its view of the facts alongside that of Republik and whether Republik must publish it.”