Trump Names Gregory Barbaccia New Federal CIO
Army veteran and former Palantir head takes over as federal CIO and will oversee government’s $70+ billion IT budget.
President Donald Trump has named Palantir’s former head of Intelligence and Investigations, Gregory Barbaccia, as the new federal chief information officer. Barbaccia announced the position on LinkedIn Friday and reportedly started in the new role Monday.
He is the latest White House leader to have a connection to Peter Thiel, the founder of Palantir and PayPal. Thiel has close ties to Trump and many leaders inside the White House — most notably, Elon Musk.
Trump tapped Musk to oversee the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to reduce federal spending. DOGE, which was stood up by an executive order signed by Trump last week, is aligned under the U.S. Digital Service.
Barbaccia spent ten years at Palantir, where he started in 2010 as a government account manager. He rose in the ranks as a core operations lead, then security lead, before leading the Intelligence and Investigations unit.
At the start of his career, Barbaccia served four years in the Army earning the rank of sergeant as an intelligence analyst. He left the Army in 2008 to join the intelligence community.
This is Barbaccia’s first government post since leaving the Army. As the federal CIO, he will oversee the federal IT budget that is expected to exceed $70 billion.
Barbaccia most recently worked as the chief information security officer at Theorem, a company that’s developing credit underwriting technology utilizing machine learning. He started at the company in August 2022 before leaving this month.
After Palantir, Barbaccia served as the president at Elementus, a data-first Web3 company focused on a blockchain platform. He started as the head of Investigations in June 2020, according to his LinkedIn page.
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