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Palantir Has Raised $880M at a $20B Valuation
- ChuckMcM 11y agooooh duodecacorn :-) Palintir is one of those companies that strikes me as one that really never goes public. If someone ever built The Machine, I would expect it to be them.
- germinalphrase 11y agoE. M. Forester? http://archive.ncsa.illinois.edu/prajlich/forster.html http://archive.ncsa.illinois.edu/prajlich/forster.html
- ChuckMcM 11y agoPerson of Interest -- http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1839578/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1839578/
- notacoward 11y agoIf it's unlikely that they'll go public, how do the investors hope to get their money (and more) back? I know there are other ways, but I don't have a feel for which kinds of arrangements would really be likely.
- flog 11y agoWell isn't the game now that their preferences mean they get their guaranteed returns even if an IPO bombs well below the private valuation?
- angryasian 11y agoOut of curiosity, why wouldn't they go public ? Major govt contractors are public, Boeing, Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, etc.
- notacoward 11y agoI don't see why they wouldn't, but the OP says this: "Palantir’s next step isn’t likely to be filing for an IPO as founder Alex Karp hasn’t been keen on that idea in the past" After $2.32B in funding it hardly seems likely that the plan is to go another round and then IPO. Why would Karp be any keener on it then than now? That leaves the possibility of no IPO at all . . . hence the question.
- ryporter 11y agoThat induction does not hold. Karp hasn't been keen on an IPO for the same reasons why many other private companies have been of late -- because it's easier to focus on growing the company without the ever-increasing overhead of being a public company. That in no way implies (or even suggests) that they never want to IPO. I used to work at Palantir, and I've never heard anything to indicate that they want to remain private forever. Even early on, Karp talked about not wanting to IPO (or sell out) too quickly. His plan was always to aggressively grow Palantir into an incredibly successful (and valuable) company, and only then to exit.
- pluckytree 11y agoYou give up some control of the company or enough control that shareholders own a majority stake, which is likely the case with the companies you mention. You also are subject to a boatload of new regulations and reporting requirements. Going public is a way to raise lots of money. It doesn’t really give a company any tangible benefits. Especially recently, companies that have gone public have ended up being valued at less than their last funding round.
- bsiemon 11y agoPrevious investors might be able to cash out in following rounds.
- notacoward 11y agoDoesn't that basically make it a Ponzi scheme?
- ryporter 11y agoIn the same way that a non-dividend paying stock (such as BRK) is a Ponzi Scheme. Furthermore, there is an active secondary market for shares in Palantir. It's obviously far less liquid than the stock of other similarly sized public companies, but it's still an equity investment.
- fredgrott 11y agoCheck out their $1M job https://angel.co/palantir-technologies/jobs/95978-deployment-strategist?utm_source=profile_module_job_listing https://angel.co/palantir-technologies/jobs/95978-deployment...
- archmikhail 11y agoIs this real or an honest typo?
- ucha 11y agoJust a typo. That position pays 100-150K + equity.
- eachro 11y agoAfter all these years, I'm still not really sure what Palantir does exactly.
- archmikhail 11y agoMy roommate interned there, and still had little idea what they do.
- ryanSrich 11y agoSame. I had a buddy that worked there a little while. Crazy good pay, but no transparency, tons of clearance required, etc. etc.
- joering2 11y agoThat's due to a beautiful and evil thing called compartmentalization. Take 1,000 people have them all work on very tiny things this might serve as a flush lever, or an atomic bomb trigger.
- capkutay 11y agoThey're basically a consulting company with in-house platforms for data management. You pay $100k+ per core pricing for their analytics platform, then you pay thousands more for implementation 'ninjas', consultants, training etc. It's a mix between a services and a technology company targeted at government accounts.
- serge2k 11y agoReminds me of Oracle or IBM.
- akhilcacharya 11y agoExcept they're pretty much completely staffed by Stanford, MIT, Harvard, (etc) grads.
- 11y ago