5 ms·

Their early investors were the CIA. I know the point you’re trying to make but Palantir isn’t really in the gray when they have been basically a branch of the s

Their early investors were the CIA. I know the point you’re trying to make but Palantir isn’t really in the gray when they have been basically a branch of the spy agencies since the beginning

bhupy 6y ago
Sure, but their current operations appear to be more diversified than that -> https://www.palantir.com/solutions/ https://www.palantir.com/solutions/. Even per their S-1, their market sizing shows "Commercial" to be a substantial proportion of their aspirations: > Commercial. Our estimate of the TAM in the commercial sector is $56 billion. > Government. We estimate the TAM in the government sector, including government agencies in the United States, its allies, and in other countries abroad whose values align with liberal democracies, is $63 billion.
- mrgordon 6y ago
  Well sure they point to a theoretical market that’s big but it isn’t where their revenue comes from now > The company’s top three customers — which aren’t disclosed — together represented 28% of the company’s revenue for 2019. Its top twenty customers represented 67% of total revenues, with each one of those customers averaging $24.8 million in revenue. They admit they count every single government sub-agency as a different customer (their example is NIH and the CDC would count separately despite the same parent organization) so the top 25 is basically just governments. There is incredible revenue concentration there.
  - bhupy 6y ago
    Where in this filing does it say that their top 25 customers are governments? And where in this filing are the current revenue numbers classified as government vs non-government? Also, it’s important to consider their TAM projections because 1) those are the only numbers we have in this S-1 that specifically delineates government vs non-government, and 2) their aspirational valuation is predicated on this TAM. It’s who they think they will grow up to become.
    - mrgordon 6y ago
      Well yeah I agree it’s aspirational but just because they want to do security work for Apple doesn’t mean their current customer base isn’t governments. Their largest project is Palantir Gotham which is exclusively for government agencies (federal, state, ICE, and by Project Maven after the tech companies abandoned it due to ethics concerns!) You’re talking primarily about Palantir Metropolis which is used by hedge funds. Not exactly some beneficial use of technology to counterweight working with ICE to separate children from their families. They don’t list their top customers because they are top secret government agencies but if you look at their customers then it’s clear that the ones paying them the most are secretive government agencies and it’s been that way since day 1
      - bhupy 6y ago
        > Their largest project is Palantir Gotham which is exclusively for government agencies (federal, state, ICE, and by Project Maven after the tech companies abandoned it due to ethics concerns!) Did you even read their S-1? Palantir Gotham is NOT “exclusively for government agencies”. According to their own filing, it’s used by their Commercial team too. It even says so on their website. > You’re talking primarily about Palantir Metropolis which is used by hedge funds. Not exactly some beneficial use of technology to counterweight working with ICE to separate children from their families. If you’re going to attack them, do it honestly by accurately representing them. Palantir isn’t used just “used by hedge funds”, if you actually read their prospectus and their website, their use cases include: auto racing, automotive parts manufacturing improvement, corporate cyber security, regulatory compliance (incl GDPR), pharma/drug development, and airline route optimization. https://www.palantir.com/solutions/ https://www.palantir.com/solutions/ > but if you look at their customers then it’s clear that the ones paying them the most are secretive government agencies ande it’s been that way since day 1 Yeah this is conjecture, at best. Nobody disputes that Palantir works with the government, but you don’t have enough information to claim with certainty that they work only with the government, and how much of their revenue comes from the 3-letter agencies. Unless you can actually substantiate your claims, these are just unfalsifiable hunches.
        6y ago
  - htrp 6y ago
    FYI mrgordon..... Metropolis got deprecated (read renamed) Foundry because they kept screwing up their sales and decided a rebrand would be more effective on their commercial side. https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-main-differences-between-the-Palantir-Metropolis-and-Gotham-platforms https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-main-differences-between-... per someone who runs tech on the commercial side, Foundry started as our attempt to create scalable process and rigor around data integration. There's a longer story to tell here, but the short version is that we started out with off-the-shelf orchestration systems for running jobs on a schedule (think Jenkins and Rundeck — things that were more robust than cron). At some level, that worked, and we had to figure out how to scale it, leading to a combination of HDFS, Rundeck/Jenkins, a git repo, and a common language for mutating data.
    - mrgordon 6y ago
      Great info
regs 6y ago
Could you cite some actual sources here?
- mrgordon 6y ago
  Saying their early investor was the CIA isn’t exactly controversial. It’s cited in almost every article about the company. When something is that widely known, it’s usually not cited. But since you asked, here is an old article about it: https://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/news/2014/09/15/cia-backed-palantir-adds-50m-to-its-war-chest.html https://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/news/2014/09/15/cia-back... Title: CIA-backed Palantir adds $50M to its war chest “Palantir's backers include the CIA's In-Q-Tel venture fund and Thiel's Founders Fund. Its customers include government intelligence agencies such as the National Security Agency.” Google In-Q-Tel and Palantir and you’ll find 100 other articles about it.

Their early investors were the CIA. I know the point you’re trying to make but Palantir isn’t really in the gray when they have been basically a branch of the spy agencies since the beginning

bhupy 6y ago

Sure, but their current operations appear to be more diversified than that -> https://www.palantir.com/solutions/ https://www.palantir.com/solutions/. Even per their S-1, their market sizing shows "Commercial" to be a substantial proportion of their aspirations: > Commercial. Our estimate of the TAM in the commercial sector is $56 billion. > Government. We estimate the TAM in the government sector, including government agencies in the United States, its allies, and in other countries abroad whose values align with liberal democracies, is $63 billion.

mrgordon 6y ago
Well sure they point to a theoretical market that’s big but it isn’t where their revenue comes from now > The company’s top three customers — which aren’t disclosed — together represented 28% of the company’s revenue for 2019. Its top twenty customers represented 67% of total revenues, with each one of those customers averaging $24.8 million in revenue. They admit they count every single government sub-agency as a different customer (their example is NIH and the CDC would count separately despite the same parent organization) so the top 25 is basically just governments. There is incredible revenue concentration there.
- bhupy 6y ago
  Where in this filing does it say that their top 25 customers are governments? And where in this filing are the current revenue numbers classified as government vs non-government? Also, it’s important to consider their TAM projections because 1) those are the only numbers we have in this S-1 that specifically delineates government vs non-government, and 2) their aspirational valuation is predicated on this TAM. It’s who they think they will grow up to become.
  - mrgordon 6y ago
    Well yeah I agree it’s aspirational but just because they want to do security work for Apple doesn’t mean their current customer base isn’t governments. Their largest project is Palantir Gotham which is exclusively for government agencies (federal, state, ICE, and by Project Maven after the tech companies abandoned it due to ethics concerns!) You’re talking primarily about Palantir Metropolis which is used by hedge funds. Not exactly some beneficial use of technology to counterweight working with ICE to separate children from their families. They don’t list their top customers because they are top secret government agencies but if you look at their customers then it’s clear that the ones paying them the most are secretive government agencies and it’s been that way since day 1
    - bhupy 6y ago
      > Their largest project is Palantir Gotham which is exclusively for government agencies (federal, state, ICE, and by Project Maven after the tech companies abandoned it due to ethics concerns!) Did you even read their S-1? Palantir Gotham is NOT “exclusively for government agencies”. According to their own filing, it’s used by their Commercial team too. It even says so on their website. > You’re talking primarily about Palantir Metropolis which is used by hedge funds. Not exactly some beneficial use of technology to counterweight working with ICE to separate children from their families. If you’re going to attack them, do it honestly by accurately representing them. Palantir isn’t used just “used by hedge funds”, if you actually read their prospectus and their website, their use cases include: auto racing, automotive parts manufacturing improvement, corporate cyber security, regulatory compliance (incl GDPR), pharma/drug development, and airline route optimization. https://www.palantir.com/solutions/ https://www.palantir.com/solutions/ > but if you look at their customers then it’s clear that the ones paying them the most are secretive government agencies ande it’s been that way since day 1 Yeah this is conjecture, at best. Nobody disputes that Palantir works with the government, but you don’t have enough information to claim with certainty that they work only with the government, and how much of their revenue comes from the 3-letter agencies. Unless you can actually substantiate your claims, these are just unfalsifiable hunches.
      - 6y ago
- htrp 6y ago
  FYI mrgordon..... Metropolis got deprecated (read renamed) Foundry because they kept screwing up their sales and decided a rebrand would be more effective on their commercial side. https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-main-differences-between-the-Palantir-Metropolis-and-Gotham-platforms https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-main-differences-between-... per someone who runs tech on the commercial side, Foundry started as our attempt to create scalable process and rigor around data integration. There's a longer story to tell here, but the short version is that we started out with off-the-shelf orchestration systems for running jobs on a schedule (think Jenkins and Rundeck — things that were more robust than cron). At some level, that worked, and we had to figure out how to scale it, leading to a combination of HDFS, Rundeck/Jenkins, a git repo, and a common language for mutating data.
  - mrgordon 6y ago
    Great info

regs 6y ago

Could you cite some actual sources here?

mrgordon 6y ago
Saying their early investor was the CIA isn’t exactly controversial. It’s cited in almost every article about the company. When something is that widely known, it’s usually not cited. But since you asked, here is an old article about it: https://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/news/2014/09/15/cia-backed-palantir-adds-50m-to-its-war-chest.html https://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/news/2014/09/15/cia-back... Title: CIA-backed Palantir adds $50M to its war chest “Palantir's backers include the CIA's In-Q-Tel venture fund and Thiel's Founders Fund. Its customers include government intelligence agencies such as the National Security Agency.” Google In-Q-Tel and Palantir and you’ll find 100 other articles about it.