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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 disc

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.
    - mrgordon 6y ago
      Its not conjecture. Here are the numbers from their S-1 which apparently you did not read: 1. "We generated $742.6 million in revenue in 2019" 2. "The total remaining deal value of the contracts that we had been awarded by government agencies in the United States and allied countries around the world, including existing contractual obligations and contractual options available to those government agencies, was $1.2 billion" 3. "We do not include government contracts totaling $2.6 billion, as of June 30, 2020, that we have been awarded where the funding of such contracts — also known as indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity (“IDIQ”) contracts — has not yet been determined." So they have 1.62 years of committed revenue from governments and 5.12 years of revenue including the IDIQ contracts. Even assuming the contracts are spread over five years, which seems to be their long term contract length, it indicates their revenue is overwhelmingly from the government. ----- As for Palantir Gotham being for government agencies, here is the language from their S-1: 1. "We built Gotham, our first platform, for government operatives in the defense and intelligence sectors...Gotham is now used broadly across government functions." 2. "Gotham enables users to identify patterns hidden deep within datasets, ranging from signals intelligence sources to reports from confidential informants, and helps U.S. and allied military personnel find what they are looking for. We later found that the challenges faced by commercial institutions when it came to working with data were fundamentally similar. Companies routinely struggle to manage let alone make sense of the data involved in large projects. Foundry was built for them." See how it says Foundry was built for commercial and Gotham for "government agencies"?
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

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.
  - mrgordon 6y ago
    Its not conjecture. Here are the numbers from their S-1 which apparently you did not read: 1. "We generated $742.6 million in revenue in 2019" 2. "The total remaining deal value of the contracts that we had been awarded by government agencies in the United States and allied countries around the world, including existing contractual obligations and contractual options available to those government agencies, was $1.2 billion" 3. "We do not include government contracts totaling $2.6 billion, as of June 30, 2020, that we have been awarded where the funding of such contracts — also known as indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity (“IDIQ”) contracts — has not yet been determined." So they have 1.62 years of committed revenue from governments and 5.12 years of revenue including the IDIQ contracts. Even assuming the contracts are spread over five years, which seems to be their long term contract length, it indicates their revenue is overwhelmingly from the government. ----- As for Palantir Gotham being for government agencies, here is the language from their S-1: 1. "We built Gotham, our first platform, for government operatives in the defense and intelligence sectors...Gotham is now used broadly across government functions." 2. "Gotham enables users to identify patterns hidden deep within datasets, ranging from signals intelligence sources to reports from confidential informants, and helps U.S. and allied military personnel find what they are looking for. We later found that the challenges faced by commercial institutions when it came to working with data were fundamentally similar. Companies routinely struggle to manage let alone make sense of the data involved in large projects. Foundry was built for them." See how it says Foundry was built for commercial and Gotham for "government agencies"?

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