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Palantir Has Raised $880M at a $20B Valuation

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Re: Palantir Has Raised $880M at a $20B Valuation

#31

Post by joering2 »

FreakLegion wrote: post #19
colordrops wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CIA contractor. On a side note, they were involved with HB Gary in an attempt to infiltrate and destroy Wikileaks.

See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7294743 and Thomas' reply. That's the extent to which Palantir was "involved" with HBGary Federal. (And while it should go without saying, I'll say it anyway: There was no attempt to infiltrate and destroy Wikileaks. Just a lot of hairbrained talk.)

I hate to be this guy, but "just a lot of hairbrained talk" is what puts people behind bars in America and all around the world, all around the clock.

You don't need to carry out a crime to be convicted of a conspiracy to commit it, and as a result put in jail for a long time.

Re: Palantir Has Raised $880M at a $20B Valuation

#32

Post by joering2 »

vinay427 wrote: post #27
colordrops wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CIA contractor. On a side note, they were involved with HB Gary in an attempt to infiltrate and destroy Wikileaks.

One of their investors is In-Q-Tel, a CIA organization that's apparently designed to bring the best technology into the Agency's hands. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In-Q-Tel

Correct, In-Q-Tel wrote initial checks for Google and Facebook. Someone figured that instead of having a fancy logo of an octopus reaching out over the globe of earth (or an eye above pyramid), its much better to just found a company with fancy logo with colored fonts, or an F, and make them harvest intel instead.

Re: Palantir Has Raised $880M at a $20B Valuation

#33

Post by joering2 »

archmikhail wrote: post #7
eachro wrote: post #5

After all these years, I'm still not really sure what Palantir does exactly.

My roommate interned there, and still had little idea what they do.

That'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.

Re: Palantir Has Raised $880M at a $20B Valuation

#34

Post by colordrops »

FreakLegion wrote: post #19
colordrops wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CIA contractor. On a side note, they were involved with HB Gary in an attempt to infiltrate and destroy Wikileaks.

See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7294743 and Thomas' reply. That's the extent to which Palantir was "involved" with HBGary Federal. (And while it should go without saying, I'll say it anyway: There was no attempt to infiltrate and destroy Wikileaks. Just a lot of hairbrained talk.)

Why should it "go without saying"? Have the facts been laid out and proven in an exceptionally clear and public way? I don't think so.

And "hairbrained" is an strange adjective to use for a company that is almost 100% engineers from top schools, pulling in a billion in funding, and working for the CIA.

All I know is the contents of the leaked presentation that laid out the plans against Wikileaks. I will ignore any PR and damage control about "hairbrained talk".

Re: Palantir Has Raised $880M at a $20B Valuation

#35

Post by vox_mollis »

FreakLegion wrote: post #19
colordrops wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CIA contractor. On a side note, they were involved with HB Gary in an attempt to infiltrate and destroy Wikileaks.

See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7294743 and Thomas' reply. That's the extent to which Palantir was "involved" with HBGary Federal. (And while it should go without saying, I'll say it anyway: There was no attempt to infiltrate and destroy Wikileaks. Just a lot of hairbrained talk.)

Right. All due respect to Thomas, but downplaying/minimizing literally every single shady thing the government does is par for the course for him. As his recent concession on Dual_EC_DRBG demonstrates, sometimes the government really does engage in damaging, moustache-twirling villainy.

Re: Palantir Has Raised $880M at a $20B Valuation

#36

Post by ryporter »

notacoward wrote: post #29
angryasian wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of curiosity, why wouldn't they go public ? Major govt contractors are public, Boeing, Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, etc.

I 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.

That 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.

Re: Palantir Has Raised $880M at a $20B Valuation

#37

Post by ryporter »

notacoward wrote: post #30
bsiemon wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Previous investors might be able to cash out in following rounds.

Doesn't that basically make it a Ponzi scheme?

In 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.

Re: Palantir Has Raised $880M at a $20B Valuation

#38

Post by mpeg »

o_nate wrote: post #26
ap22213 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was helpful to read their own description: https://www.palantir.com/2007/12/what-do-we-do/ But, for me, it was even more helpful to look at their patents: http://patents.justia.com/assignee/palantir-technologies

A patent for a long left-click to show a context menu when the right mouse button for some reason isn't available? Sheesh. Some of these are enough to turn anyone into an anti-software-patent crusader.

Maybe I'm not remembering it right, but when macs had one button only and no fancy trackpads, you could hold it to do a right click (you could also just ctrl+click)

Re: Palantir Has Raised $880M at a $20B Valuation

#39

Post by akhilcacharya »

serge2k wrote: post #23
capkutay wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They'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.

Reminds me of Oracle or IBM.

Except they're pretty much completely staffed by Stanford, MIT, Harvard, (etc) grads.

Re: Palantir Has Raised $880M at a $20B Valuation

#40

Post by pluckytree »

angryasian wrote: post #24
notacoward wrote: post #3

If 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.

Out of curiosity, why wouldn't they go public ? Major govt contractors are public, Boeing, Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, etc.

You 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.
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