
Palantir Has Raised $880M at a $20B Valuation - aritraghosh007
http://techcrunch.com/2015/12/23/palantir-has-raised-880-million-at-a-20-billion-valuation/
======
eachro
After all these years, I'm still not really sure what Palantir does exactly.

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

~~~
FreakLegion
See
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7294743](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.)

~~~
colordrops
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".

------
notacoward
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.

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

~~~
notacoward
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.

~~~
ryporter
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.

------
ChuckMcM
oooh 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
E. M. Forester?

[http://archive.ncsa.illinois.edu/prajlich/forster.html](http://archive.ncsa.illinois.edu/prajlich/forster.html)

~~~
ChuckMcM
Person of Interest --
[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1839578/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1839578/)

------
fredgrott
Check out their $1M job [https://angel.co/palantir-
technologies/jobs/95978-deployment...](https://angel.co/palantir-
technologies/jobs/95978-deployment-
strategist?utm_source=profile_module_job_listing)

~~~
ucha
Just a typo. That position pays 100-150K + equity.

