Palantir Sucks in More Dinero
July 24, 2015
I am all for keeping the companies involved with law enforcement and intelligence entities out of the public eye. The hoo hah about Hacking Team is a grim reminder of what happened to Gamma Group and FinFisher when information about their services and products hit the “real” journalists’ radar.
I want to point you to “Confirmed. Palantir Raise a Huge $450 Million Investment.” The write up points out:
This [more cash investments] confirms a report last month that the company was raising up to $500 million at a valuation of $20 billion – making it the third most valuable “startup” on the Valley scene. (If you can call a 16-year-old company that reportedly generates millions in revenue a “startup.”)
Palantir is a unicorn wearing an invisibility saddle, tack, and saddle blanket. That’s okay with me. My observation is that Palantir has technology which is intended to prevent untoward acts. Are these untoward acts being prevented? I will let you answer that question.
I have no comment on whether the Palantir technology works. Even court documents related to Palantir’s dust up with i2 Group Ltd (a former client of mine) are not public. Why would i2, the pioneer in Palantir’s software segment, get involved with legal eagles?
Perhaps someone will have an answer some day. For now, I will ignore the partially invisible unicorn. The company has plenty of stakeholders who are trying to figure out Palantir so my efforts are redundant.
Stephen E Arnold, July 24, 2015
Palantir Explains Palantir
July 1, 2015
I read a question about Palantir on Quora. You may be able to access it at http://bit.ly/1LUPgtd but no promises. A person named Abhiram and then Kevin Simler provided some information. Here’s are three items I found interesting:
- At Palantir we specialize in analysis.
- The first important thing to note is that we don’t actually do the analysis ourselves.
- You could say that we help summarize large data sets, in the sense that we have to provide the analyst with a rich library of techniques and algorithms.
I think I understand.
Stephen E Arnold, July 1, 2015
Palantir: A Unicorn on Steroids
June 24, 2015
Whoa. I read “Palantir Valued At $20 Billion In New Funding Round.” Palantir is not exactly pumping out the marketing collateral. The company is making sales to those who want to squeeze “nuggets” from the hydraulic flow of digital information. What’s remarkable is that the company is selling into a sector which wants to buy, yet Palantir continues to collect money from funding sources.
Is the company in the business of processing data or in the business of making presentations to venture types with open checkbooks?
According to the write up:
Palantir is raising up to $500 million in new capital at a valuation of $20 billion, people briefed on the matter told BuzzFeed News, insisting on anonymity to discuss the confidential deal. The 11-year-old company previously raised money late last year at a $15 billion valuation. The new round of funding, which has not been previously disclosed, reflects investors’ eagerness to gain access to a startup seen as one of the most successful in the world. Little is known about the details of Palantir’s business, beyond reports about its data-processing software being used to fight terror and catch financial criminals.
A couple of observations:
First, the amount of money is impressive, even by Sillycon Valley standards. The investment makes outfits like Digital Reasoning look like paupers.
Second, compared to search centric outfits like Attivio, Coveo, and others working to deliver traditional Fast Search type services, Palantir is in a different league. Attivio and Coveo combined has attracted less than $70 million or so. This amount probably is equivalent to the fees assessed on Palantir’s inflows of cash.
Third, Palantir is a bit like Google with a twist of paranoia. There are unreturned phone calls and unanswered emails. There are legal dust ups sealed away, presumably forever. There are secrets, lots of secrets.
In short, Palantir makes other content processing outfits green with envy. Green. The color of money. With a unicorn on steroids the question becomes, “Will the joints hold up?”
Stephen E Arnold, June 24, 2015
Palantir Gets Some Publicity
February 16, 2015
Short honk: The New York Times publishes a weekly magazine. I have a tough time figuring out what the publication covers. I noted a long article on Sunday, February 15, 2015, “The Undergraduate and the Mentor.” The cover of the magazine carried the title “The Accusation.” I was confused, but the NYT magazine is a baffler I ignore when it arrives. You may be able to access the article at this link, but don’t complain to me if the NYT wants money from you. I just want to document that the mentor was a founder of Palantir. The company is described this way:
With early funding from the C.I.A., Lonsdale helped Thiel and others start Palantir. Named for the “seeing stones” in “The Lord of the Rings,” the company developed powerful data-mining software for surveillance and won contracts with hundreds of law-enforcement agencies, including the National Security Agency and the Defense Department. In 2009, Lonsdale went on to other ventures but retained a stake in Palantir, whose value would climb to more than $9 billion. In 2011, with a small group of partners, some of whom had close ties to Asia, Lonsdale started the venture-capital fund Formation 8, named for a lucky number in China. Along with starting and financing companies, he has continued to embrace libertarian causes and recently joined the finance team for Senator Rand Paul’s possible Republican presidential campaign. And he sometimes can’t resist showing off his newfound wealth: For a viewing party of HBO’s “Game of Thrones” last year, Lonsdale bought a $30,000 replica of the show’s iron throne, posing on it like the show’s line of blustering and sadistic kings.
I made a list of some of the loaded words used in the write up to bring the former Palantir founder into more vivid relief:
- “hard time making eye contact”. The Palantir person would not look at an interlocutor.
- “condescending.” Word used to describe the Palantir person’s attitude
- “broke the rules”. Phrase used to describe Palantir person’s behavior at a swimming pool
The author of the write up paints a word picture of the Palantir person which I did not find positive. If you are curious about alleged improper interpersonal behaviors, the NYT magazine may interest you.
For me, it is one more dreary Stanford University/Silicon Valley dust up. I assume the rules are different in the go go world of high tech. Innovating in content processing could, I suppose, husband more ambitious pursuits.
Stephen E Arnold, February 16, 2015
NGIA Palantir Worth Almost As Much As Uber and Xiaomi
January 18, 2015
Short honk: Value is in the eye of the beholder. I am reminded of this each time I see an odd ball automobile sell for six figures on the Barrett Jackson auction.
Navigate to “Palantir Raising More Money After Tagged With $15 Billion Valuation.” Keep in mind that you may have to pay to view the article, or you can check out the apparently free link to source data at http://bit.ly/KKOAw1.
The key point is that Palantir is an NGIA system. Obviously it appears on the surface to have more “value” than Hewlett Packard’s Autonomy or the other content processing companies in the hunt for staggering revenues.
Stephen E Arnold, January 18, 2015
Palantir Raises More Money
January 6, 2015
Sometimes it seems like Palantir is constantly enticing investors. Forbes reports, “Palantir Aiming to Raise $400 Million in New Round.” Writer Ryan Mac tells us that, according to Securities and Exchange Commission documents, a planned round of additional funding could rake in that sum if all shares sell. Mac continues:
“If the round is completed in full, Palantir’s total funding could swell to about $1.2 billion. It’s currently unclear what the company would be valued at if it were to raise the $400 million round….
“Palantir previously raised about $450 million at about a $9 billion valuation in a round that began in December of last year. That round finally closed in September, after the company continued to add additional shares and investors.
“Even at $9 billion, Palantir was already among Silicon Valley’s most valuable private technology companies, some of which have seen massive bumps in valuations recently.”
Current Panantir investors include In-Q-Tel and Tiger Global Management, and co-founder Peter Thiel remains its largest shareholder. It seems unlikely that the growing company will go public any time soon; last year, CEO Alex Karp noted that Palantir’s existing relationships with government agencies and global corporations make the company ill-suited for IPO status.
Palantir’s massive-scale data platforms allow even the largest organizations to integrate, manage, and secure all sorts of data. Its founding members include PayPal alumni and Stanford computer science grads. The company is based in Palo Alto, California, and has offices around the world. It should come as no surprise that they are currently hiring.
Cynthia Murrell, January 06, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Palantir and 2014 Funding
January 5, 2015
I read an article that confused me. Navigate to “Palantir Secures First $60M Chunk of Projected $400M Round as Market Asks, “Who?”
This sentence suggests that Palantir wants to go public. What do you think?
But although it would clearly find no trouble catching the market’s attention, the company is in rush to take on the pressure of public trading The secretive nature of its clientele and an apparent desire to prioritize long-term strategy over short-term returns are the primary considerations behind that approach, but what facilitates it is the ease with which Palantir has managed to draw private investors so far.
I wonder if this article means “no” rush. I wonder if this article is software generated.
Here’s another interesting passage:
The document [cited by Techcrunch?] doesn’t specify the source of the capital or what Palantir intends to spend it on, but based on the claim in NYT report that it wasn’t profitable as of May, the money will probably go primarily toward fueling operations. The paper also noted that most of the estimated billion dollars that the company raked in this year came from private sector customers, which provides a hint as to the areas where the funding will be invested, namely the development of its enterprise-oriented Gotham offering.
I have my own views about Palantir which are summarized in the forthcoming CyberOSINT: Next Generation Information Access monograph. (If you want to order a copy, write benkent2020 at yahoo dot com. The book is available to law enforcement, security, and intelligence professionals.)
The statement “isn’t profitable” is fascinating if true.
Stephen E Arnold, January 5, 2015
Palantir Is a Fund-Raising Leader
November 7, 2014
We have been following the progress of content processing firm Palantir, a business that seems to have both a strong vision and robust follow-through. Now, the Silicon Valley Business Journal highlights Palantir’s fundraising chops in, “Q3 VC Update: Who Did the Most Deals, Got the Most Money in Silicon Valley.” Their senior tech reporter Cromwell Schubarth gives a funding rundown from the quarter that spans July through August of this year; he reports:
“Palo Alto-based Palantir Technologies, the $9 billion Big Data analytics company that counts U.S. government intelligence agencies among its backers, had the Bay Area’s biggest funding round in the quarter. It raised $337 million in the quarter, according to CB Insights.
“CB Insights reported on Tuesday that venture dollars raised in the third quarter in the U.S. dropped 30 percent from the post-dotcom high they hit in the second quarter, and the number of deals done declined by 10 percent.”
So, Palantir excelled despite a downturn that quarter. The article goes on to list more details about each entry in their list (see the piece for the four runners-up), and this is what Schubarth says about Palantir:
“This Palo Alto-based Big Data analytics company is led by CEO Alex Karp and has raised about $1 billion since it launched in 2004. It is valued at about $9 billion and was co-founded by Karp, Peter Thiel, Joe Lonsdale and others. Its backers include Thiel’s Founders Fund and In-Q-Tel, the venture arm of U.S. intelligence agencies.”
Palantir’s founding members came from such promising pools as PayPal alumni and Stanford computer science grads. The firm is famous for serving government intelligence agencies, but maintains clients in a range of fields. Its massive-scale data platforms allow even the largest organizations to integrate, manage, and secure all sorts of data. The company is based in Palo Alto, California, but has offices around the world.
Cynthia Murrell, November 07, 2014
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Palantir: Now an Enterprise App Developer
September 30, 2014
I read “Hush Hush Data Firm Palantir Snags ICE Case Tracking Deal.” Palantir may be moving from supporting intelligence agencies to the market sector dominated by government contractors like SRA, Booz Allen Hamilton, and CACI.
The article states:
Immigration and Customs Enforcement has awarded secretive data-mining firm Palantir a $42 million contract to redo the investigation agency’s failed case filing system.
The challenge will be to make a case management system work in a manner that satisfies the statement of work. Other case management efforts have crashed and burned.
Palantir appears to be working with a tough mandate: On time and on budget delivery. As you may know, the notion of on time and on budget is only valid until the first scope change rolls down the timeline.
Are flaws in case management systems unusual. Nah. The article reveals:
The Justice Department inspector general last week released a report on the FBI’s new case management system, Sentinel, assailing its searching and indexing features for slowing the investigations of special agents and the productivity levels of evidence technicians.
Why are case management systems problematic? I can identify a number of reasons, but it will be more entertaining if I wait for news about the Palantir project’s path.
Stephen E Arnold, October 17, 2014
Palantir and Its Funding
September 18, 2014
I read “Palantir May Have Raised More Than We Thought, Perhaps $165 million.” The article presented a revisionist view of how much money is in the Palantir piggy bank. Here’s the number I circled: $165 million since February 2014. I also marked this paragraph:
The Palo Alto company led by CEO Alex Karp disclosed in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing on Friday that it had raised more than $440 million in a funding round that began last November.
The numbers add up. The write up asserted:
The company co-founded by Karp, Peter Thiel, Joe Lonsdale and others in 2004 has raised a total of about $1 billion, with some of that funding coming from In-Q-Tel, the venture arm of U.S. intelligence agencies.
This works out to a $9 billion valuation.
The question now becomes, “How long will it take Palantir to generate sufficient revenue to pay back the investors and turn a profit?” The reason I ask is that IBM is chasing this market along with a legion of other firms.
Terrorism, war fighting, and Fancy Dan analytics are growth buttons. Will there be enough customers to feed the appetites of the outfits chasing the available money?
My hunch is that some of the competitors in this segment will come up empty.
Also, the tonnage of money Palantir has had dropped in its bank account makes the separate injections of $30 million funding into three firms— Attivio, BA Insight, and Coveo—look modest indeed. Perhaps there is more to the Big Data pitch than just words?
Stephen E Arnold,
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