Extracts published at Brokerdealer.com are courtesy of NY Times May 31 story by Quentin Hardy
Palantir Technologies will not help you share, message, pin, post or chat. It does not exist to make you more social or connected, or even to help advertisers get to you. Its technology is deeply geeky, its work secretive. Nonetheless, it’s one of the most valuable private tech companies in Silicon Valley.
Palantir Technologies, which has 1,500 employees, has government and private clients worldwide. Credit Peter DaSilva for The New York Times
This year, Palantir, which is based in Palo Alto, Calif., is expected to bring in about $1 billion in revenue, mostly from private companies interested in adaptations of its intelligence software. Though it is not yet profitable, investors have given Palantir almost $900 million in total. The most recent round, last December, sold shares in the company to investors at an implied valuation for the company of $9 billion.
All of this has its investors, including some of the world’s most successful hedge funds, salivating for a big payday from an initial public offering. “The company has been incredibly successful, and every investor likes when companies go public,” Justin Fishner-Wolfson, a managing partner at 137 Ventures, which is one of those investors, said in an email.
Instead of selling stock to the public, founder and co-CEO Alex Karp and other executives are toying with the idea of creating new kinds of financial instruments, like a bond that pays off on future earnings, to unlock a bit of Palantir’s value.
For the full story from the NY Times, please click here