Founded in 2003, Palantir Technologies is one of Silicon Valley’s oldest unicorns. Like many of those unicorns, the data analytics startup has yet to turn a profit.
In July, it confidentially filed an S-1 to go public—TechCrunch got its hands on screenshots of the document.
$$$: Palantir pulled in $742 million in 2019, a roughly 25% increase in revenue over 2018. In both years, the startup recorded a net loss of roughly $580 million (or net cash outflow, as WeWork likes to say).
IPO: The company will go public via direct listing—a route that Slack and Spotify also took—and create three tiers of stock. The founders will retain 49.999999% voting control in perpetuity. Yes, that many 9s.
Clients: Palantir had 125 customers in the first half of 2020. Many of them are government clients. The startup’s work with some government customers (including ICE) has generated controversy.
Big picture: Due to its losses and difficulties attracting corporate customers, Palantir may not be able to attain the same P/E ratio as other newly public software companies.
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