Member-only story
The Ticker
Demystifying Palantir: The Most Controversial Company to Go Public in 2020
The software and consulting business is doubling down on its work with government agencies
Welcome to The Ticker, a series that examines everything you need to know about companies going public.
Seventeen years after it was founded, Palantir will make its public market debut tomorrow, via direct listing. Created in the aftermath of 9/11 with the aim of protecting the United States from future terror attacks, Palantir has become one of the nation’s most controversial companies. At the center of the firestorm is the software company’s work with the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE), the governmental unit tasked with tackling illegal immigration, its political stances, and its polarizing co-founder Peter Thiel. Despite Palantir’s prevalence in the public conversation — particularly under the Trump presidency — its product has remained relatively opaque until its recent filing to go public.
In advance of the listing, we unpack what you need to know about the company poised to be valued at $22 billion.
They’re both a software company and consultancy
At a basic level, Palantir provides data analytics software. The company has two product lines: Gotham and Foundry. Gotham was the first product to market and is focused on public sector customers like U.S. defense and intelligence agencies. Foundry, created later, serves similar products for private enterprises including Airbus, Credit Suisse, and BP. Palantir is coy about the other private companies it serves with case studies referring only to a “major U.S. broadcast network,” and “major payment processor.” In 2019, 53% of Palantir’s revenue came from commercial clients, with the remaining 47% from government agencies.
Palantir’s product lines compete with a coterie of data companies including Tableau, Alteryx, Google Sheets, Snowflake, and more. In this sense, Palantir is fundamentally a software company, serving its 125 customers with differentiated technical tooling.
But Palantir is far from a self-serve software solution. In order to onboard customers…
