Palantir co-founder and chairman Peter Thiel. Photo credit: Heisenberg Media, under Creative Commons license

Palantir, the data analytics company, which is said to be on the cusp of a public listing, has raised $500 million in funding from Sompo, a Japanese insurer that it set up a joint venture with last year. The raise seems to be Palantir’s last before it heads for a public listing. Such a raise apparently helps to lessen Palantir’s need to raise cash from a public listing, or if at all, given the company is said to be eyeing a direct listing.

A few days ago, Palantir was reported to be preparing to register a confidential S-1 filing for a public listing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in the “coming weeks”. Before now, Palantir is known to have raised $2 billion in external funding, that figure including secondary share purchases. Save for new investor Sompo, other backers of Palantir include the likes of Founders Fund, FJ Labs, Oakhouse Partners, Khazanah Nasional, and a few individual investors.

The valuation for Palantir as placed by Sompo’s investment isn’t known.