- General
- September 6, 2019
- 5 minutes read
Palantir Said To Be Seeking More Private Funding
Palantir co-founder Peter Thiel Photograph by Stuart Isett/Fortune Brainstorm Tech According to a report from Bloomberg, Palantir, which was reported…
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| Palantir co-founder Peter Thiel
Photograph by Stuart Isett/Fortune Brainstorm Tech
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According to a report from Bloomberg, Palantir, which was reported to be targeting a next year IPO, has postponed IPO plans in lieu of more private funding. Bloomberg reports the secretive data mining company has approached Singapore’s Temasek Holdings, Softbank, and other investors outside the U.S. for additional funding. Talks are still ongoing, with no deal reached yet, Bloomberg reports.
According to Bloomberg, Palantir co-founder Peter Thiel, speaking to employees earlier this month, said the company wouldn’t go public anytime during the next two to three years, entailing an IPO has been pushed up to 2022 or later. Raising more private funding would ease some IPO pressure, and provide a firm valuation for Palantir, whose value has been appraised at different figures, from $20 billion in 2015 to $11 billion this year, to as high as $41 billion [in the event of an IPO] and once as low as $4.4 billion, which led to a feud with the appraiser: mutual funds managed by Morgan Stanley. Ponderingly, Morgan Stanley’s investment bankers were behind the appraisal of as high as $41 billion.
Palantir has already raised $2 billion in funding, according to Crunchbase data. The Palo Alto-based company made nearly $1 billion in revenue last year, according to one of its executives. That figure was up from a forecast of between $750 million to $800 million, thanks to a growing sales team and better than expected performance of a new product named Foundry. However, Palantir is said to have never turned a profit since inception, meaning it may need to raise new funding to ease up financial pressures.
Amid numerous reports concerning an IPO, funding, and even controversies, Palantir has succeeded in courting large revenue-generating contracts, two notable ones being a recent $800 million deal with the U.S. Army and a renewed $50 million contract with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), whose work with Palantir has been a major source of controversy for the company.
