Research Outline

Palantir Technologies

Goals

To get a detailed company profile of Palantir Technologies, including details like the business segment, comparative advantage, success story, revenue model, monetizing process, and the difference between its products, Gotham and Foundry, and its expansion in the Japanese market.

Early Findings

Our first round of research unveiled the following information:

Palantir Technologies

  • Palantir Technologies Inc is a data analytics and data integration company based in Palo Alto. According to BizJournals, "Palantir raised more than $3 billion in funding since it was founded in 2003 and is valued at about $20 billion." The company has Peter Thiel as the chairman and Alex Karp as the chief executive officer.
  • "As per an article published by The Street, Palantir has raised more than $3 billion in venture capital funding from a variety of investors, including BlackRock, Tiger Global, and Morgan Stanley."
  • "According to Reuters, Sompo Holdings, a Japanese insurance holding company, is investing $500 million in Palantir."
  • Palantir works on a B2B business model; it gains most of its revenue from long term contracts. It has two main products, which include Palantir Gotham and Palantir Foundry.
  • One of the core advantages that Palantir has over its competitors is its experience in the industry and its clientele, which includes Federal and local governments, some of the biggest companies like JP Morgan, Airbus SE, and Merck KGaA.
  • According to an article published in Bloomberg, "Palantir has sought to work more with companies and be less reliant on government contracts; Airbus SE and Merck KGaA are among its customers, but government clients still make up a significant portion of revenue."
  • On July 6, 2020, Palantir Technologies filed an initial public offering at the Securities and Exchange Commission; it was a confidential IPO filling. However, the IPO is controversial, as critics from the industry have highlighted the fact that the use of the application by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, one of Palantir's core clients, divides families and violates civil rights.
  • According to an article published in FedScoop, the Department of Health and Human Services awarded two contracts to Palantir in April 2020; both contracts totaled $24.9 million. "One of these contracts was for a Palantir Gotham subscription worth $17.4 million and the other for cloud platform implementation to the tune of $7.5 million."
  • According to a research report published by ReportLinker, some of the major competitors in the global big data analytics market include "International Business Machine Corporation, Splunk Inc., Amazon Web Services, Inc., Teradata Corporation, Dell Inc., Oracle Corporation, Accenture Inc., Microsoft Corporation, Palantir Technologies Inc. and SAP SE."
  • In 2019, Palantir won a contract from the U.S. Army. The contract is worth $111 million, and the army was considering proposals from Accenture Plc, Deloitte, Ernst & Young and Microsoft Corp, but Palantir won the deal because of its robust and effective products.

Summary of Findings

  • As per our background research about the company, Palantir Technologies, it is B2B data aggregation, data mining, and data analytics software company focused on building solutions for companies to "integrate, manage, and secure any kind of data on a massive scale."
  • As far as their revenue model is concerned, we were able to determine that the company earns most of its revenue from long term contracts and that Palantir Gotham works on a subscription-based model.
  • We were also able to list the competitive advantage Palantir has over its competitors: its experience and its strong clientele. We have also listed some of the core competitors of the comapny in the big data analytics market.