back to article Peter Thiel's Palantir reportedly eyeing up $41bn IPO

CIA-backed data-mining business Palantir is reportedly in talks with banks to take the company public for a blockbuster sum, and could move as early as next year. Peter Thiel’s company – known for its work with the US government, spy agencies and police as well as its reported links to the Cambridge Analytica data-harvesting …

  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Pump and dump scam

    Only insiders will get rich off this.

    1. Charlie Clark Silver badge

      Re: Pump and dump scam

      Stockmarkets are at record highs and a lot of them at higher than historic price:profit ratios. Expect a flood of valuations based on this and possibly IPOs hoping to ride the wave before there is, er, a correction. Hence, Uber's ludicrously high IPO scheduled for next year: pension funds beware.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Pump and dump scam

        This is why I'm glad I don't rely on funds managed by others. I have ultra low expense index funds, and a handful of really strong individual stocks. I suppose I will own some overvalued Uber or Palatir eventually, but not much as their impact on the S&P 500 etc. will be pretty minor. I don't have to worry about some fund manager getting bribed by Thiel to buy up billions and have it compromise a significant chunk of my retirement!

  2. dnicholas

    What data would banks glean from them? Potential customer's Facebook faux pas? Risky credit profile because they like a drink?

    The sooner the AI singularity occurs and they put humans in a zoo the better

    1. Jellied Eel Silver badge

      Virtuous circle jerking

      What data would banks glean from them? Potential customer's Facebook faux pas? Risky credit profile because they like a drink?

      Obvious one is a 16 bit value containing some leading numerals, padded with zeros. There's a lot to be made from pimping an IPO, and subsequent financing rounds, consulting etc etc. Then there's the requirement to prevent fees earned from money laundering. See Denmark and Estonia for more billions.. I mean info. Then there's credit risk/fraud prevention, which is increasingly a 2-way street, ie if banks cough up their customer's transaction history, companies like Palantir will 'help them' selves to our data.

      And there's time pressure. So people are finally waking up to rampant commercial exploitation and mismanagement of our privacy, so starting to legislate against it. So IPO before that really kicks in and extract your profits.

      The sooner the AI singularity occurs and they put humans in a zoo the better

      Depending on your online presence, you're there already.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    What could possibly go wrong?

    Bankers, Wall Street, CIA, and Peter Theil...

    Sounds like a match made in Hell

    Welcome to Dystopia

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: What could possibly go wrong?

      Well Thiel is too rich to go bankrupt, so instead we can hope he's one of the first passengers for commercial travel to the Moon when one of them inevitably suffers a liftoff "incident". Bonus points if its a bro party with Kalanick and Levandowski.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Big Brother

    Palantir: more security less invasions of privacy

    “The technological solution I would like is where .. we have more security with fewer invasions of privacy .. what I would define as actual innovation in a space” Peter Thiel

    Palantir or more correctly Palantíri: a crystal ball giving the possessor the ability to observe events both in the present or distant past, as depicted by Saruman in Lord of the Rings.

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