Billionaire Peter Thiel’s Palantir files for direct listing with tech IPOs surging
- Like many tech companies that have headed to the public markets, Palantir has never been profitable
- Founded in 2003, data-mining company Palantir counted the US Central Intelligence Agency among its first customers
Palantir Technologies, the data-mining company backed by tech billionaire Peter Thiel, broke years of suspense by filing to go public through a direct listing.
The Denver-based company applied to list on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker PLTR, according to its filing on Tuesday with the US Securities and Exchange Commission.
Palantir will not raise any proceeds in the listing and does not have traditional underwriters. In contrast with previous direct listings, though, investors will face restrictions on how much of their shares they can sell initially.
Like many tech companies that have headed to the public markets, Palantir has never been profitable. The company lost US$580 million in 2019, though that loss narrowed in the first half of this year to US$165 million, according to the filing. Revenue in the first half of the year climbed 49 per cent from the previous year to hit US$481 million. The company has said it expects to break even this year.
Palantir’s founders will control about half of the total voting power. The company currently has two classes of shares and plans to add a third class that carries a variable number of votes. All shares of this new class will be held by a voting trust established by co-founders Alexander Karp, Stephen Cohen and Thiel.
