Data analytics company Palantir Technologies has filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission to issue shares in an initial public offering.
In a statement, the company said it started a confidential process to list shares. It did not disclose the proposed timing of the offering, how many shares it would sell, or a price range.
Palantir, co-founded by Peter Thiel and Alex Karp, has worked with the CIA, FBI, Los Angeles Police Department, and ICE, for whom it used data mining technology to create profiles of immigrants and aid deportation efforts.
In a Form D filing last week, Palantir said it had raised $550 million and had capital commitments for an additional $441 million. A fundraising round in 2015 reportedly valued the company at $20 billion.
In September 2019, Reuters, citing sources familiar with the matter, said the company was seeking a valuation of at least $26 billion.
The company’s S-1 filing allows it to keep information private until the date for listing shares gets closer, a strategy that has been used in other IPOs, notably by Slack, Spotify, and Uber. Uber filed confidentially for an IPO in late 2018, days after its competitor Lyft submitted its draft registration statement.
Founded in 2003, Palantir’s fundraising history remains murky.
In April, the company was awarded two contracts totaling $24.9 million from the Department of Health and Human Services to assist efforts to track and mitigate COVID-19. The department cited the “unusual and compelling urgency” of the pandemic in awarding the no-bid contracts.
The 50% surge in the NASDAQ in recent weeks has led to a bump in technology IPOs. The online mobile-based insurance startup Lemonade launched its IPO last Wednesday and saw its shares jump more than 30% before closing up nearly 140% on Thursday.
ZoomInfo and Vroom have also successfully listed shares in recent weeks.
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