A filing by big data company Palantir with the US Securities and Exchange Commission revealed that the company was set to raise USD57.5 million apart from a USD196.5 million fundraising it held three months ago, bumping its value to USD6 billion then. According to unnamed sources who were familiar with the funding round, the additional new capital had put the company's valuation at USD9 billion. Palantir did not disclose who its investors were for both rounds, but TechCrunch heard that revenues of the big data company are set to hit half a billion this year, and may work on a total of USD1 billion in contracts in 2014.
It will not be a surprise on how Palantir was able to do well as a startup. The brainchild of Paypal co-founder Peter Thiel, the establishment of the startup was based on the idea that anti-fraud technologies of the payments company could aid in the fight for terrorism. It has counted the National Security Agency (NSA), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) early on.
Current CEO Alex Karp, Joe Lonsdale, chief technology officer Nathan Gettings and Stephen Cohen formed the company's first product.
Palantir grew as a formidable leader in the big data market, thanks to the government agencies who had subscribed to its product in the latter's efforts to curb drug trafficking and terrorism. Palantir's platform extracts disparate reams of data, breaks down encryption and presents them in a more understandable way for federal authorities to translate. According to TechCrunch, Palantir has extended its target to the private sector, pharmaceutical industry and cybersecurity. Palantir's mission, according to its profile on Crunchbase, is to provide solutions to high-priority problems of the most important institutions in the world.
Early backers of Palantir included Founders Fund, Yelp's Jeremy Stoppelman and Ben Ling, among others. According to TechCrunch, Palantir had managed to raise around USD650 million in investment funding.
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