[newprint]

Can someone explain to me what is the Palantir's business model ? I haven't heard any large, meaningful project they been involved in, but I keep hearing the company name & how hot they are and their stocks are going to blow-up any day (some of my friends kept their stocks for the last 4-5 years with very little gain compared to other software companies). I know of the smaller software companies that are less than 100 people and have a very meaningful impact in DoD & Gov space.

[Manuel_D]

When I interned at Palantir (summer 2014) their business was mostly in data ingestion, visualization, and correlation.

A typical workflow for a Palantir customer was that Palantir would come in and dump a ton of data out of old crufty databases and into Palantir's datastore. Then, they'd establish connections between that data. This is all sounds kind of hand-wavy, but the gist of it is that a lot of government agencies have data that lives in separate databases and they can't easily correlate data between those two databases. Once the data was in Palantir's system, they could do queries against all their data, and make connections and correlations that they wouldn't otherwise be able to find when the data was previously siloed.

One of the sample use cases was identifying people filling prescriptions for schedule II drugs multiple times on the same day, and correlating that with pharmacies run by people connected to known drug traffickers. Previously, this was hard to do because the database of prescription purchases was disconnected from the database of drug convictions.

[sroerick]

People dismiss this type of work as no big deal, but in my experience this is the actual hard work of producing something useful for companies, and what 90% of SaaS resellers will never be able to deliver on.

[browningstreet]

In many of the enterprise orgs I've worked in, the two tech teams that are chronically understaffed are 1) info sec, 2) DBA/ data architecture/ data science. I'm lumping those 3 together on purpose, because they're always understaffed and typically not empowered to build anything.

[LarsDu88]

So basically data warehousing, and making it possible to do joins?

Super boring, but super important stuff, which I've seen neglected at far too many places I've worked.

Sounds like data engineering with a dash of ML.

[hammock]

So it’s hygiene and structure

[throwaway2037]

This is a good post to explain the value proposition. It sounds like "Big Data" from the 1990s, but a very good salesperson was able to infiltrate some US gov orgs to sell the idea.

[rsynnott]

This all just sounds like any other consulting company, really?

[thimkerbell]

So if they are dumping data out of old crufty databases and into Palantir's datastore, which one is the active database going forward? In 2024.

[maeil]

They basically have two. Just like e.g. Amazon has both retail and cloud infra as separate, independent business models.

One is described well in the article, originally aimed at commercial clients. The article isn't short but we're on HN, not Reddit, so we should read the articles. Parts 2 and 3 describe it. The linked note at the end of 3 is very relevant.

The other one is the gov one, which is also mentioned as "Palantir has prevented terrorist attacks".

The article actually links to lots of product docs. It isn't secretive, plenty of videos on Youtube demoing the software. The docs are public, which is more open than can be said for 90% of software in their price range.

[swordsmith]

I use Foundry for work. It makes data ingestion, cleaning, quality check and automation easy. After all the data is ingested, running analysis/RAG on them become extremely easy.

Basically, it's end-to-end data engineering and analytics. And the more a company uses/invests into the platform, the more benefit and locked-in they are.

[alexpetralia]

"End-to-end data engineering and analytics" is quite a bold claim from a single service provider.

Here is the link for anyone interested: https://www.palantir.com/platforms/foundry/ and a YouTube explainer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZGGRCTTjLfQ

Given you've used it, just how self-service is it? To me this seems like such a large claim that - if it's doable - I'm surprised there are not more competitors in the "vertically integrated data providers" space.

[justmarc]

It certainly sounds like they've created an excellent product both for its value to the customer as well as value to their shareholders.

That's what companies should all be built and optimized to do. That's what it's about.

[hermitcrab]

RAG?

[stephencoyner]

They have a few brand new products that are quite compelling.

Warp Speed: Aims to integrate ERP, MES, PLM, and factory floor systems into a single AI-driven platform. As opposed to legacy ERP systems, it focuses on production optimization rather than just financial tracking. Warp Speed has the potential to relegate legacy systems to backend data storage, shifting the entire intelligence layer (and value) to Palantir's system. Warp Speed targets both innovative new manufacturers (they note Tesla and Space X alums starting new companies) and traditional large-scale operations.

Mission Manager: enables other defense contractors to build on Palantir's platform and benefit from their security infrastructure and position of trust within government. You can think of it as an AWS for defense companies; plug and play with the foundations handled for you. While the product just launched in Q4 2023, they just received a new $33 million CDAO Open DAGIR contract. While this is possibly just an advanced POC, it represents significant potential for future growth and wider adoption in the defense sector. Now is the perfect time. From 2021 to 2023, VC firms invested nearly $100 billion in defense tech startup companies, a 40% increase from the previous seven years combined. Time is the most important thing for these startups and Mission Manager shows the potential to save lots of it.

[NicoJuicy]

> Now is the perfect time

The perfect time is yesterday. All defense companies already went way up.

Palantir... Not so much

[sangnoir]

> Can someone explain to me what is the Palantir's business model

AFAICT, it is government & government-adjacent contracting using techniques borrowed from big tech and WITCH, since big tech won't directly court government sw contracts, and WITCH may fail at getting clearances for foreign-based personnel.

[ericjmorey]

WITCH?

[melling]

The stock has blown up. It has more than doubled for me. Almost tripled.

It’s quite expensive now.

I would encourage you to do your own research.

For some reason, HN has very little depth in stock market understanding. HN passed on META at $100.

I know there are some very knowledgeable people here. Wish there was a way to create a “subreddit “ here without all the Reddit noise.

[rabf]

One of the reasons I still frequent this forum is to countertrade the espoused opinions. Meta@100 was such an easy buy, Everyone was talking as if they were going out of business because they did not like the idea of the metaverse. A quick look at their earnings said that was utter nonsesnse. So bizarre to see all jounalists and many users here to attribute the turn around to them pivoting to AI when that was not at all what the CEO was saying during that time. Always look for primary sources, opinions are funny.

[sakopov]

If you were buying in the $6s, it nearly 7x'ed in like a year

[nodesocket]

HN has always lacked economic and stock market knowledge and instincts generally speaking. Most comments tend to say it’s rigged, evil capitalist, etc. Guessing because hackers generally tend to swing far left and socialist though weird as a lot of founder and entrepreneurs are active on HN as well.

There is a long tradition of show HN were the comments poo poo startups and ideas which end up being huge and the opposite is also true with praise and admiration of failures.

[joewhale]

It all comes down to if you have the right sales people that can land large govt contracts. The rest is figuring it out as you go. This is an incredible moat for them. Whoever gets these large govt contracts first in their space wins.

[itronitron]

They're like Oracle in that they focus their sales activity on the untouchable managers of managers, but their focus is on data integration and data analytics.

[sleepybrett]

your own private digital cia, for hire to the highest bidder.