Helping Build The Surveillance State Is Good Business: Palantir Gets $196 Million More In Funding

from the money-money-money dept

Palantir is definitely a fairly well-known (if somewhat secretive) company in Silicon Valley. While Silicon Valley firms actually tend to have a reputation for being skeptical of partnering up with the intelligence community, Palantir has always focused on trying to work directly with the intelligence community, quite successfully. Palantir got a bit of notoriety a couple years ago, when it was revealed to be associated with HBGary Federal when Anonymous leaked plans to try to discredit Wikileaks and various critics (including Glenn Greenwald) in a pitch to Bank of America and the US Chamber of Commerce. However, with the latest stories about NSA surveillance, and questions concerning the involvement of Silicon Valley, more and more attention has been paid to Palantir. Andy Greenberg and Ryan Mac did a profile in Forbes of the "deviant philosopher" who built the company. And the Telegraph recently called it the creepiest startup ever.

Apparently all the revelations concerning the surveillance state haven't been bad for business either. Reports are that the company has recently closed on a little under $200 million from investors, bringing its total raised to around $500 million. Supposedly the latest valuation has the company around $8 billion -- which would mean that the $200 million only bought around 2.5% of the company.

Obviously, there's money in feeding the surveillance state. In fact, we've argued that so much of the hype around "cybersecurity" has really been about efforts to drum up more business for contractors, including Palantir. It's just a shame that all these revelations don't seem to have dampened the interest in building the surveillance state. Apparently the 4th Amendment doesn't mean too much when all that money is on the table.