Peter Thiel's Palantir to IPO within weeks, start trading before election

Bloomberg News reports on Friday that the secretive big-data and surveillance technology firm Palantir is preparing to register an S-1 filing confidentially, and plans to go public in the coming weeks and start trading as early as fall 2020.

U.S. President-elect Donald Trump sits with PayPal co-founder and Facebook board member Peter Thiel, Apple Inc CEO Tim Cook, Oracle CEO Safra Catz and Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk during a meeting with technology leaders at Trump Tower in New York U.S., December 14, 2016. REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton - RTX2V2DE

As others have pointed out, it's an interesting time for a much-criticized tech firm to go public, right before the election which decides whether we get another four years of Donald Trump, and his brand of technofascism, with which Palantir's chief executives seem very content.

The U.S. Department of Palantir set to IPO later this year https://t.co/tQzByQom7L

— Mike Dudas (@mdudas) June 11, 2020

Hey @Bloomberg, this is a dishonest representation of what Palantir does.

“Dozens of law enforcement and government agencies around the world use Palantir to find missing children, investigate tax fraud and track the spread of Covid-19.“https://t.co/n1Wuna8kQN

— William Fitzgerald (@william_fitz) June 12, 2020

It was an intentional choice on Bloomberg’s part to list “tracking the spread of COVID-19” as one of Palantir’s functions, while omitting building tools for ICE that are mission critical to deportations. https://t.co/dn3cri8NCd

— Sasha Perigo (@sashaperigo) June 12, 2020

Trump speaks while PayPal co-founder and Facebook board member Peter Thiel and Apple Inc CEO Tim Cook look on during a meeting with technology leaders at Trump Tower in New York U.S., December 14, 2016. REUTERS