{"id":5145,"date":"2017-04-05T18:46:09","date_gmt":"2017-04-05T22:46:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/digital.hbs.edu\/platform-digit\/submission\/palantir-a-secretive-unicorn\/"},"modified":"2017-04-05T18:55:43","modified_gmt":"2017-04-05T22:55:43","slug":"palantir-a-secretive-unicorn","status":"publish","type":"hck-submission","link":"https:\/\/d3.harvard.edu\/platform-digit\/submission\/palantir-a-secretive-unicorn\/","title":{"rendered":"Palantir- A Secretive Unicorn"},"content":{"rendered":"

Palantir:<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n

On December 14th<\/sup>, 2016 President-Elect Donald Trump met with the industry leaders of Silicon Valley at Trump Tower in New York.\u00a0 Seated around the table were the familiar faces of tech giants including Eric Schmidt, Larry Page, Tim Cook, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Sheryl Sandberg, Peter Theil; but seated directly across from Mr. Trump was a relatively unknown 49 year Ph.D. named Alex Karp.\u00a0 Unlike the household company names like Google, Apple, Amazon, Tesla and Facebook; Karp runs a private firm that has quietly grown into a $20 Billion behemoth on the back of \u201cBig Data Analytics.\u201d\u00a0 His position at the table was no accident either.\u00a0 Peter Theil, an early Trump supporter, helped found and fund Palantir in 2004 and remains the Chairman of Board.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Palantir was born from an idea in 2003, that technology and a start-up mentality could assist the US government combat terrorism in the wake of the 2001 attacks.\u00a0 After securing a small round of funding from In-Q-Tel, the CIA venture arm, Palantir went about pitching the US intelligence community of the practicality of their product.<\/p>\n

Early adopters of the software included the CIA\u2019s Counter Terrorism Center, the DoD\u2019s Special Operations Command and Joint-IED-Defeat-Organization.\u00a0 Through success cases with these organizations, Palantir went on to expand into non-defense and intelligence clients that included the IRS, Department of Homeland Security, NY and LA police departments and JP Morgan Chase.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

What Does Palantir Do:<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n

Given its size and growing public awareness, much has been written about Palantir and its seemingly uncheck power to process information.\u00a0 However, despite the sometimes-misplaced apprehensions, the concept of Palantir\u2019s products are less complicated than some would have the public believe.<\/p>\n

From the beginning, Palantir believed that computation was meant to augment human analysis, not replace it.\u00a0 Its focus has been to enable real time query of all available data without tying down a user to onerous searches or lengthy coding exercises.<\/p>\n

To achieve this, Palantir claims its platform does the following 4 tasks-<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Data Integration:<\/p>\n

The most important feature of Palantir\u2019s products are the ability to synthesize and compare an organization\u2019s underlying data sources without needing to transfer them into a single language or repository.\u00a0 While the engineering behind this feat is complicated, the concept isn\u2019t.\u00a0 Instead of ingesting, translating, and storing information in a structured manner (the traditional rows and columns of any table), Palantir interprets information into an \u2018object based model\u2019.<\/p>\n

Palantir\u2019s object model relies on its \u2018Dynamic Ontology.\u2019\u00a0 Meaning that for any sets of information, Palantir\u2019s engineers work with the end user to define what information represents a thing, place, or event; instead of hard coding these characteristics in its generic product.\u00a0 From this basic structure the additional descriptions and enrichment information can be categorized for each object.\u00a0 What results is the ability of Palantir\u2019s software to discover and surface \u2018relationships\u2019 between data, regardless of its format.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

性视界 and Discovery:<\/p>\n

The most well-known feature of Palantir\u2019s products is the user interface, which enables search and discovery.\u00a0 Through the interface, non-technical analysts can query anything from bank records to images from an aircraft in real time to see underlying connections.\u00a0 Depending on the information or task, analysts can visually investigate data in histograms, geographic overlays or spider web looking link analyses.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Knowledge Management:<\/p>\n

Due in large part to their origins working with the intelligence community and military, handling classified information, Palantir built into all its products a sophisticated means of regulating what information can be searched by individual user, as well as an unalterable audit trail of what information was seen, manipulated, or transferred by any individual analyst.\u00a0 Palantir has claimed that in addition to enabling information security for their clients, this feature also enables an unbreakable barrier against civil liberty infractions.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Collaboration:<\/p>\n

Giving the power of Palantir\u2019s platform to one analyst is powerful.\u00a0 Connecting a team of analysts around the world to each other\u2019s work and data sources (as allowed through the knowledge management) is game changing.\u00a0 Through Palantir\u2019s products, individual users create and publish their analysis to a broad network, enabling other users to build off their work and collaborate on investigations.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Future<\/p>\n

In 2015, Palantir closed an 880mm round of funding at a reported $20B valuation.\u00a0 Information on Palantir\u2019s internal finances have never been shared, but it has been reported that Palantir is cash-flow positive.\u00a0 Recent forays into the commercial space of financial and legal services have seemed to calm investors apprehensions that Palantir is a niche government player, showing an ability to find growth and adoption for its products.\u00a0 What remains to be seen is whether the human capital intensive nature of its product will be scalable with its ambitions.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Sources:<\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/news\/articles\/2011-11-22\/palantir-the-war-on-terrors-secret-weapon<\/a><\/p>\n

https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/2016\/12\/14\/donald-trump-meets-with-tech-leaders\/<\/a><\/p>\n

http:\/\/fortune.com\/palantir-pentagon-trump\/<\/a><\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2014\/06\/01\/business\/unlocking-secrets-if-not-its-own-value.html?_r=0<\/a><\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/ryanmac\/2013\/12\/05\/palantir-seeks-9-billion-valuation-in-new-round-as-ceo-alex-karp-nears-billionaire-mark\/#692a47f42925<\/a><\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/channel\/UCwed6_f0WcDIioXvMQfcP2Q<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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