I don't know, I'm not seeing a "sleeping giant" here... Plantir has been around for a long time already at this point- Getting an additional cash infusion, especially one so small for a company of Palantir's size, sounds like the move of a company that is struggling.
They are sleeping in the sense that they go under the radar of most of the public in spite of being massively influential.
This raise is relatively small because it is a continuation of the previous raise. To me, it actually sounds more like a bullish sign that they were able to raise more than their target amount at such a high valuation. The investors had access to far more information than we outsiders do. If Palantir were truly "struggling", then they likely would not have been able to secure more investments at that same high valuation.
Re:Palantir raises $680M
by huntermonk on Friday December 11, 2015 @01:05AM
(#10715674)
I see what Joseph is saying about that macro trend. In Austin, RideScout (Kayak.com for transportation options) just sold for ~$100m to Daimler AG with only tens of thousands of user.
The importance to Daimler was seeing all the driving and traveling data for each user.
You're a couple of orders of magnitude off, my friend.
Re:Palantir raises $680M
by huntermonk on Friday December 11, 2015 @05:06PM
(#10720441)
Ah ok - that's what I heard through Capital Factory. However, I can't imagine it would be more than 2 (you said a couple) orders of magnitude off.
Do you know approximately what the amount was?
number of users? price? which direction?
price.
I disagree with the analogy. Human population will not grow from 1 billion to 7 billion because of data, that is the kind of change we got with oil. Oil is a hard asset, data is not entirely hard asset.
can you explain how oil enabled human pop to go from 1b to 7b?
Not sure why you are getting down voted. It's a valid question.
Cheap, abundant energy makes in cheaper to produce and transport necessities for human life and allows us to invest more time into researching and improving the quality and availability of those necessities (food, clothing, housing, medicine, etc.).
Haven't read through all of this, but it seems to have some similar ideas. http://www.resilience.org/stories/2009-04-20/peak-people-int...
Re:Palantir raises $680M
by angry_octet on Friday December 11, 2015 @02:00PM
(#10719068)
Industrial fertiliser and transport, plastics, energy, etc.
Re:Palantir raises $680M
by hyperbovine on Friday December 11, 2015 @01:12AM
(#10715682)
> Data is the oil of the 21st century.
Interesting. So you're saying we'll reach "peak data" in about 100 years?
Re:Palantir raises $680M
by paulddraper on Friday December 11, 2015 @01:49AM
(#10715766)
Well, we'll keep getting better and better at extracting more worthwhile data, and increase our ability to use the data we have. And data will allow extensive growth (of business). It might be reaching, but yes, kinda.
Re:Palantir raises $680M
by alex_hirner on Friday December 11, 2015 @03:56AM
(#10716060)
Interesting thought, I suspect there is something like peak computation per ft^3 and we will hit such barriers earthbound (with quantum computing being the equivalent to solar+cheap storage for this problem).
The SF term is 'computronium'.
Re:Palantir raises $680M
by josephjrobison on Friday December 11, 2015 @02:14PM
(#10719163)
I think like oil, we'll keep finding new ways to dig deeper and get more out of it through innovations and new technologies, don't you agree?
There's only so much to know. What's more important is what we do with it, and how we apply it.
Everyone in tech knows about Palantir.
Re:Palantir raises $680M
by personjerry on Friday December 11, 2015 @02:03AM
(#10715806)
Soon Palantir will also know about everyone in tech.
Re:Palantir raises $680M
by BinaryIdiot on Friday December 11, 2015 @02:24AM
(#10715862)
Well considering what their software actually does...yeah they most likely do in a data set somewhere.
Considering what their software actually does, which is basically displaying a dashboard of nice tables / visualizations / graphs, and knobs to turn those visualizations/graphs, no. Palantir barely does any machine learning.
Re:Palantir raises $680M
by BinaryIdiot on Friday December 11, 2015 @10:04AM
(#10717440)
Seems like you'd NOT want to do machine learning if you simply want to hold all of the data parent mentioned...
This one seems like the sleeping giant of the top venture-backed companies. I suppose the media can't as easily describe and talk about it and understand it as much as Uber or AirBnb, so they just move on to the more fun companies.