I think Palantir has been overtly committed to avoiding an IPO for a while.

Yes, the "liquidity event" mentioned in the article is extremely vague. I'll reach out to my colleagues that are still at Palantir to find out what that actually meant.

It's the ability to do board-sanctioned sales of stock to buyers. It's basically an equity follow-on sale to previous investors (or new investors if there's a round concurrently underway).

This is significant because private companies typically have clauses in their option agreements that you can only sell shares pre-IPO if the board approves. So, a company like Palantir structures things so that, before an IPO, you can only make money off your options if you're still working at the company. Oh yeah, and if you leave and want to exercise your options so they don't expire (so that you can have a nest egg that vests when they IPO), be prepared to pay AMT on the difference between the strike price and the current value.

They call it "golden handcuffs" for a reason.

Are you sure that Palantir options expire after the 90 days? The options offered to me were NSOs; I wouldn't have had to convert them.

Or are you making a general statement about companies similar to Palantir?

I don't think they've been that overt.

Here's one of the founders a couple years ago https://www.quora.com/When-will-Palantir-go-public?share=1

They've been signalling that an IPO is imminent for a long time.

Palantir has allowed for current employees to cash out options during some rounds of funding in the past, if I remember correctly.

Liquidity events are simply opportunities to convert some of the stock options to cash, at current FMV.