Granted, Goldman Sachs and other investment banks that were once partnerships are now public. But that move hasn't necessarily been a good thing for the companies in question, and some argue it has been damaging.

Basically, Palantir looks to me like a law firm/consultancy, those firms typically find it advantageous to stay private, what is the advantage for Palantir to go public except to provide a cash out to investors?

if companies could cash out and remain private, 100% of companies would choose that option.

the liquidity of the secondary stock market is a purely American phenomenon.

What do you mean by that? Loads of countries have adequately liquid stock markets.

Not 100% of companies have been choosing those options, however the # of US IPOs is lower now than it has been: https://www.quandl.com/data/RITTER/US_IPO_STATS-Historical-U...

I think it's worth remembering that Enron was public.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarbanes%E2%80%93Oxley_Act

"financially transparent while still keeping mum about who their clients are"

How would this work in practical terms?

Hell, for that matter, look at AT&T, Verizon, and Level3 -- the companies that we didn't really expect to be doing the kinds of things they were doing.

He's not your usual corporate leader, but there's an unmistakable intellect in the way he articulates himself which must work for both leading this particular workforce as well as selling to this particular customer base.

[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/17/technology/acxiom-the-quie...

Another crucial difference is that marketing is a tertiary use case for Palantir, at best.

Perhaps this is shaking the trees of institutional/sovereign wealth funds/investors is in order to make them seem like they'll miss out.

IPO, these days, is a move of desperation and often a murdering of remaining agility.

By saying they are a "Data-Mining Company" is an obvious (to me) sign that they want to be able to position themselves in the public sector (e.g. banking, retail) with counter-fraud services/solutions, and perhaps more generic cyber security solutions for large organisations.

a) to bring up at all b) to bring up in an article about ipo

what does it have to do with the company going public?

Unless there's a subtlety I missed, isn't this more likely to be driven by their VCs?

What!?! Is there a market for that? Who pays that much? Republic of Turkey Secret Police?

Can't read it from direct link, can't read it from web link, can't read it from private browsing.

:-(