Palantir Technologies Raises $70 Million At $2.5 Billion Valuation

Leena Rao currently works as a writer for TechCrunch. She recently finished graduate school at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University, where she studied business journalism and videography. From 2004 to 2007, she helped lead Congresswoman Carloyn Maloney’s community outreach and relations efforts in New York City. She graduated from Columbia University in 2003, where she was... ? Learn More

Palantir Technologies has raised $70 million in Series F funding, we’ve confirmed with the company. This brings Palantir’s total funding to nearly $200 million. While the company declined to reveal the valuation in the round, we’ve learned from sources that it is around $2.5 billion. Two unnamed New York-based hedge funds anchored the round, and multiple early investors and university endowments participated in the round.

Founded in 2004 by former PayPal employees and Stanford computer scientists, Palantir offers a high-powered data analysis platform. Palantir Government and Palantir Finance both integrate, visualize, and analyze information in these sectors. The company analyzes a variety of data including structured, unstructured, relational, temporal, and geospatial content. The virtue of Palantir is that it accepts huge databases and allows users to slice and dice this information.

Palantir says its platform works at any scale while also promising security and civil liberties protections. Clearly this makes it ideal for governments and financial institutions, who need to analyze large amounts of classified, secure data.

While the company’s technologies has been popular amongst government agencies (including the FBI), Palantir has revealed that 60 percent of its business actually comes from the commercial sector. In fact, the company closed a number of recent deals in the commercial space, including a deal with financial giant JP Morgan Chase.

Palantir told us last year that revenues have at least doubled every year for the last three years. And in the company’s last round last year (in which it raised $90 million), its valuation was pegged at $735 million; so clearly the company has taken a big jump in value in the past year.

Early investors include former PayPal CEO Peter Thiel (who is the Chairman of Palantir’s board as well), and the CIA’s venture arm In-Q-Tel.

We had originally reported on an SEC filing revealing some of this most recent round in May, and AllThingsD reported a few weeks ago of another SEC filing that showed additional fundraising. As the company confirmed to us today, this round has closed and Palantir now has another $75 million in its coffers.

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CloudFlare, Dropbox, Palantir And Kickstarter Named Technology Pioneers By The World Economic Forum

Leena Rao currently works as a writer for TechCrunch. She recently finished graduate school at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University, where she studied business journalism and videography. From 2004 to 2007, she helped lead Congresswoman Carloyn Maloney’s community outreach and relations efforts in New York City. She graduated from Columbia University in 2003, where she was... ? Learn More

Every year the World Economic Forum picks a number of up-and-coming technology startups from around the world and dubs them Technology Pioneers. Past members of this club include Google, Mozilla, Mint, Etsy, Twitter, Amiando, Playfish, Obopay, and Brightcove

Today, The World Economic Forum announced 25 new members of the 2012 class of Technology Pioneers, who will be honored at a conference in China in September. This year’s group includes CloudFlare, DoubleVerify, Dropbox, Kickstarter, Lending Club, and Palantir Technologies.

CloudFlare, which was a TechCrunch Disrupt runner-up last Fall, offers a service that protects websites from online threats, promises and increase in page load speeds, and more. The startup made recently waves when it was revealed the security service was being used by infamous hackers LulzSec. And CloudFare just announced a $20 million round of funding.

File sharing company Dropbox is on a roll of late, with its 25 million users (many of which are paying), uploading 200 million files a day. The company is expected to announce a $200 million to $300 million  funding round soon, which could value the company at a whopping $4 billion.

Founded in 2004 by former PayPal employees and Stanford computer scientists, Palantir offers a high-powered analysis platform for businesses and governments. The company analyzes a variety of data including structured, unstructured, relational, temporal, and geospatial content. The virtue of of Palantir is that it accepts huge databases and allows users to slice and dice this information. The company has raised a massive $175 million, most recently adding $50 million to its coffers.

Crowd-funding website Kickstarter allows anyone with an idea for a film, album, art project, or product to make their pitch, say how much they need to get started, and ask for pledges. Once the minimum amount needed is pledged, the project gets started. To date, Kickstarter has helped fund more than 25,000 projects, with $75 million pledged.

According to the organization, Technology Pioneers are chosen on the basis how innovative a company is, the potential impact on society, growth and sustainability, proof of concept, leadership and more.

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