DISCLAIMER
This is in no way, shape or form, fluid and function, an analytical, qualitative or intelligent compte rendu. I am obviously not rich, so obviously I haven't made it with my own thinking, so definitely don't put faith in me. But maybe read and learn some things about a company that might just be the digital coming of the antichrist.
I want to make this clear, and a general warning for the following text; when I decided to take on this venture, I made a promise to be myself no matter what, and to hold true to what I believe in. Palantir has a good product, but it is unworthy of praise, adoption or support. There is money to be made elsewhere, there are so many other stocks that are undervalued and belong to companies working to make a better world. Hopefully a competitor emerges against Palantir run by those who would do more good.
Thesis
I have been dreading this analysis. On one hand, I am dying from the amount of news I see about Palantir because of these memestreet traders, and on the other hand, I didn't want to do an analysis and be a bearer of bad news. I think a lot of my major issues with Palantir remain, but I think the company is developing a serious piece of software. I am looking at Gotham right now, and despite the douchiest name they could think of, I am genuinely interested. The concept of Gotham is literally the future of operating systems. Or rather the side of operating systems that we experience. I am sitting here reading the principles page and just awe struck that someone actually just did it, someone went ahead and decided to just make the future computer workspace. I mean, I don't know if there is a single real person in this company, I don’t know if this is like an AI experiment gone horribly right, but my body and mind is ready. If they could figure out how to explain their system in real people speak, dropped the elitist attitude, and the gaudiest naming schema, people would quickly realize that Palantir has just dropped the hammer on the operating system market and is going to win. I do not see a world in which Palantir's Gotham does not become the outright OS for anyone born in the last 40 years with a level of competency in computers.
As awful as the idea may be that tagging a file with a keyword is coming from Instagram, it is genius. I can name files anything I want, but honestly, I am never going to go back to them, because I have no idea what is on it. As a scientist, my option for data management is folders. I create so much data that ranges in topics, that does not belong in a folder. The ability to tag the data with a keyword has been something I have genuinely desired for a significant portion of my data-making life. If I get rich, I am probably just going to buy myself this as my personal operating system. Mock me all you want, but it is true. I don't know how to code, but being able to code in the same workspace as everything else, is pretty god damn cool.
Essentially, Gotham boils down to 1 simple change; how we analyze our data. Not just data of a single type, as in data from a single experiment or numbers from an excel sheet, but the data as in every word we write, everything we collect information on and store in our computer. Currently, storing data is a mix between internet browser bookmarks, word documents, pictures, pdfs, excel sheets, and videos, all spread through their own folders and their own executable applications. When we search through this data, is complex and awful, and I am saying this not even as a salesman for Palantir, but as someone who genuinely has a lot of friggin' data. Gotham takes all of that data, makes it searchable, looks for keywords or key themes, takes user added tags, and builds standard bioinformatics algorithms with it to make it accessible and digestible. At least, I am calling them bioinformatics, because that is how I recognize it.
I don't think Palantir knows what it has here; this is the future operating system, something so far forward that it makes Windows, Mac and Linux look antiquated, because they are. Windows et al are all founded and chained by the concepts of their designers, a generation that is now far removed from the people using them. I think Palantir is the first major attempt at the next generation of Operating Systems, the question is, can Palantir make it mainstream? And then the other question is, what the hell are they doing with Gotham 21? Can they just rename it Skynet and merge with Boston Dynamics now, or do we have to wait 10 more years to watch this one playout. The question that this ultimately boils down to, is Palantir to be trusted? Gotham is more than a new operating system, it’s a fresh start for a better build. It is quite clear they aim to have everything be made within Palantir, such that Palantir open-sourced applications are ran through the Gotham desktop workspace. No more Adobe, no more Word or google docs, or word for mac, or notepad, notepad++, it just all is the same, all built from the same languages in the same framework as plugin modules. It is kind of our chance to become a beehive, where we are all working for the common good (which is the mass accumulation of data for processing and development of future technologies), together in new ways. The possibility of opening your desktop, or specific tagged documents of various types to a community at large, and to be able to work together on those things without the fear of viruses or spam or junk, a place where every single piece of data is valuable and rich and tasty and succulent. That is the kind of place Palantir is making, just not with the user as the end to end, its them. Gotham is like giving your entire computer to one singular company who will have the ability, and direct desire to consume it and use it to enrich the world. Whether or not we meant to, this is the ultimate big brother. When every single wall is broken that separates us from anyone or anything else, then we no longer have privacy. While Palantir claims Privacy and Security are it's #1 target, it is integrated with the data-consuming analytics, and with strong early support from the CIA, current work with the government and the CEO's decision to back Trump's regime with, quite possibly, the most powerful AI-linked cooperative OS; Palantir may have breakthrough technology capable of accelerating the progress of humanity, but with a Directorship untrustworthy and strong connections to the CIA, ICE and Peter Thiel Palantir as a human rights nuke and a future battleground for ethical investors.
Ethics Issues - Extreme biases and bad language ahead
I am going to put this pretty fucking bluntly, you have to be an actual piece of shit human being to in any way support or help what Trump and ICE did to children. Aside from the absolute fucking madness that would drive a grown person to want to rip children away from their parents, countless children were mutilated and raped. The wounds caused by these acts will never heal, and will likely be the major domestic issue driving the narrative and growth of future generations. The pure naivety that must come with doing that to a massive subset of people and not expect Karma's response? America just took a group of people that were trying harder than anything to be American, destroyed them, and likely created future martyrs against the American plague. It just is what it is, and any response to correct what we have done is going to be met with equal parts skepticism, fear and hate.
Furthermore, backing and being backed by the CIA isn't popular anymore. While JFK wasn't able to delete the agency, he started the narrative that will be picked up by every liberal and right wing-nut job from now 'til US Constitution 2: The Eclectic Boogaloo. This is the point where I am going to draw a very clear line in the sand, I am a bleeding heart, and I will never stop being a bleeding heart. I make the purpose and goal of these write-ups known from the get-go; These are to teach, serve as a guide and a starting place for interested readers to learn how to research companies, what to look for and what to put in the pro and con charts. Aside from the financial arguments to be made on the basis of a company supporting real life monsters doing monstrous acts, it is my drive to chart an ethical and happy path forward that forges my sword and shield against Palantir. I am not just against the company's success, I am against the simple existence of it and a board that believes it can aid governments in committing mass atrocities, and deserve to thrive from it. While you, the reader, may not cry for the immigrants, I implore you to use your imagination to understand how the same technology that was used to hunt down and capture illegal immigrants across the States might be used by someone to hunt you down. Palantir isn't just a burgeoning OS with an intent to connect the world; Palantir is the assembled monster of privacy destruction, government over-reach and unethical "woke" tech creating a program to consume the publics data, and control them.
I will say this very simply, I hate Alex Karp. Fuck him. Fuck Peter Thiel, fuck Stephen Cohen, fuck Shyam Sankar, fuck David Glazer. Not a single monster at Palantir deserves a single second of restful sleep with the blood on their hands. While some may have the ability to separate their ideals, their beliefs and their humanity from their livelihoods or their investments, I don't. And I don't think we should separate them either. If the retail investor wave coming isn't the final step in the social change chokehold towards a brighter and better tomorrow, then it is a failed and sickened beast. I implore you on humanity's sake, do not invest in Palantir and do not invest in companies that would so easily see harm be done to innocent people, and that would aid the plague of a tyrant. Furthermore, I am not alone. It is only a matter of time until the narrative surrounding Palantir becomes one of ethics, vs one of progress. Blackrock has made it quite clear, although with their own recent investment in Palantir, it becomes much less so, but the rise of ethical investing is beginning, and it will matter.
The Board
The Board boils down to 2 people, Peter Thiel and the CEO Alex Karp. Aside from the brutal comments already made, I believe it is unsustainable and uninformative for me to do a formal review of these 2. Googling both should be easy enough to find a long list of qualities and accomplishments of these 2 that support this.
Bull Theory
As much as I hate the company, and the board, Palantir do have an amazing platform. Their technology looks perfect, or at least as perfect as the next step in a next gen operating system can be without getting a fair time of development. Aside from that, they embrace the government, and the government is embracing right back. They have done a lot to secure their investors interests, and have made an important step in working on their investor relations to keep the memestreet crew around, and dumping more and more money into this heaping pile of shit. Furthermore, they learnt from Moderna to constantly announce their "partnerships" which are little more than trial runs or small temporary contracts to try out the software.
Ultimately, Palantir needs to transition to the population as a whole, meaning they need to work on integrating Gotham with existing OS' or make their own and get it developed enough to not be a barren field for early adopters. If they are able to complete the proof for the US Government, that would be the only contract they need to warrant exuberant market valuations, and as each partnership in industry comes to fruition, there is only room for growth. The likelihood of adoption by the US government leading to other governments rapid adoption would be likely, but with the growing list of ethical concerns and global break from American leadership, I wouldn't be surprised if Palantir stalls in the global market.
In short, complete Gotham UI or existing UI integration, proof of concept for US government, successful collaborations amounting more than the "participation trophies" they are handing to themselves now, and a push into general public adoption will see a massive increase in Palantir market cap.
Bear Theory
I have made my arguments for a bear theory on ethical grounds alone. But let me back it up with this, Palantir ain't special. Palantir's true specialty might lie in their inability to explain their platform and products in a meaningful and sensical way, choosing buzzwords and catch-phrases over real consumer relations. To put it pretty simply, I smell the shit from Palantir way before I ever saw it. The CEO is so far up his own ass he couldn't see the sun, even if he lifted his head to look, before getting burned by it. I don't know what kind of person has to become a multi-billionaire, son of a holocaust survivor, own purveyor of a brand new holocaust, and a fucking meditation guru bullshit spineless coward. I don’t know if the guy is amazing at yoga, or he just hasn't developed a single grain of integrity in that limp wet noodle of a body. It is almost a shame he is such a health nut, because the comparisons to Steve Jobs are just too overwhelming to try and subtly joke. And not in a good way. Steve Jobs was also an asshole, a monster and real big flaming piece of shit upon the future of the world. I could directly blame Steve Jobs and Bill Gates for Palantir's success, and for the lack of a competing operating system that would have been made by a more person and ethic friendly developer.
With that said, Palantir isn't special. Sure, their lack of a moral code, and their first-to-market product is going to make it hard for competition, but Microsoft has been trying to push this theme for a while. In fact, it has been the public push back on elements of this redesign that have been the main component holding it back. Apple already doesn't like other programs, so Apple specific programs have been a thing from birth. Furthermore, both companies have been trying to swallow every single byte of our data for decades, and with their cloud backup systems, they have finally found their in. While I doubt Microsoft or Apple have the brain power or design freedom to catch-up quickly enough, the suggestion that a bunch of nerds working together on an internet forum couldn't make something infinitely more beautiful and less precocious than Gotham, is a sorry mindset indeed. Furthermore, if there was a serious public demand for Gotham, someone funding something similar, getting it to market for cheap would tear Palantir apart and limit their market to the more nationalistic entities.
All on top of that, there is something to be said for lying with wolves; Palantir has skeletons even if they don't know it. There is no realm in which the CEO is not careful followed by a team of lawyers trying to avoid some catastrophic public issue, and with such deep connections to Peter Thiel, it is almost impossible that any movement or rage against Facebook does not come square onto Palantir's own shoulders.
Fundamentally, Palantir is an upstart-startup with a wordy vocab that screams beanie douchebag trying to out muscle Microsoft and Apple. I don't think bears could stomp Palantir into the ground, but giving it a market cap above its P/E ratio is just a slap in the face to every argument made in the past 50 years of trying to help the world.
And while this shit might have floated decades ago with Microsoft and Apple getting away with it, I cannot imagine a generation so torn and driven by the sins of their fathers will play nice with a company so clearly making evil moves. Fuck them.
The Float & Current Shareholders
Disclaimer
I am going to be real honest with you; congratulations for getting to the end. Thank you for your time, I hope it was worth it. If you have any suggestions, I would love to hear it. Please don’t make an investment decision on my information alone, always double check. I am not a financial analyst, I do not get paid to write any of this, and I do not, nor plan to, have an investment in PLTR or its stock price.
This means that I do not have options, shares or shares short sold. While I vehemently disagree with Palantir as a company and believe them to be evil, I equally hate short selling and speculative and manipulative options. Due to the charged nature of the write up, I will not be answering questions and I will not interact with comments. This is my stance, and I will take it silently.
Thank you.
This is in no way, shape or form, fluid and function, an analytical, qualitative or intelligent compte rendu. I am obviously not rich, so obviously I haven't made it with my own thinking, so definitely don't put faith in me. But maybe read and learn some things about a company that might just be the digital coming of the antichrist.
I want to make this clear, and a general warning for the following text; when I decided to take on this venture, I made a promise to be myself no matter what, and to hold true to what I believe in. Palantir has a good product, but it is unworthy of praise, adoption or support. There is money to be made elsewhere, there are so many other stocks that are undervalued and belong to companies working to make a better world. Hopefully a competitor emerges against Palantir run by those who would do more good.
Thesis
I have been dreading this analysis. On one hand, I am dying from the amount of news I see about Palantir because of these memestreet traders, and on the other hand, I didn't want to do an analysis and be a bearer of bad news. I think a lot of my major issues with Palantir remain, but I think the company is developing a serious piece of software. I am looking at Gotham right now, and despite the douchiest name they could think of, I am genuinely interested. The concept of Gotham is literally the future of operating systems. Or rather the side of operating systems that we experience. I am sitting here reading the principles page and just awe struck that someone actually just did it, someone went ahead and decided to just make the future computer workspace. I mean, I don't know if there is a single real person in this company, I don’t know if this is like an AI experiment gone horribly right, but my body and mind is ready. If they could figure out how to explain their system in real people speak, dropped the elitist attitude, and the gaudiest naming schema, people would quickly realize that Palantir has just dropped the hammer on the operating system market and is going to win. I do not see a world in which Palantir's Gotham does not become the outright OS for anyone born in the last 40 years with a level of competency in computers.
As awful as the idea may be that tagging a file with a keyword is coming from Instagram, it is genius. I can name files anything I want, but honestly, I am never going to go back to them, because I have no idea what is on it. As a scientist, my option for data management is folders. I create so much data that ranges in topics, that does not belong in a folder. The ability to tag the data with a keyword has been something I have genuinely desired for a significant portion of my data-making life. If I get rich, I am probably just going to buy myself this as my personal operating system. Mock me all you want, but it is true. I don't know how to code, but being able to code in the same workspace as everything else, is pretty god damn cool.
Essentially, Gotham boils down to 1 simple change; how we analyze our data. Not just data of a single type, as in data from a single experiment or numbers from an excel sheet, but the data as in every word we write, everything we collect information on and store in our computer. Currently, storing data is a mix between internet browser bookmarks, word documents, pictures, pdfs, excel sheets, and videos, all spread through their own folders and their own executable applications. When we search through this data, is complex and awful, and I am saying this not even as a salesman for Palantir, but as someone who genuinely has a lot of friggin' data. Gotham takes all of that data, makes it searchable, looks for keywords or key themes, takes user added tags, and builds standard bioinformatics algorithms with it to make it accessible and digestible. At least, I am calling them bioinformatics, because that is how I recognize it.
I don't think Palantir knows what it has here; this is the future operating system, something so far forward that it makes Windows, Mac and Linux look antiquated, because they are. Windows et al are all founded and chained by the concepts of their designers, a generation that is now far removed from the people using them. I think Palantir is the first major attempt at the next generation of Operating Systems, the question is, can Palantir make it mainstream? And then the other question is, what the hell are they doing with Gotham 21? Can they just rename it Skynet and merge with Boston Dynamics now, or do we have to wait 10 more years to watch this one playout. The question that this ultimately boils down to, is Palantir to be trusted? Gotham is more than a new operating system, it’s a fresh start for a better build. It is quite clear they aim to have everything be made within Palantir, such that Palantir open-sourced applications are ran through the Gotham desktop workspace. No more Adobe, no more Word or google docs, or word for mac, or notepad, notepad++, it just all is the same, all built from the same languages in the same framework as plugin modules. It is kind of our chance to become a beehive, where we are all working for the common good (which is the mass accumulation of data for processing and development of future technologies), together in new ways. The possibility of opening your desktop, or specific tagged documents of various types to a community at large, and to be able to work together on those things without the fear of viruses or spam or junk, a place where every single piece of data is valuable and rich and tasty and succulent. That is the kind of place Palantir is making, just not with the user as the end to end, its them. Gotham is like giving your entire computer to one singular company who will have the ability, and direct desire to consume it and use it to enrich the world. Whether or not we meant to, this is the ultimate big brother. When every single wall is broken that separates us from anyone or anything else, then we no longer have privacy. While Palantir claims Privacy and Security are it's #1 target, it is integrated with the data-consuming analytics, and with strong early support from the CIA, current work with the government and the CEO's decision to back Trump's regime with, quite possibly, the most powerful AI-linked cooperative OS; Palantir may have breakthrough technology capable of accelerating the progress of humanity, but with a Directorship untrustworthy and strong connections to the CIA, ICE and Peter Thiel Palantir as a human rights nuke and a future battleground for ethical investors.
Ethics Issues - Extreme biases and bad language ahead
I am going to put this pretty fucking bluntly, you have to be an actual piece of shit human being to in any way support or help what Trump and ICE did to children. Aside from the absolute fucking madness that would drive a grown person to want to rip children away from their parents, countless children were mutilated and raped. The wounds caused by these acts will never heal, and will likely be the major domestic issue driving the narrative and growth of future generations. The pure naivety that must come with doing that to a massive subset of people and not expect Karma's response? America just took a group of people that were trying harder than anything to be American, destroyed them, and likely created future martyrs against the American plague. It just is what it is, and any response to correct what we have done is going to be met with equal parts skepticism, fear and hate.
Furthermore, backing and being backed by the CIA isn't popular anymore. While JFK wasn't able to delete the agency, he started the narrative that will be picked up by every liberal and right wing-nut job from now 'til US Constitution 2: The Eclectic Boogaloo. This is the point where I am going to draw a very clear line in the sand, I am a bleeding heart, and I will never stop being a bleeding heart. I make the purpose and goal of these write-ups known from the get-go; These are to teach, serve as a guide and a starting place for interested readers to learn how to research companies, what to look for and what to put in the pro and con charts. Aside from the financial arguments to be made on the basis of a company supporting real life monsters doing monstrous acts, it is my drive to chart an ethical and happy path forward that forges my sword and shield against Palantir. I am not just against the company's success, I am against the simple existence of it and a board that believes it can aid governments in committing mass atrocities, and deserve to thrive from it. While you, the reader, may not cry for the immigrants, I implore you to use your imagination to understand how the same technology that was used to hunt down and capture illegal immigrants across the States might be used by someone to hunt you down. Palantir isn't just a burgeoning OS with an intent to connect the world; Palantir is the assembled monster of privacy destruction, government over-reach and unethical "woke" tech creating a program to consume the publics data, and control them.
I will say this very simply, I hate Alex Karp. Fuck him. Fuck Peter Thiel, fuck Stephen Cohen, fuck Shyam Sankar, fuck David Glazer. Not a single monster at Palantir deserves a single second of restful sleep with the blood on their hands. While some may have the ability to separate their ideals, their beliefs and their humanity from their livelihoods or their investments, I don't. And I don't think we should separate them either. If the retail investor wave coming isn't the final step in the social change chokehold towards a brighter and better tomorrow, then it is a failed and sickened beast. I implore you on humanity's sake, do not invest in Palantir and do not invest in companies that would so easily see harm be done to innocent people, and that would aid the plague of a tyrant. Furthermore, I am not alone. It is only a matter of time until the narrative surrounding Palantir becomes one of ethics, vs one of progress. Blackrock has made it quite clear, although with their own recent investment in Palantir, it becomes much less so, but the rise of ethical investing is beginning, and it will matter.
The Board
The Board boils down to 2 people, Peter Thiel and the CEO Alex Karp. Aside from the brutal comments already made, I believe it is unsustainable and uninformative for me to do a formal review of these 2. Googling both should be easy enough to find a long list of qualities and accomplishments of these 2 that support this.
Bull Theory
As much as I hate the company, and the board, Palantir do have an amazing platform. Their technology looks perfect, or at least as perfect as the next step in a next gen operating system can be without getting a fair time of development. Aside from that, they embrace the government, and the government is embracing right back. They have done a lot to secure their investors interests, and have made an important step in working on their investor relations to keep the memestreet crew around, and dumping more and more money into this heaping pile of shit. Furthermore, they learnt from Moderna to constantly announce their "partnerships" which are little more than trial runs or small temporary contracts to try out the software.
Ultimately, Palantir needs to transition to the population as a whole, meaning they need to work on integrating Gotham with existing OS' or make their own and get it developed enough to not be a barren field for early adopters. If they are able to complete the proof for the US Government, that would be the only contract they need to warrant exuberant market valuations, and as each partnership in industry comes to fruition, there is only room for growth. The likelihood of adoption by the US government leading to other governments rapid adoption would be likely, but with the growing list of ethical concerns and global break from American leadership, I wouldn't be surprised if Palantir stalls in the global market.
In short, complete Gotham UI or existing UI integration, proof of concept for US government, successful collaborations amounting more than the "participation trophies" they are handing to themselves now, and a push into general public adoption will see a massive increase in Palantir market cap.
Bear Theory
I have made my arguments for a bear theory on ethical grounds alone. But let me back it up with this, Palantir ain't special. Palantir's true specialty might lie in their inability to explain their platform and products in a meaningful and sensical way, choosing buzzwords and catch-phrases over real consumer relations. To put it pretty simply, I smell the shit from Palantir way before I ever saw it. The CEO is so far up his own ass he couldn't see the sun, even if he lifted his head to look, before getting burned by it. I don't know what kind of person has to become a multi-billionaire, son of a holocaust survivor, own purveyor of a brand new holocaust, and a fucking meditation guru bullshit spineless coward. I don’t know if the guy is amazing at yoga, or he just hasn't developed a single grain of integrity in that limp wet noodle of a body. It is almost a shame he is such a health nut, because the comparisons to Steve Jobs are just too overwhelming to try and subtly joke. And not in a good way. Steve Jobs was also an asshole, a monster and real big flaming piece of shit upon the future of the world. I could directly blame Steve Jobs and Bill Gates for Palantir's success, and for the lack of a competing operating system that would have been made by a more person and ethic friendly developer.
With that said, Palantir isn't special. Sure, their lack of a moral code, and their first-to-market product is going to make it hard for competition, but Microsoft has been trying to push this theme for a while. In fact, it has been the public push back on elements of this redesign that have been the main component holding it back. Apple already doesn't like other programs, so Apple specific programs have been a thing from birth. Furthermore, both companies have been trying to swallow every single byte of our data for decades, and with their cloud backup systems, they have finally found their in. While I doubt Microsoft or Apple have the brain power or design freedom to catch-up quickly enough, the suggestion that a bunch of nerds working together on an internet forum couldn't make something infinitely more beautiful and less precocious than Gotham, is a sorry mindset indeed. Furthermore, if there was a serious public demand for Gotham, someone funding something similar, getting it to market for cheap would tear Palantir apart and limit their market to the more nationalistic entities.
All on top of that, there is something to be said for lying with wolves; Palantir has skeletons even if they don't know it. There is no realm in which the CEO is not careful followed by a team of lawyers trying to avoid some catastrophic public issue, and with such deep connections to Peter Thiel, it is almost impossible that any movement or rage against Facebook does not come square onto Palantir's own shoulders.
Fundamentally, Palantir is an upstart-startup with a wordy vocab that screams beanie douchebag trying to out muscle Microsoft and Apple. I don't think bears could stomp Palantir into the ground, but giving it a market cap above its P/E ratio is just a slap in the face to every argument made in the past 50 years of trying to help the world.
And while this shit might have floated decades ago with Microsoft and Apple getting away with it, I cannot imagine a generation so torn and driven by the sins of their fathers will play nice with a company so clearly making evil moves. Fuck them.
The Float & Current Shareholders
Disclaimer
I am going to be real honest with you; congratulations for getting to the end. Thank you for your time, I hope it was worth it. If you have any suggestions, I would love to hear it. Please don’t make an investment decision on my information alone, always double check. I am not a financial analyst, I do not get paid to write any of this, and I do not, nor plan to, have an investment in PLTR or its stock price.
This means that I do not have options, shares or shares short sold. While I vehemently disagree with Palantir as a company and believe them to be evil, I equally hate short selling and speculative and manipulative options. Due to the charged nature of the write up, I will not be answering questions and I will not interact with comments. This is my stance, and I will take it silently.
Thank you.