Palantir Is Raising $197M In Growth Capital, SEC Filing Shows

Palantir, the big data company that has counted the NSA, the FBI and the CIA among its clientele, is raising up to $196.5 million in growth capital, according to an SEC filing.

The company declined to say who the new funding was from, according to Lisa Gordon, who handles media and government relations for the company. Another source close to the company says the round is also not finalized yet. Morgan Stanley is managing the deal, according to the filing.

Forbes reported last month that a round could value the company at between $5 and 8 billion.

Founded back in 2004, the company was the brainchild of Paypal co-founder Peter Thiel, who believed that the payments company’s anti-fraud technologies could be used to fight terrorism.

Current CEO Alex Karp, Joe Lonsdale (who went on to found Asia and Silicon Valley-focused investment firm Formation 8), Stephen Cohen and chief technology officer Nathan Gettings put together an initial product.

It’s now become an analysis platform that government agencies use to manage the war against terrorism and drug trafficking. Palantir’s platform pulls disparate reams of data and puts them together in a way that makes otherwise hard-to-detect patterns and connections much more visible to users.

It’s since grown into a business that Karp says may do $1 billion in contracts next year. It is not yet profitable, however.

The company’s earlier investors include Founders Fund, Yelp’s Jeremy Stoppelman and Ben Ling among others.