Peter Thiel is best known as one of the co-founders of PayPal and an early investor in Meta Platforms, then known as Facebook. After leaving PayPal, he co-founded another company, Palantir Technologies (NYSE: PLTR), where he serves as chairman.
Thiel sold over $1 billion worth of Palantir stock over the last few days of September and the first day of October, according to Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filings. Those sales came after the company officially joined the S&P 500 on Sept. 23. Thiel also shed about $400 million worth of Palantir stock earlier this year.
Thiel’s sales were executed automatically as part of the 10b5-1 plan adopted in May. That plan automatically sells Thiel’s shares upon reaching certain criteria, effectively reducing the influence of insider information on the selling decision. Thiel has now exhausted the authorization through Dec. 31 of next year.
Thiel remains one of the largest shareholders in Palantir, which has a market cap around $83 billion as of this writing. He also holds super-voting shares along with his co-founders, ensuring the three maintain control over the company. But it may be time for investors to consider whether they should sell Palantir stock as well.
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A big name in big data
Palantir got its start by offering big data analytics to government agencies. The CIA’s venture capital arm was the only early outside investor (besides Thiel’s own venture capital firm). Management eventually adapted its software for large enterprises, but largely remained focused on high-value large organizations until recently.
Commercial customers are growing quickly. Co-founder and CEO Alex Karp points out that commercial customers grew from 14 to 295 over the past four years in his most recent letter to shareholders. That growth is aided by the launch of Palantir’s Artificial Intelligence Platform (AIP). AIP makes it easier for customers to explore and use their data with natural language and automate workflows. It can also help develop applications using enterprise data sets.
As it scales, Palantir is…
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