Palantir, the Peter Thiel-backed big data analytics startup company, surges in Wall Street debut at nearly $21 billion

Last month, we wrote about Palantir Technologies after Peter Thiel-backed big data analytics startup announced in an SEC filing Tuesday that it has filed to go public through a direct listing. The day is finally here. Today, Palantir made its Wall Street debut Wednesday. Its shares opened at $10 on the New York Stock Exchange.

Palantir’s stock closed at $9.50, 31% above the reference price of $7.25 a share. The closing price is higher than the $7.31 and $9.17 average prices where the stock changed hands in private trades in August and September, respectively. Earlier in the session, the stock traded as high as $11.41 before settling at $9.50, giving the big-data analytics company an initial valuation of about $22 billion.

Founded 17 years ago by a handful of PayPal alumni and Stanford computer scientists including Peter Thiel, CEO Alex Karp, Joe Lonsdale, Nathan Gettings, and Stephen Cohen. Palantir provides software tools to help companies, nonprofits, and government agencies analyze data sets. (The name is a reference to magical stones in J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings books.)

Palantir software lets its customers integrate and analyze all of their data so they can answer questions that they couldn’t before. From delivering disaster relief to building safer automobiles, the company is honored to help make its partners better at their most important work. The company has been rumored to be considering an IPO this year, with the most recent valuation of $20 billion.

Palantir is known for three projects in particular: Palantir Gotham, Palantir Metropolis, and Palantir Foundry. Palantir Gotham is used by counter-terrorism analysts at offices in the United States Intelligence Community (USIC) and the United States Department of Defense, fraud investigators at the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board, and cyber analysts at Information Warfare Monitor, while Palantir Metropolis is used by hedge funds, banks, and financial services firms.

Since its inception in 2013, Palantir Technologies has raised more than $2B in funding over 22 rounds, according to public funding data. The company’s name is derived from The Lord of the Rings: a palantír is an artifact used to communicate with or see faraway parts of the world.