Why Did Alex Davis Double Down on Palantir Before Its IPO?

Alex Davis says Disruptive had been in Palantir for about 10 years when COVID arrived. While other people were sheltering in place, Palantir was planning to go public, which he took as a very Palantir way to think. A chance to bring in a couple of large investors, including a big insurance company, was the moment they doubled down. Holding a company for 10 years had not been the goal. At that moment, if he could write a check to anything, it was Palantir. He puts the company then at maybe $10 to $15 billion, and he does not want to be wrong on the figure. Looking back, he calls it a half-trillion-dollar company. They did not yet know the listing would be a direct listing. There was hardly a month or two or three in which they were not buying more.

Palantir had stayed closed off. The public had not spent time with Alex Karp. The way Karp built confidence inside the company, and among the people whose budgets Palantir was creating, is still the most unusual thing Davis has seen. A listing would put that same person on quarterly calls, blunt and straightforward. One fear was that great people would leave once the company was public. The bet was that Palantir was undervalued as a private company relative to where it would trade once Karp and that team won the public over. He thinks Karp has become one of the more iconic CEOs, and that he deserves it.