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"The company, based in Palo Alto, California, is essentially a hybrid software and consulting firm, placing what it calls “forward deployed engineers” on-site at client offices."

This says everything about Palantir, and depending on your perspective, their valuation is (not) justified.

It's justified if you think of the equation Palantir = McKinsey + IBM. On the other hand, no consulting firm should have 20x revenue multiple.

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I've often heard the Palantir narrative where they talk about a core platform or product that they build independent of the consulting work. That might explain the optimistic 20x revenue multiple. However, I don't think that platform has really come to fruition and they're still relying primarily on consulting to fuel themselves. Someone else here mentioned that they hadn't fully productized their solution, which prevents them from closing large clients outside of government contracts.

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