a lot of shops do this. The most obvious example of this practice are car financing companies such as Ford Motor Credit and its ilk. I am not aware of how abusive (i.e. terrible underwriting standards) Lucent was using for this technique.

The issue with the Palantir strategy is that the borrowers weren't actually borrowers, they sold often-times worthless equity to Palantir. And now Palantir cannot get its money back. Quite frankly, I don't know how Palantir investors were OK with the Palantir balance sheet getting loaded up with highly speculative investments. Growth at any cost, I guess.