tags:

• thesis/hype
• analyst/edwin-dorsey
• sector/AI
• sector/tech ...

Bear Cave.

Palantir Technologies (NYSE: PLTR — $31.2 billion) builds software for government agencies and large businesses “to effectively integrate their data, decisions, and operations at scale.” The company, co-founded by Peter Thiel and backed by the CIA, is something of a black box and is up 130% this year on intense retail enthusiasm over the company’s purported AI capabilities. The Bear Cave believes Palantir is an AI imposter engaging in spurious games to inflate its books and obfuscate its less sexy role as an overhyped data consultant.

The retail investor hype around Palantir is hard to miss. One Palantir investor launched PalantirBullets, a newsletter created “to provide investors with knowledge and tools to spot asymmetries between narrative and reality on Palantir.” Another investor promotes a Discord server where nearly 1,000 investors share Palantir-focused memes and stock charts. The Motley Fool recently published an article titled “Why Palantir's Latest AI Initiatives Make It a Screaming Buy” and Cathie Wood has been buying Palantir shares in three of her ARK Invest funds.

Palantir is picking up a lot of business from governments that are terminally hopeless at IT development, so I am not sure this is safe to short. I think that the political alignment of Thiel might compromise the ability of Palantir to get contracts with mainstream governments.