Palantir built itself into a $20 billion success with a secretive and controversial business. Now it's prepping for life as a transparent public company.

• Data-crunching firm Palantir Technologies filed to go public Monday night. Valued at $20 billion, it would be the largest tech startup to debut in the market since Uber's public offering last year.
• The firm has a reputation for secrecy, and previously kept away from an IPO to keep details of its business under wraps. Details of its business that did surface — like its work with ICE and the Pentagon — have prompted backlash.
• Palantir's IPO filing also comes amid unprecedented political pressure on Silicon Valley companies — tech employees have increasingly pushed for progressive reforms while the Trump administration cracks down on perceived anti-conservative bias in tech.
• Going public will force Palantir to pull back the curtain on its business. And for the first time, the company will have to present an image that appeases the public and shareholders.

As Palantir prepares to go public, it will have to sacrifice one of its most valuable assets: secrecy.

The data-crunching firm is one of the oldest startups in Silicon Valley, co-founded by venture capitalist Peter Thiel in 2003. It's also one of the most valuable private tech companies — it has raised more than $3 billion in venture capital with a valuation of $20 billion. Palantir's announcement on Monday that it plans to go public capped more than five years of speculation that it was planning to list its shares.

But until now, Palantir has avoided revealing many details about its business — a decision that likely bolstered the company's success.

Palantir works primarily with government agencies including police, the Department of Defense, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement, building software to process and analyze their data. The company's tools have been used to facilitate ICE raids and military strikes — CEO Alex Karp said earlier this year, "Our product is used on occasion to kill people."

Karp himself has worried publicly that Palantir might not have been able to secure those contracts or build its products if it were a public company at the time, both because of public perception and investors' inability to understand Palantir's revenue model.

"The problem with being a public company is that it can be culturally corrosive on the inside," Karp told Axios in May. "These products were built over the course of years. And they were derided. Barely anyone wanted to invest in us. We almost went out of business a number of times."

A growing chorus of activist pushback

Because Palantir hasn't shied away from contracts with agencies like ICE and the Pentagon, it's become a target for immigration activists and human rights advocates.

After Palantir won a contract to build a coronavirus tracking platform for Health and Human Services, members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus opened a probe demanding answers about whether Palantir would share people's health data with ICE (Palantir says it doesn't share data between different clients).

The lawmakers' letter cited concerns raised by Mijente, a progressive activist group that has led a campaign called #NoTechForICE that lobbies universities and companies to cut ties with Palantir. Other tech activist groups that have long criticized public companies like Amazon for law enforcement partnerships have turned their attention on Palantir.

"Palantir has built its empire by helping governments' violate people's basic human rights. No matter how much they try to clean up their image for investors, their money will always be blood money," said Evan Greer, deputy director of Fight for the Future.

Palantir's public offering announcement also comes as tech workers are increasingly vocal about dissatisfaction with their company's mission and contracts. Earlier this year, Google abandoned a contract to develop AI for military drones, called "Project Maven," after employees protested. Palantir picked up the Pentagon contract after Google dropped it.

As a private company, Palantir itself has withstood similar employee uproar without caving — more than 200 employees sent a letter to Karp in 2018 decrying the company's contract with ICE, but Palantir maintained the contract.

Rebranding under public scrutiny

Palantir's IPO filing is confidential, and the company has yet to formally pitch its business to potential shareholders and the general public. But Palantir has made some early indications of what its brand might look like as a public company.

The company, usually cagey about the details of government contracts, has touted its work with public health agencies on COVID-19 response — a banner at the top of its site invites people to "learn what we're doing to help."

Palantir has also taken steps to build a more robust public image as it prepares for an IPO. The company hired three new board members in June including Alexandra Wolfe Schiff, a former Wall Street Journal reporter and its first female board member (California law requires that public companies have at least one woman on their board).

Karp himself has also been increasingly open to public statements, sitting down for an Axios interview in May that probed the company's ethical obligations.

"I've had my favorite employees yell at me ... I've had some of my favorite employees leave," Karp said at the time. "The most valid criticism that they have is, essentially, that if you are involved in anything, that one instance of injustice, does it tarnish all instances of justice?"