Sources: Palantir's 2018 revenue grew ~40% YoY to ~$1B, as losses fell to ~$30M; Palantir wants to show two consecutive years of growth before expected 2020 IPO
Context & Ripple Effects
This report captures Palantir at the moment it began managing itself toward the public markets: sources told Bloomberg the company grew 2018 revenue ~40% YoY to about $1B while cutting losses to roughly $30M, and that it wanted two consecutive growth years on the board before an expected 2020 IPO. The framing matters because the eventual filing told a different story — the leaked S-1 showed 2019 revenue of $742M, up only ~25%, with a net loss of $580M described as about the same as 2018's.
That gap between sourced private-market figures and filed numbers is the throughline of this coverage thread: the growth story held (FY2020 revenue of $1.1B, up 47%), but the profitability story had to be rebuilt in public over multiple years before the company could claim sustained profits.
First-order effects
- Palantir's own IPO clock is now running against a self-imposed test — two consecutive years of growth — making 2019's growth rate, not just its absolute revenue, the number its bankers and existing holders watch.
Second-order effects
- When the S-1 surfaced with a $580M loss rather than the ~$30M sourced here, the divergence forced the company to re-anchor public expectations around filed GAAP figures instead of the private-market narrative.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, late-stage private companies will keep sequencing metric disclosure to fit IPO windows, and investors will increasingly discount pre-filing sourced numbers until they are confirmed in an S-1.
The trend: Late-stage private companies are increasingly choreographing their financial disclosures around IPO windows, with the gap between sourced figures and filed numbers becoming a recurring credibility test.