# Palantir IPO [[Palantir]]'s public-market debut on **September 30, 2020** — a direct listing on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker **PLTR**, and the moment its founder-control structure became a matter of public record. ## What happened Palantir went public via a **direct listing** rather than a traditional underwritten IPO — no underwriters set a price or raised new capital; existing shares simply began trading (the path Spotify and Slack had taken). The NYSE set a **reference price of $7.25 per share**, implying a fully-diluted valuation of roughly **$15.7B**. The stock opened around **$10** and closed its first day at **$9.50**, about 31% above the reference price. ## The founder-control structure The listing made explicit Palantir's **three-class share structure**, including the **Class F super-voting shares** held collectively by [[Alex Karp]], [[Peter Thiel]], and [[Stephen Cohen]]. Class F is engineered to give the three founders up to roughly **49.999% of total voting power regardless of how many economic shares they sell** — a structure governance critics flagged at the time and which still defines who controls the company. Detail lives in [[Palantir Leadership]]. ## Why it matters - It converted Palantir from a secretive private contractor into a public company with disclosure obligations — the 10-Ks, 10-Qs, proxies, and Form 4s that the [[Palantir Calendar]] and [[Palantir Watch Log]] now track. - The valuation at listing (~$15.7B) is the baseline against which Palantir's later run to a multi-hundred-billion-dollar market cap — driven by AI ([[Palantir AIP]]) and government contracts — is measured. - **September 2024 S&P 500 inclusion** later triggered mechanical index-fund buying ([[The Vanguard Group]], [[BlackRock]], [[State Street Corporation]]), reshaping the ownership base documented in [[Palantir Investors]]. ## See Also - [[Palantir]] — company page - [[Palantir Founding]] — the 2003 origin - [[Palantir Events]] — event index - [[Palantir Leadership]] — the Class F voting structure - [[Palantir Investors]] — post-listing ownership