Shadowy surveillance company started by a reactionary Bond villain suddenly started trading at a P/E over 500 shortly after Trump was elected -- probably nothing to see here

 

In case you missed it.  

 

 Palantir is pretty much exactly the company you would expect from the cartoonishly evil Peter Thiel: ethically and morally questionable and badly run (if you’re doing all the sleazy things your competitors shy away from and you still can barely turn a profit, you’re probably not a business genius). But of course, Thiel has always made his money the old-fashioned way: getting people to give it to him, and Palantir has been spectacularly successful at attracting investors, first through funding rounds then very recently through the stock market.

As the Economist puts it:

 

 Palantir generally gets grouped in with the AI boom, and while that's reasonable, the real story here is clearly about Trump.Thiel is one of the most influential Republican donors. The vice president owes every aspect of his professional and government career since graduating law school to either Thiel or to the rest of the PayPal mafia. 

Palantir stock had been basically flat for the years since its IPO. It was only when the Trump/Vance ticket started gaining momentum that the company's valuation began to climb, with a notable jump the first week in November. 

 

The market is clearly anticipating that the administration will pay back its friends by pumping hundreds of billions of dollars into their coffers, and Palantir appears to be first in line.

This is an extraordinary story of corruption and conflict of interest, even by the Hieronymus Bosch standards of 2025. It's true that there's a lot going on out there, but there is still no excuse for how little attention this has gotten.