Palantir Technologies Inc., the controversial big data company co-founded by Peter Thiel, has raised $500 million amid reports that it’s readying to file for an initial public offering.

The entirety of the funding was provided by Tokyo-based insurer Sompo Holdings Inc. As part of their collaboration, Sompo and Palantir will introduce a data platform based on Palantir technology with an initial focus on the Japanese healthcare sector. The insurer also said in the Thursday funding announcement that it eventually plans to extend the partnership to other markets.

With this latest $500 million investment, Palantir’s total raised is at least $2.5 billion, according to Crunchbase. The company has reportedly been trading at a valuation of $14 billion to $15 billion in private markets lately.

Palantir makes data management and analytics software that helps organizations process data from a large number of different sources. The data platform Sompo plans to introduce in Japan is based on Palantir’s product for the private sector, which is called Foundry. 

The company also sells a product called Gotham for the public sector that’s used by the U.S. intelligence community, law enforcement agencies and other government bodies. Palantir has drawn controversy for some of its public sector projects, notably its work with the  National Security Agency and Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Chief Executive Alex Karp revealed in a May interview that Gotham is now “powering most intel services in the world.”

In the same interview, Karp divulged that the company could go public within a year. A more recent report from Bloomberg cited sources as saying that Palantir may file IPO paperwork within weeks.

The $500 million investment from Sompo gives the company an extended financial runway it could use to make its balance sheet more attractive for investors. Additionally, the financing might give Palantir more flexibility to wait for a window when IPO conditions are most favorable. All that means the investment may have affected the timing of the listing. 

If it happens to take place this year, Palantir’s IPO could be one of the biggest for a tech company in 2020. But it may face some competition for the top spot. 

Another big data firm, cloud-based data platform provider Snowflake Inc., is said to have confidently filed for an IPO earlier this month after receiving a $12.4 billion valuation in its most recent funding round. The Financial Times reported that the listing could give Snowflake a market capitalization of as much as $20 billion. ZoomInfo Technologies Inc., which provides sales data for business-to-business companies, earlier raised about $934 million in the biggest tech IPO of 2020. 

Photo: Cory Doctorow/Flickr