Billionaire Peter Thiel sold $600 million worth of Palantir shares this week

As shares of data mining company Palantir continue to rise, Thiel is cashing out. He's not the only Palantir insider to do this.

Palantir co-founder and major investor Peter Thiel worth $9.8 billion a year Forbes' It is estimated that approximately 16 million Palantir shares were sold between Tuesday and Thursday this week, representing gross proceeds of $600 million, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing on Thursday. Thiel's recent transactions bring his total sales of Palantir shares in 2024 to just over $1 billion.

Thiel's sales began this week a day after Palantir entered the S&P 500 and came as the share price hovered around $37, up 150% from a year ago. The company now has a market capitalization of $82 billion and trades at 35 times sales, the S&P's highest multiple. Palantir helps companies collect, analyze and manage their data and is known for its long-standing relationship with the US military – government customers accounted for more than 50% of its $2.5 billion in revenue (for the year ending June 2024) . The company has had such a successful year, thanks in part to its ability to turn a profit with the AI ​​capabilities it has developed over decades, and in part thanks to the general hype around AI. Palantir's stock price is the highest since its all-time high closing price of $39 in January 2021 – which was about the last time Thiel sold Palantir shares and shortly after its IPO in late 2020. Like many other billionaires, Thiel did so Do not sell during the market downturn in 2022 or when the market recovers in 2023.

Thiel, who co-founded Palantir in 2003, still owns about 110 million shares of the company, or about 5%. Much of his stake is also thanks to investments in Palantir by venture capital firm Founders Fund, where Thiel is a partner. Founders Fund appears to have completely exited its investment in Palantir and distributed the shares to investors like Thiel.

All of Thiel's recent sales are part of a trading plan filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission in May that says Thiel could trade up to 28.6 million shares by the end of 2025 – meaning he could still sell more than 12 million shares by then. The plans are intended to provide an “affirmative defense” against insider trading because they are submitted in advance and trigger automatic sales under certain conditions, such as price targets. Therefore, it is possible that the increase in Palantir's stock price met one of the price targets in the trading plan, which led to the large selling. However, because trading plans are often submitted multiple times a year, insiders can still adjust their trades based on market conditions. There is only a 90-day “cooling off” period between plan submission and the first sale. Thiel's last plan, filed in December 2023, included terms for the sale of 20 million shares, which he sold in full by May 2024.

Similarly, Palantir co-founder and CEO Alex Karp has been dumping shares as part of his trading plan, which calls for a much higher number of his Palantir shares – 49 million, virtually his entire 2% direct holding (though he also largely has a plethora of stock options has). of which are not yet exercisable). Karp, whose net worth is estimated at $4.1 billion, sold $230 million worth of Palantir shares this month. His last major sales also occurred in 2021, when he sold $850 million worth of shares (all before taxes).

This article was originally published on forbes.com and all figures are in USD.