New York (AFP)

Top-secret data analysis firm Palantir, accused of mass surveillance and criticized for its close ties to law enforcement, entered the New York Stock Exchange on Wednesday at a price valuing it at $ 21.7 billion. dollars.

Under the symbol PLTR, the stock began trading around 5:40 p.m. GMT at $ 10, well above the indicative price of $ 7.25 given Tuesday night by the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE).

It continued to climb, climbing to $ 11.42 around 6.30 p.m. GMT.

Founded in 2003 with CIA money, Palantir began by creating software for the anti-terrorist operations of US intelligence services.

For example, the company would have helped the US military locate Osama bin Laden.

It then extended its services to companies and now collaborates with both the aircraft manufacturer Airbus, the oil company BP and the bank Credit Suisse.

She served a total of 125 clients in the first half of the year.

Palantir, which takes its name from a legendary stone in the fantastic epic "The Lord of the Rings", has chosen to go public via a direct listing: it does not recover any new money, but the shareholders already present at its capital - founders, employees and historical investors - can sell their stakes in the market.

Pandemic obliges, the arrival of the group on the floor of the NYSE, in the south of Manhattan, was not marked by a great celebration but its banner was deployed on the facade of the building and its name will be put forward at the closing of the session.

It is the third major company to choose direct listing on Wall Street, after Slack in 2019 and Spotify in 2018.

Palantir has so far been very discreet about its activities, with the company not revealing how it processes data or its algorithms.

This voluntary discretion attracts criticism.

Its platform is used in particular in the controversial practice of "predictive management of public order", which is supposed to help authorities make deployment decisions, detect medical insurance fraud or fight the coronavirus pandemic. .

Palantir also plays a major role in the development of the use of algorithms in the area of ​​public security, which some accuse of amplifying discrimination.

- No complex -

Seventeen years after its creation, the company is not yet making any money: it lost 580 million last year for a turnover of 743 million.

But the future looks bright as both public and private organizations will increasingly need tools to manage and analyze their data, says Palantir.

The group forecasts a growth in its turnover of 41% to 43% for this year.

"We have reached a threshold where our company has become very important and we believe that going public will help us, with our clients, and to grow", commented its managing director and co-founder Alex Karp in an interview on CNBC.

Its largest shareholder is Peter Thiel, a controversial figure in the tech industry who was an early investor in Facebook and supported Donald Trump in 2016.

Some critics say Palantir's technology - which analyzes data as diverse as financial records, social media posts or web browsing - enables unprecedented mass surveillance.

The association for the protection of human rights Amnesty International recently published a report denouncing the role of the company in tracking down illegal migrants in the United States.

The company publicly has no complex working with law enforcement, but it regularly defends itself by pointing out that it does not collect or own data but operates on its clients' existing databases.

Its governance is also singled out.

The way in which the voting rights were distributed, for example, is quite "confusing", notes Richard Windsor, an analyst specializing in new technologies, author of the Radio Free Mobile blog on Wednesday.

It "very largely favors its founders", he believes, to the detriment of investors "who take the risk of paying the economic price for bad decisions on which they have nothing to say".

© 2020 AFP