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Chief financial officer David Glazer said investments in cryptocurrency are ‘definitely on the table’ as the company announced its latest earnings.
Palantir, the data analytics firm co-founded by Peter Thiel, is following Tesla by accepting bitcoin as payment.
The company provides data analysis tools to government agencies and large corporates. Customers will now be able to pay for Palantir services using bitcoin in the latest move by a major publicly listed firm to accept the cryptocurrency as payment.
Chief financial officer David Glazer said the company was considering holding bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies on its balance sheet.
“It’s definitely on the table from a treasury perspective as well as other investments as we look across our business and beyond,” Glazer said on an earnings call yesterday (11 May) announcing the company’s latest quarterly results.
Glazer’s comments come as more listed companies and Wall Street firms take an interest in bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.
Elon Musk’s Tesla recently began accepting bitcoin as payment for its cars. But, more notably, the company invested $1.5bn in bitcoin earlier this year, with its last earnings report showing the carmaker sold off $272m worth of the cryptocurrency shortly after.
Nasdaq-listed enterprise software firm MicroStrategy has invested in and held a great deal of bitcoin in the last several months too.
Palantir co-founder and tech investor Peter Thiel has been an advocate for bitcoin in the past. His venture capital firms have invested in several crypto-related companies and in bitcoin itself. This week he invested in a new crypto exchange being developed by Block.One.
But he has also courted some controversy lately with comments around China’s use of bitcoin.
Announcing its latest quarterly earnings, Palantir reported revenue of $341m for the quarter with $208m of that coming from government customers. In the past, analysts have raised concerns over the company relying too heavily on government contracts for revenue. Net losses for the quarter were up to $123m.
