Business Insider

Palantir Is Offering Workers a Generous Stock Buyback—in Exchange for Their Silence

Palantir CEO Alex Karp. 

Photo by Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images

This post originally appeared on Business Insider.

Palantir, the secretive $20 billion data-mining startup co-founded by Peter Thiel, is buying $225 million of stock back from employees.

The catch, reports BuzzFeed’s William Alden, is that employees and “certain” ex-employees are eligible for the buyback offer only if they agree to a variety of conditions, including:

  1. The renewal of their nondisclosure agreements.
  2. An agreement not to poach Palantir employees for 12 months.
  3. A promise not to sue the company or company executives.
  4. An agreement not to talk to the press—and a promise to forward any emails from reporters to Palantir within three days.

If Palantir employees agree to these terms, then they’re eligible to sell 12.5 percent of their equity, or $500,000 worth, of shares back to the company, whichever is lower. At $7.41 a share, Palantir is offering a higher price than most private brokers, BuzzFeed reports.

It’s a big payout for employees of Palantir, which is backed by the CIA’s venture-capital arm and which has historically capped salaries at lower than competitive rates and made up the gap with stock options.

For the business itself, these rules are a way to ensure its veil of secrecy. That’s especially important now, following a previous report by BuzzFeed about high employee turnover and lost customer deals at Palantir that have been an embarrassment for a company that tries to keep a low profile.

Palantir did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

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