Gold’s Value Has Doubled Since Palantir Sold $50 Million Worth

The price of gold has reached record-shattering new heights this week.

The precious metal’s value has risen 28% this year, climbing as high as $3,506 per ounce on Tuesday. That’s nearly double what it was worth in August 2021 when data-analytics firm Palantir Technologies first purchased a whopping $50.7 million worth of 100-ounce gold bars.

Palantir sold all that gold in 2023 for a profit of less than half a million dollars — measly in comparison to the major financial boost such a sale would be today.

At the time of its initial gold purchase in 2021, Palantir did not provide much rationale for its unusual investment strategy, but investing in the precious metal is generally seen as a safe-haven hedge against inflation. In addition to its newly acquired gold stockpile, Palantir said it would also be accepting gold as payment, just months after adding bitcoin to its payment options.

Palantir’s chief operating officer Shyam Sankar told Bloomberg at the time that accepting less traditional currencies “reflects more of a worldview.”

“You have to be prepared for a future with more black swan events,” he said.

Two years later, Palantir was ready to dump its gold investment, announcing in a quarterly filing released May 2023 that it had sold all of its gold bars for $51.1 million — or about $400,000 more than its initial purchase.

The value of gold has risen so much since 2023 that had Palantir waited and sold its stockpile at Tuesday’s peak of $3,506 per ounce, it would have made over $99 million — nearly double its initial investment.

Missed opportunity with gold investments aside, Palantir is doing very well financially. It reported a 29% year-over-year revenue growth for 2024, its stock is up over 37% so far this year and more than 365% over the past 12 months. It also just signed a $30 million contract with Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Palantir cofounder and CEO Alex Karp recently told Fortune that one of the reasons behind his company’s meteoric rise is because he stuck to his guns.

“When all the idiots hate you and you ignore them, and you build the single set of software products you would need to actually transform your company or your government, you get breakout growth,” Karp told the outlet. “That’s what’s happening.”

Palantir did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.