palantir-officePalo Alto, California-based Palantir Technologies, the secretive big data analytics startup backed in part by the CIA’s venture capital arm, is setting up shop in Seattle with plans to host an office launch party on March 11th.

Palantir’s arrival is part of a wave of Silicon Valley technology giants that are mining Seattle’s technical talent, joining companies such as Twitter, Apple, Alibaba, Dropbox and others. Earlier this month, Facebook said it planned to expand its offices in Seattle, taking space in Seattle’s South Lake Union neighborhood with room for as many as 2,000 employees.

GeekWire first learned of Palantir’s interest in Seattle last month, reporting on the new office in Seattle’s Pioneer Square neighborhood.

At the time, representatives at Palantir did not respond to inquiries from GeekWire. They also could not be reached today, but the invite to the launch party signals Palantir’s first confirmation of the new office.

“Please join us for a tech talk, food and drinks as we discuss our expansion to the Pacific Northwest,” the invite notes.

According to The New York Times, Palantir was expected to bring in close to $1 billion in revenue last year. Palantir has raised $900 million in funding, with the latest round valuing the company at $9 billion. The company was founded in 2004, and is led by Alexander Karp.

The company says that its Metropolis platform works across multiple sources of data to track and analyze insurance claims data, network traffic flow, financial trading patterns, cybersecurity and more. The company’s Gotham product is used by counter-terrorism analysts at offices in the United States Intelligence Community and United States Department of Defense.

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