I know of no employees who took the mostly-cash offer, but that may be a selection bias on my part; I've never worked for Palantir, and am just friends/hang out with people who particularly care about their job (independent of where they work), don't have children or other major cash obligations, and are libertarian tax-minimizers. Those people are highly likely to shoot for highest EV (vs. low risk) and pushing as much income to capital gains as possible.