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Palantir CEO Alex Karp sold 585,000 PLTR shares for about $96 million on Thursday, right after he had attacked traders who loaded up on put options against Palantir, calling their moves “outrageous behavior” and “market manipulation.”
Alex was dismissing concerns about his company’s insane valuation and pushed back at critics who doubted Palantir’s long-term position as an AI and data powerhouse.
Alex insists that Palantir is “the most important software company in America and therefore in the world.”
That claim came as he confronted renewed criticism over Palantir’s role in government systems capable of linking tax files, biometric information, and personal records.
Palantir software powers deportations, drones, and NHS
Questions over whether Alex is the “scariest CEO in the world” resurfaced after his media appearances. Some point to Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos and Peter Thiel as competition, but trust me, Alex brings his own entirely different eccentric style to the party.
Viewers saw him speak at rapid speed, shake both fists on CNBC’s Squawk Box and demand to know why short sellers were targeting Palantir when its stock had climbed almost 600% in a year. “It’s super triggering,” he said. “Why do they have to go after us?”
Palantir’s influence reaches across the US government. Its AI tools help ICE carry out deportations, support the Pentagon’s drone program and guide police departments in their crime-prediction work.
Outside the US, its software supports the Israel Defense Forces in Gaza, assists Ukrainian forces in their defense against Russia and is used by police and corporations in Europe and beyond.
In the UK, Labour’s military and NHS modernization plans rely heavily on Palantir systems. When Keir Starmer visited Washington in February, his first stop after the White House was Palantir’s office, where Alex showed him military technology.
A new biography titled The Philosopher in the Valley, written by journalist Michael Steinberger, outlines Alex’s personality in detail.
Steinberger writes that “fear is something that really drives him” and describes Palantir as “the embodiment, in a lot of ways, of Karp.” He says Alex built the company around his personal view of the world and his own need for security.
Steinberger found Alex contradictory, intense, and shaped by a past that still affects him today.
Anyway, Alex earned $6.8 billion in 2024 and owns roughly 20 homes, many designed like sparse ski huts. He calls Palantir “an artists’ colony” and compares himself to Larry David, joking once that his style of humor “might be called Karp Your Enthusiasm.”
Alex’s weird political evolution
Alex met Peter Thiel in law school at Stanford, where the two connected despite opposing views. Thiel later co-founded PayPal with Elon Musk, while Alex went to Frankfurt to pursue a PhD in social theory. As a Jew, Steinberger writes, Alex wanted to understand “how Germany… descended into barbarism.”
When he reconnected with Thiel in 2004 and joined Palantir, he couldn’t code but understood ontology, how information is organized. He persuaded engineers and researchers to join him and pushed the company toward work that other tech firms avoided.
Palantir’s mission centered on “defending the west” from the beginning. While tech giants avoided military contracts, Palantir embraced them. Its tools supported the US military in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the company sued the Army in 2016 over blocked contracts.
Palantir was connected to the Cambridge Analytica scandal in 2018, and during the pandemic, its software tracked virus spread and vaccine allocation, while today it works with the CIA, FBI, DHS, NSA, ICE and other federal agencies.
Steinberger argues that people misunderstand what Palantir actually does, arguing that Alex does not collect or store people’s data but builds software that lets others use their own data.
Politically, Alex is hard to pin down. He opposed Donald Trump in 2016, voted for Hillary Clinton and backed Kamala Harris in 2024. But once Trump returned to the White House, Alex adjusted.
He wrote a $1 million inauguration check, and Palantir gave $5 million to Trump’s military parade. In an interview with Axios, he called himself “an independent who admires what Trump has done on many things.”
Steinberger said Alex believes that “the price of doing business with the government is making nice with Trump.” Critics say this contradicts Alex’s past warnings about fascism, especially since Palantir’s tools aid ICE in street arrests that sometimes include innocent people.
Steinberger said Alex rejects the idea that Trump is fascist and argues that the US still has a working court system and free press.
Steinberger added that Alex claims Palantir prevented “innumerable terror attacks” in Europe. On immigration, Alex argues that “if the left doesn’t take this concern seriously, voters are going to turn to people who do, and the left isn’t going to like the outcome. That’s how you got the first Trump presidency, and arguably it’s one of the reasons you got the second one.”
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