Palantir CEO Alex Karp will appear on CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street” on June 5, 2025.
CNBC
Palantir CEO Alex Karp took on a familiar target during Monday’s earnings call: his critics.
“Turn on your traditional TV and see how unhappy the people who didn’t invest in us are,” Karp said after the data analytics company reported better-than-expected third-quarter results. “Have fun, eat your popcorn, they’re crying. We’re making this company better every day, and we’re doing it for this country, for our allies.”
Palantir stock has risen 25 times over the past three years, increasing its market capitalization to more than $490 billion and giving it a forward price-earnings ratio of nearly 280. Despite higher profits and a brighter outlook, the stock fell in after-hours trading.
Karp, who co-founded the company in 2003, said Palantir is “going to dig very deep into what’s right with us” because it is “very good for America.”
The eccentric and outspoken CEO has long earned a reputation for colorful and often politically charged comments in interviews, letters to shareholders and earnings calls. His essay-like quarterly letters have quoted quotes from famous philosophers, the New Testament, and President Richard Nixon.
In Monday’s letter, Karp cited 20th century Irish poet William Butler Yeats and advocated a shared “national experience.” He wrote that rejecting “a sense of a shared and defined common culture” has serious drawbacks.
It is “the pursuit of something greater and the rejection of empty, neutralized, empty pluralism that will help ensure our continued strength and survival,” he wrote.
During the conference call, Karp moved from a discussion of artificial intelligence deployments to fentanyl overdoses in the United States, a topic he said was “somewhat political.”
“I want people to remember that if fentanyl was killing 60,000 Yale graduates instead of 60,000 working-class people, we would be dropping a nuclear bomb on whoever shipped it from South America,” he said.
Mr. Karp also commented on the company’s dealings with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Israeli military. Earlier this year, Palantir won a $30 million contract to build ImmigrationOS for ICE, which provides data on immigrant identification and deportation.
In 2023, Karp had a message for those in the technology industry concerned about their companies’ dealings with intelligence agencies and the military.
“You may not agree with that, and the good news is you don’t want to work here,” Karp said at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
Palantir, which derives more than half of its U.S. revenue from the government, also provided tools to Israel after the deadly Oct. 7 attack by the militant group Hamas. In recent years, both Karp and the company have taken fiercely pro-Israel stances.
After the Oct. 7 attack, Palantir took out a full-page ad in the New York Times saying it “stands with Israel” and held its first board meeting in Tel Aviv, Israel, several months later. Karp said the company has lost employees because of his strong stance on Israel and expects more to leave.
“We have been on the front lines against all adversaries, including China, and we have participated in ICE and supported Israel,” he said at an earnings conference. “I don’t know why this is controversial, but a lot of people find it controversial.”
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