AI industry is ‘effing insane’ – Palantir CEO
Alex Karp, whose company supplies artificial intelligence tech to the US government, says authorities should not trust the industry
Published 3 Jul, 2026 14:59 | Updated 3 Jul, 2026 16:00
Palantir CEO Alex Karp speaks at 2025 New York Times Dealbook Summit in New York City, December 3, 2025
Alex Karp speaks at 2025 New York Times Dealbook Summit in New York City, December 3, 2025 © Getty Images; Michael M. Santiago
Palantir CEO Alex Karp has unleashed a lengthy tirade against the AI industry, arguing that Western governments and militaries shouldn’t trust companies like OpenAI and Anthropic with sensitive data.
Karp appeared on CNBC on Wednesday to discuss Palantir’s recent infrastructure partnership with Nvidia – under which the former will sell its operating systems, powered by the latter’s hardware and AI models, to customers as an all-in-one data analytics package. However, the interview soon spiraled into a 20-minute rant from the Palantir CEO about the state of the AI industry.
Most businesses and governments who work with OpenAI and Anthropic purchase tokens from these companies, which grant access to their Large Language Models (LLMs) on a pay-as-you-go basis. While this arrangement generates vast income for the AI companies, their clients end up ripped off, Karp argued, as they hand over their money and data while gaining no control over the weights of the models – essentially the tweaks that determine the choices the models make.
“Are we really going to outsource the battlefield of this country to the consensus view in Silicon Valley?” he asked. “That is effing insane.”