• In his new book, Palantir CEO Alex Karp will explore how "Silicon Valley has lost its way."
• Big Tech needs to realign with the US government to address pressing issues like AI, he says.
• Karp says the progressive left has impeded this work in recent years.

Palantir CEO Alex Karp said Silicon Valley has lost its way under the spell of the progressive left — and has spent its time on inconsequential things like social media instead of collaborating with the US government on game-changing advancements.

It's time for that to change, Karp will argue in his coming book, "The Technological Republic." He sat down in an interview this week to unpack his thoughts on the incoming Trump administration — and what needs to change in Big Tech.

Speaking with investor Stanley Druckenmiller to promote the book, Karp recounted how, in 2018, Google employees protested the tech giant's involvement with Project Maven, which was a collaboration with the Department of Defense.

Amid outcry, Google opted not to renew its contract. (Palantir is among the companies now working on the project.)

It's become unpopular in some quarters of the tech world for companies to support the US government in recent years, Karp contended. But a shift may be afoot, he said.

"The Valley has realized you just cannot placate the anti-intellectual left" — a trend that's accelerated in the wake of October 7, he said. "They'll destroy your business."

Karp's book will argue that the tech sector must work with the government to address pressing issues — namely, prevailing in the AI arms race.

At the same time, Karp expressed optimism about "the level of talent that is coming in to fix our government," nodding to the incoming Trump administration.

He said American society is at a crisis point, with many feeling certain "instruments of measurement" — schools, borders, and intergovernmental government organizations like the United Nations — "have been corroded." On the other side of the aisle, Karp said, people are "worn out."

Palantir did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.

In the interview, Karp joked that Palantir was "a rare cult with no sex and very little drugs — and we're not poisoning anyone."

• Palantir CEO Alex Karp joked the software giant was like a "cult" — minus the sex and drugs.
• He says Palantirians tend to be "snobby" about their intellect and aren't easily persuaded by orders.
• "My success has been getting Palantirians to believe that my ideas are theirs," Karp says.

Palantir CEO Alex Karp acknowledged that working at the company can feel a bit like a "cult. Employees share a like-minded drive that can occasionally raise eyebrows from those outside, he said.

"It's a rare cult with no sex and very little drugs — and we're not poisoning anyone," he joked during an interview with investor Stanley Druckenmiller. Karp spoke about his coming book, "The Technological Republic."

Cofounder Peter Thiel is an "artist" when it comes to appointing leaders, Karp said, and attracting top engineering talent has always been the company's strong suit.

The founding team started by calling their smartest friends, and the talent pool quickly compounded. Early employees tended to be "very high-mission, very high rigor, very low pay, very high-equity — we lived together," Karp said. "It just was a really cool vibe, and there was nothing like it."

The company was "hated" by the outside venture capital world, Karp said — but it was a welcome dynamic that reminded him of his childhood. Karp's parents were unusual, but it was a happy home. (He's previously described them as hippies who took him to protests.) And if outsiders considered his parents "freaks," Karp said, that just made them "even happier."

Today, Palantirians are "snobby" when it comes to intellect — though not about where they went to school, Karp said. They're also "not convinced by orders." The culture is one of low authority that prizes self-starters.

"My success has been getting Palantirians to believe that my ideas are theirs," Karp said, adding that lateral hiring can be difficult at the company, where respect is hard-earned.

It's also a relatively small team of 3,600 employees, and Karp doesn't harbor ambitions of massively scaling the head count — thanks in no small part to AI, which has meant "you can power whole industries with 100 people," he said.

Palantir did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.

Palantir has had an explosive year, with its stock up around 350% so far this year. In a recent earnings call, Karp attributed the company's growth to an AI revolution and said its success had silenced longtime critics.

• Alex Karp pursued a Ph.D. and invested on behalf of wealthy European clients before founding Palantir.
• The secretive and controversial big-data company went public in 2020 and recently posted strong quarterly earnings.
• Karp is an outspoken CEO who hasn't held back in defending the company against critics.

Alex Karp, longtime CEO of data mining company Palantir, has been taking a victory lap on the heels of the company's latest blowout earnings and rising stock price.

Palantir, which creates software to manage, analyze, and secure data, saw its stock hit an all-time high earlier this month.

Karp, who has been CEO since 2004, is known as an unusual leader, even by Silicon Valley standards. He pursued a Ph.D. in philosophy before joining the startup and sometimes works from a barn.

He and the company have courted controversy over the years, and he's known to be outspoken in defending the company's work with government agencies and the military, saying at a recent talk that he's proud "the death and pain that is brought to our enemies is mostly, not exclusively, brought by Palantir."

Here's how the 57-year-old Karp got his start, took the helm of the secretive startup, and built it into a multi-billion-dollar company.

Alex Karp grew up in Philadelphia.

His parents were a pediatrician and an artist who Karp has described as hippies, saying they often took him to labor rights demonstrations and anti-Reagan protests when he was young. A 2018 Wall Street Journal profile called Karp a "self-described socialist."

Karp got his bachelor's degree at Haverford College in Pennsylvania before attending law school at Stanford University.

At Stanford, he was classmates with PayPal cofounder and venture capitalist Peter Thiel.

After law school, Karp began working on a Ph.D. in philosophy at Goethe University in Frankfurt, Germany, studying under famed philosopher Jurgen Habermas.

Karp is fluent in German and speaks French as well.

Around the same time, an inheritance from his grandfather sparked an interest in investing.

According to Forbes, he quickly became successful at it and created a London-based firm called Caedmon Group, named after his middle name, investing on behalf of high-net-worth clients.

By 2003, Thiel, Karp's law school classmate, had already founded and sold PayPal to eBay for $1.5 billion.

He decided to launch Palantir, along with Stanford computer science graduates Joe Lonsdale and Stephen Cohen, plus Nathan Gettings, a PayPal engineer. By 2004, Karp joined as CEO.

Karp is known for being an eccentric leader.

He often wears brightly colored athletic wear, keeps Tai Chi swords in his offices, and was known to practice martial arts on his Palantir cofounders in the office hallways.

Karp is a fan of fitness and wellness who practices Qigong meditation and keeps vitamins and extra swim goggles stocked in his office.

He told Forbes that the only time he isn't thinking about Palantir is "when I'm swimming, practicing Qigong or during sexual activity."

Despite a net worth of around $7.1 billion by Forbes' estimates, Karp doesn't appear to spend lavishly.

Karp has been known to sometimes work out of a barn in New Hampshire. He has never been married and told Forbes that the idea of starting a family gives him "hives."

Palantir is also pretty secretive. Because of the company's contracts, many employees have government security clearances and receive five-figure bonuses for choosing to live close to the office, according to the Journal.

Palantir has courted numerous controversies over the years.

The company has been criticized for licensing its technology to law enforcement, which has used it for practices like predictive policing and tracking cars' routes using just their license plates.

Palantir has also come under fire for its contracts with US Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

The company provides software that helps the agency gather, store, and search through data on undocumented immigrants. After employees pressed Karp on ending the company's contracts with ICE, he denied that its technology was being used to separate migrant families.

Karp has responded boastfully to criticism of the company's contracts with the military.

"The death and pain that is brought to our enemies is mostly, not exclusively, brought by Palantir," he said at a talk in December 2024.

"You may not agree with that and, bless you, don't work here," Karp said in 2023 of tech workers who have qualms about the company's data mining.

The company went public in 2020.

It went public via a direct listing on the New York Stock Exchange in September 2020 at an estimated $20 billion valuation.

Following Palantir's Q3 2024 earnings report, Karp boasted about the company's performance and defended himself from critics.

"This is a US-driven AI revolution that has taken full hold," he said in an earnings release. "The world will be divided between AI haves and have-nots. At Palantir, we plan to power the winners."

During the subsequent earnings call, he said, "Given how strong our results are, I almost feel like we should just go home."

Responding to criticisms of his leadership, he said, "Instead of going into every meeting saying, 'Oh, yes, Palantir is great, but their fearless leader is batshit crazy, and he might go off to his commune in New Hampshire,' whatever thing we're saying, it's now like, yes, the products are best, and we have great products."

Palantir's stock has since hit an all-time high in December.

Now, Karp has a forthcoming book.

Slated for release on February 18, 2025, his book "The Technological Republic" argues that Silicon Valley has become complacent and lost its ambition.

He cowrote the book with Nicholas Zamiska, Palantir's head of corporate affairs and legal counsel to the office of the CEO.