Palantir CEO Alex Karp has escalated his criticism of frontier artificial intelligence labs, telling CNBC that enterprises should not be forced to surrender intellectual property work with model markers. “We have people trying to drug addict us to a future they believe they control,” Karp said, referring to companies like OpenAI and Anthropic. Karp believes that their vision of future leaves businesses unprofitable, jobless and vulnerable to adversaries. He also emphasised that enterprises must retain control of their own models and data, working with companies like Palantir and offer an application layer on top of existing infrastructure. He dismissed assurances from AI giants Anthropic and OpenAI that customer data is secure and not used for trading, saying enterprises see little value in ‘tokenmaxxing’ without control over their computer and data stack.
Palantir delivered one of its strongest quarters yet
Palantir delivered one of its strongest quarters yet, with revenue surging 93% year-over-year to $1.94 billion, well above analyst expectations of $1.801 billion. Net income came in at $1.1 billion, or 41 cents per share, topping Wall Street’s estimate of 35 cents. Investors responded positively, sending shares up more than 14% in after-hours trading. According to a report by Fortune, on the earnings call, Palantir CEO Alex Karp appeared jubilant, pounding his pen on the table and taking aim at unnamed Silicon Valley AI rivals who he said ‘eat vegetables’ and don’t support the US military. “Obviously, we are loving these results and loving what they mean for our customers and, broadly speaking, the West,” Karp said.
Palantir CEO Alex Karp has sharply criticised the leading AI companies
This is not the first time that Alex Karp has criticised OpenAI and Anthropic. Last month, Karp told CNBC in an interview that the enterprise customers are dissatisfied with how frontier labs like OpenAI and Anthropic operate. “It’s not just the man and woman on the street that is unhappy with the frontier labs, it’s in private, every single enterprise we deal with,” Karp said. Karp argued that many businesses believe frontier labs don’t understand their needs and are focused instead on ‘tokenmaxxing’ which is burning AI tokens to signal productivity rather than delivering practical value. The increasing costs associated with large language models are fueling concerns on Wall Street, as companies funnel more AI into workloads while efficiency gains remain uncertain.
Alex Karp believes that real value lies in implementation
Acknowledging the importance of large language models, Karp stressed that the real value lies in implementation. “It is not that large language models aren’t crucial for the world. It’s just the implementation is where the value is, certainly in the next seven years,” he said. He added that many of Anthropic’s public projects are already running on Palantir’s infrastructure.The comments made by Karp come as OpenAI and Anthropic move towards public listings. OpenAI, led by Sam Altman, filed confidentially for an IPO earlier this week, just days after Anthropic did the same. Despite his disagreements with Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, Karp described him as “a very, very important person” guiding the leading frontier model company.
Open-weight models and global competition
In late July, Palantir joined Microsoft, Nvidia, and others in signing an open letter defending open-weight AI models as vital for national security. Karp argued that distillation — used by Chinese firms to copy U.S. models — is no different from how frontier labs built their own systems by absorbing enterprise IP. He framed the debate as part of a global battle over AI sovereignty.
