In a recent interview, Alex Karp claimed that his company, Palantir, is “the most important software company in America and therefore in the world.” He might be right. To many, Palantir is also the world’s scariest company, especially given its role in the Trump administration’s authoritarian agenda. The ultimate goal of Palantir’s technology appears to be an all-powerful government system that combines citizens’ tax records, biometric data, and other personal information—creating the ultimate tool for state surveillance. It’s no surprise that Palantir has been compared to George Orwell’s Big Brother or Skynet from the Terminator films.
Does this make Karp the world’s scariest CEO? He faces competition from Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, and Palantir’s co-founder Peter Thiel. But the 58-year-old Karp could rival them all in influence, self-confidence, ambition, and—even among this group of eccentrics—sheer oddity. In his growing number of media appearances, Karp stands out with his wild gray hair, fast-paced speech, and a blend of aggressive conviction and childlike gestures. On CNBC’s Squawk Box, he shook both fists at once while lashing out at short sellers targeting Palantir, whose stock has surged nearly 600% in the past year. “It’s super triggering,” he complained. “Why do they have to go after us?”
Setting aside what Palantir actually does, the company seems central to many of the world’s urgent issues. In the U.S. alone, its AI-driven data analysis technology supports Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) deportations, the Pentagon’s drone program, and police departments’ (often criticized as racist) profiling of potential criminals. Its software is used by the Israel Defense Forces in Gaza, by Ukrainians against Russia, and by police and corporations across the Western world. In the UK, Palantir is key to Labour’s plans to modernize the armed forces and the NHS. When Keir Starmer visited Washington in February, his first stop after the White House was Palantir’s office, where Karp demonstrated the latest military equipment.
For decades, Karp kept a low profile, but a new biography, The Philosopher in the Valley, portrays him as a complex, thoughtful, and often contradictory figure whose background explains many of his insecurities. “Fear is something that really drives him,” says author Michael Steinberger. “One of the many fascinating things about Palantir is how it embodies Karp in many ways… he created Palantir to make the world safer for himself or people like him.” Whether that’s still true is debatable.
Steinberger’s book reveals Karp as an unconventional CEO with a unique lifestyle. He’s obsessed with fitness, particularly tai chi (he sometimes leads classes for employees) and cross-country skiing (often wearing ski gear daily), and he has a group of extremely fit, mostly Norwegian bodyguards. Karp, who earned $6.8 billion in 2024, owns around 20 homes worldwide, many of them sparsely furnished ski cabins. He isn’t married and has no children but has been described as “geographically monogamous”—maintaining two simultaneous relationships with partners in different parts of the world. He claims to run Palantir like “an artists’ colony” but also enjoys joking around, comparing himself to Larry David and once suggesting his comedic style could be called “Karp Your Enthusiasm.”
This isn’t just quirky behavior for its own sake.Steinberger says, “In this case, it’s genuinely him. He is being himself, and that’s who he’s always been.” Steinberger attended the same college as Karp—Haverford, a private school in Pennsylvania—though they didn’t know each other then. Over the past five years, he has managed to interview Karp whenever the CEO could spare time, even once joining him during his midday roller-skiing workout. Steinberger had to bike alongside him, holding out a recorder.
Karp grew up feeling like an outsider. The son of a Jewish pediatrician and an African American artist, he was raised in Philadelphia in an intellectual, relatively privileged, left-leaning household. In a 2023 interview, he remarked, “I always thought if fascism comes, I’ll be one of the first people targeted.” Beyond his ethnicity, he sees his dyslexia as a key part of his identity, telling Steinberger it “held me back but also gave me wings to fly.” He also has ADHD and claims that practicing tai chi helps him concentrate.
Karp and Thiel first met as students at Stanford Law School and became friends despite their opposing ideologies. While Thiel went on to co-found PayPal with Musk and build a successful career in tech investing, Karp pursued a PhD in neoclassical social theory in Frankfurt. Steinberger notes that, as a Jew, Karp wanted to understand how Germany, a bastion of European civilization, could descend into barbarism. Unlike many tech leaders who accumulate wealth and then promote their philosophies, Karp did it the other way around. When he reconnected with Thiel and joined Palantir Technologies in 2004, he couldn’t code but had knowledge of “ontology”—how information is structured and organized. He was also a persuasive figure, skilled at recruiting and motivating other unconventional talents like himself.
Palantir’s original mission was “defending the West”—a vague and adaptable goal, but also an unpopular one in early 2000s Silicon Valley, which was focused on consumer-friendly technology. While companies like Google, Apple, Facebook, and Microsoft avoided military contracts, Palantir, never a consumer-facing company, embraced them. It argued that Silicon Valley should help the U.S. maintain its advantage over threats from countries such as China, Iran, and later Russia. The company’s name comes from J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, where a palantír is a “seeing stone,” akin to a crystal ball—a surveillance device. Karp has described Palantir’s mission as “saving the shire,” and employees were sometimes called “hobbits.”
In its early years, Palantir aided the U.S. military in Iraq and Afghanistan by developing tools to identify enemy locations and attacks, potentially saving American lives. However, in 2016, it sued the army after being overlooked for contracts. The company was also involved in the Cambridge Analytica scandal in 2018, where Facebook user data was exploited to influence elections. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Palantir’s technology helped the U.S. and U.K. track the virus’s spread and manage vaccine and aid distribution. Today, it holds billions in contracts with U.S. military and government agencies, including the CIA, FBI, Department of Homeland Security, National Security Agency, and ICE. It’s easy to see why comparisons to Big Brother arose.
But, Steinberger says, there are “some fundamental misconceptions about the work they do.”Inberger explains, “They don’t collect or store data; they provide software that helps companies and organizations make better use of their own data.” This could involve creating software to streamline complex supply chains for a large corporation like Airbus, or analyzing vast amounts of data in real time to identify patterns and connections—such as spotting a battlefield enemy, a domestic terrorist, or an illegal immigrant (or potentially any other individual). Palantir claims to have a code of conduct and built-in safeguards to prevent misuse, including protections for civil liberties, though these claims are hard to verify. “If data is being abused with Palantir software, it’s not Palantir doing it—it’s the clients,” says Steinberger. “I think of Palantir software like a toaster. If you burn your toast, you don’t blame the toaster.”
Karp has described Palantir’s mission as “saving the shire.” Politically, Karp is hard to categorize. While the conservative libertarian Thiel was an early supporter of Trump in Silicon Valley and campaigned for him in 2016, Karp was not. In 2015, Karp said of Trump, “I respect nothing about the dude. It would be hard to make up someone I find less appealing.” He voted for Hillary Clinton in that election and supported Kamala Harris in 2024. Thiel had turned against Trump by 2024 but played a key role in making his protégé, JD Vance, Trump’s running mate.
Since Trump’s re-election, both Thiel and Karp seem to have aligned more closely. Karp wrote a million-dollar check for Trump’s inauguration but did not attend. As a major defense contractor, Palantir also donated $5 million to Trump’s military parade in June. In a recent interview with Axios, Karp described himself as “an independent who admires what Trump has done on many things.” Steinberger notes that in Karp’s view, “the price of doing business with the government is making nice with Trump.” Karp’s argument is, “Look, we got into business to work with the government; you can’t withdraw that support just because someone you don’t like is elected.”
Despite once stating that fascism was his greatest fear, Karp may now be enabling it—for example, by helping ICE detain people off the street, some of whom could be innocent citizens. Steinberger acknowledges the irony: “How do you square that circle? Well, in his case, I guess one thing is, he would deny that Trump is a fascist. Karp would argue that we still have a functioning, independent judiciary and a free press, for instance.” Karp also claims that Palantir has prevented “innumerable terror attacks” in Europe, which he says has helped save it from fascism. According to Steinberger, Karp’s argument on immigration is that “if the left doesn’t take this concern seriously, voters will turn to those who do, and the left won’t like the outcome. That’s how we got the first Trump presidency, and arguably it’s one reason we got the second.”
It seems Karp sees no contradiction, but the “western values” he defends appear to have shifted. When Steinberger first met him in 2019, Karp spoke of defending liberal democracy and making Palantir a “civil liberties juggernaut.” Steinberger argues, “Judging by his own words… he does not see multiracial, pluralistic democracy as the aspect of the West that should be defended.” Now, “he sees it much more as just a collection of countries bound by a shared Judeo-Christian heritage.”To varying degrees, he is driven by a commitment to free enterprise. That’s essentially his position, I believe, and it can lead down some troubling paths.
In Karp’s book The Technological Republic, co-authored with Nicholas W. Zamiska and released in February, he appears more focused on U.S. dominance in technology and the military, particularly on outpacing rivals like China in the AI race. He has criticized identity politics, stating in a recent earnings call that Palantir is “completely anti-woke.” Karp believes the West is too self-critical about its own superiority and that much of what is taught in schools and colleges about how the world operates is intellectually flawed. In his February letter to shareholders, he cited political scientist Samuel Huntington’s view that the West’s rise was not due to the superiority of its ideas, values, or religion, but rather its effectiveness in applying organized violence.
In May, a group of former Palantir employees published an open letter titled “The Scouring of the Shire,” claiming that the company’s leadership has strayed from its original ideals. They argued that principles aimed at preventing discrimination, disinformation, and abuses of power are being violated and dismantled at Palantir and throughout Silicon Valley.
Despite how perplexing, objectionable, or even frightening some may find Karp, journalist Michael Steinberger did not come away disliking him. He found Karp fascinating and enjoyed their conversations, describing him as very engaging and intelligent, though sometimes his thoughts raced at such a pace that it was hard to keep up.
Steinberger notes that Karp enjoys debate, which reflects Palantir’s culture where pushback is encouraged. Karp often tried to draw Steinberger into arguments, leading to a running joke where Steinberger would remind him that he was there to interview Karp, not himself. This would amuse Karp, who would insist on arguing. When Steinberger did engage, he usually regretted it, as Karp is nearly always convinced he’s right, leaving Steinberger mentally replaying the conversation and crafting rebuttals long after it ended.
Palantir is deeply embedded in the military-industrial complex, and its business is thriving, but Karp shows no signs of slowing down. He aims for Palantir to become as dominant and essential as IBM was in the 1960s, when it led the computing industry and influenced both government and corporate operations. Karp also seems to perceive the world as locked in an existential struggle between the West and its adversaries. This perspective could be seen as irrational paranoia, alarming foresight, or simply the result of reading too much Tolkien. Regardless, Karp clearly believes he has a mission. In a recent shareholder letter, he wrote that they are still in the early stages of a revolution that will unfold over years and decades.
The Philosopher in the Valley by Michael Steinberger is published by Simon & Schuster (£25). To support the Guardian, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com.
Frequently Asked Questions
Of course Here is a list of FAQs about Alex Karps motivation and public perception with clear and direct answers
BeginnerLevel Questions
1 Who is Alex Karp
Alex Karp is the cofounder and CEO of Palantir Technologies a data analytics company known for its work with government agencies and large corporations
2 Why do people call Alex Karp intimidating
His intense direct speaking style unorthodox appearance and the secretive nature of his companys work contribute to this perception He doesnt follow typical corporate conventions
3 Does fear motivate Alex Karp
No not in the way we typically think He is not motivated by being scared Instead he is driven by a powerful sense of mission and a belief that Western institutions need powerful technology to survive and compete which creates a highstakes urgent environment
4 What is Palantirs main business
Palantir builds software that helps organizations integrate and analyze massive amounts of disparate data to find patterns uncover threats and make critical decisions
Advanced Deeper Questions
5 If its not fear what is Alex Karps primary motivation
His primary motivation is a philosophical and ideological commitment to strengthening what he calls the West He believes in using technology as a tool to support democratic institutions against their adversaries
6 How does Karps background influence his leadership style
He holds a PhD in Neoclassical Social Theory from Goethe University Frankfurt This philosophical background shapes his worldview and leads him to frame Palantirs work in grand civilizational terms which is unusual for a CEO
7 Is the intimidating persona a deliberate strategy
It appears to be an authentic part of his personality but it also serves a business purpose It reinforces Palantirs brand as a serious nononsense company dealing with matters of national security which helps it stand out from typical Silicon Valley firms
8 What are some common criticisms of his leadership and Palantir
Critics raise concerns about privacy the potential for mass surveillance the ethical implications of their government contracts and the immense concentration of power in a single secretive data platform
9 Can you give an example of Karps unconventional thinking
He has publicly criticized the broader
