Alex Karp explains what Palantir does, in his own words
Palantir’s iconoclastic CEO, Alex Karp, sat down with Wired’s Steven Levy for a Q&A published Monday. The discussion yields little of specific note for shareholders, focusing mostly on the more controversial aspects of the company’s work with Israel and United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), among other cultural hot buttons.
But there was one interchange in which Karp was asked for his own explanation of what Palantir actually does, which seems to shed some light on Karp’s vision for the company:
A lot of people say that it isn’t clear exactly what Palantir does. Can you explain it in your own words?
If you’re an intelligence agency, you’re using us to find terrorists and organized criminals while maintaining the security and data protection of your country. Then you have the special forces. How do you know where your troops are? How do you get in and out of the battlefield as safely as possible, avoiding mines, avoiding enemies? Then there’s Palantir on the commercial side. The shorthand is if you’re doing anything that involves operational intelligence, whether it’s analytics or AI, you’re going to have to find something like our products.
Basically, it’s about orchestrating information with AI, which is something lots of companies in Silicon Valley want to do. But you contend that no other tech company can do it like yours.
What I’m really saying is we know how to do it. If you find someone else who can do it, and you don’t want to work with us, buy it from them.
Thanks to an upswing in the AI trade, shortly before noon Palantir shares were having their best day since early August. But the stock remains down by more than 8% since it reported objectively fantastic earnings a week ago, then slumped amid a breakout of market jitters over high valuations.
But there was one interchange in which Karp was asked for his own explanation of what Palantir actually does, which seems to shed some light on Karp’s vision for the company:
A lot of people say that it isn’t clear exactly what Palantir does. Can you explain it in your own words?
If you’re an intelligence agency, you’re using us to find terrorists and organized criminals while maintaining the security and data protection of your country. Then you have the special forces. How do you know where your troops are? How do you get in and out of the battlefield as safely as possible, avoiding mines, avoiding enemies? Then there’s Palantir on the commercial side. The shorthand is if you’re doing anything that involves operational intelligence, whether it’s analytics or AI, you’re going to have to find something like our products.
Basically, it’s about orchestrating information with AI, which is something lots of companies in Silicon Valley want to do. But you contend that no other tech company can do it like yours.
What I’m really saying is we know how to do it. If you find someone else who can do it, and you don’t want to work with us, buy it from them.
Thanks to an upswing in the AI trade, shortly before noon Palantir shares were having their best day since early August. But the stock remains down by more than 8% since it reported objectively fantastic earnings a week ago, then slumped amid a breakout of market jitters over high valuations.
