Palantir CEO Alex Karp gave an extremely high-energy interview to CNBC’s “Squawk Box” on Wednesday, with his arms flailing as he ranted about everything from politics to Israel to AI. He also referred to past public appearances where people have speculated that he was on drugs. Karp started the interview by criticizing the frontier AI companies like Anthropic and their fixation on customers paying for individual tokens, something that the Palantir CEO says frustrates the leaders of other companies who are being sold on the productivity gains of artificial intelligence. “I’m not throwing shade at them, but something has gone completely wrong,” Karp said of the AI companies. “And the basic view among enterprises, in this country, is I’m going to chillax and waste my time with tokens. I’m going to get no value, and they’re going to get my IP.”
No, we’re not sure how that’s the fault of AI companies, either. As we said, Karp had a lot of energy this morning. Karp also raised concerns about the security of sensitive intellectual property and classified information. One of the weirdest moments came when Karp started referring to himself and making nods to old interviews where he was accused of appearing to be on drugs. Karp said that CEOs of other companies didn’t want to talk publicly about their frustrations with the AI companies, so he apparently needed to be the one to do it on TV.
