Palantir CEO Alex Karp went on CNBC’s Squawk Box on July 1 and did something unusual for a tech executive: he openly torched the business model that most of the AI industry runs on.
His target was the token-based pricing structure used by companies like OpenAI and Anthropic, where enterprises pay per unit of AI computation. Karp’s assessment was blunt: “I’m not throwing shade at them, but something has gone completely wrong.”
The token model gets roasted
Karp’s argument is that enterprises are effectively handing over their most sensitive data to third-party AI providers and getting shortchanged in return. He characterized the enterprise mindset around these services with characteristic bluntness: “I’m going to chillax and waste my time with tokens, I’m gonna get no value, and they’re gonna get my IP.”
The Palantir CEO went further, calling certain aspects of the AI industry “effing insane,” zeroing in on what he sees as a dangerous dependence on Silicon Valley firms for military and national security applications.
