Palantir CEO Alex Karp Criticizes AI Industry Data Practices

Palantir chief executive Alex Karp told CNBC that the current AI industry is “effing insane,” accusing large model providers of charging excessive fees while siphoning customers’ proprietary data to improve their own models – a practice he likened to a “wealth tax.” He warned that outsourcing military and national‑security technology to Silicon Valley AI firms could jeopardize U.S. security.

Palantir recently announced a partnership with Nvidia to launch an AI infrastructure solution featuring an “ontology layer” that it says will let governments and enterprises use advanced models more safely and with greater control. Karp argued that many corporate CEOs are privately angry about frontier‑model vendors’ token‑based pricing and data extraction, positioning Palantir as a trusted intermediary that protects proprietary knowledge. An accompanying analysis framed his remarks as a clash between “data communism” – shared model intelligence – and “data capitalism,” emphasizing the fight over who will own enterprise‑level AI intelligence.