Palantir Calls Out AI Labs as Q2 Soars 93%

**Bob Evans** (0:00)
Hello there, my friends. Welcome back to Cloud Wars Minute. Well, we had a fascinating earnings report and earnings call with Palantir recently. A couple things happened. One, their growth rate soared. They almost doubled their growth in Q2, up 92% to over $1.8 billion. But, intriguingly, the story behind this growth now is one that CEO Alex Karp is doubling down on, and that is to cut directly against the grain of how traditionally the software industry has worked. He feels that there's too much power being consolidated among the tech vendors, particularly now the AI labs, the AI model companies. And he said that this is going to be very dangerous for enterprises, and that there's a new direction, a new approach that has to be forged. And he wants Palantir to be in the lead of that. Now, is there a direct correlation between the 93% growth rate and this refreshing, new, different customer oriented approach from Palantir? I think there is. And in a detailed article, I've got later this morning on cloudwars.com, I go into quite a few numbers about their Q2 growth rate. But more important or as important, the arguments being raised and the rationale, the philosophy from Karp and also from Chief Technology Officer, Shyam Sankar, and one in there as well from a guy whose title I love dearly, Chief Revenue Officer and Chief Legal Officer, Ryan Taylor, talking about the remarkable ways that customers are responding to what Palantir is offering. Now, whether you think Karp's antagonism here toward the entrenched order is overblown or not, you've got to look at the financial results.
Palantir is outperforming every major tech vendor on earth. Ninety-three percent growth here and in its concluding remarks on the earnings call, Karp said, I think that what we've done in the last 18 months, I think we can grow at an even higher rate into the future. So because there's more work to be done.
You really have to see some of these comments that he made because they're unlike anything you'll hear from any sort of tech industry executive. He's not out to bash people, just indiscriminately make enemies. What he's saying is that especially here now with the notion of what models can do and what data can do, too much power, too much control over data is being consolidated among the AI labs and the AI model companies and tech vendors in general. What Karp is promising, he said, what Palantir is offering a new, better way that allows customers to keep control of that data, keep the benefits of that data, keep what he calls the alpha in there, that they can get this benefit from their data in ways that let them control their own outcomes. He says that conversely, the current way of things is where businesses turn over their data to these model companies who use that data to train their models that then can be used by any company, including competitors of the companies who are business customers who are feeding them that data. It was really, really interesting.
He's just railing against this, but Karp's an extremely thoughtful person, very eloquent, very impassioned in how he talks about things. This is not your typical earnings call discussion here. But one of the things he had to say about the current way a lot of tech vendors approach this in the I-Labs companies in particular, he said, they think they're superior to you. They think they deserve to colonize your enterprise. And he said, there's no question that's what they intend to do.
So, it's very refreshing to see this. Somebody speak out just bluntly because it gives customers not only the products to evaluate or the financial performance to evaluate, but it gives them a very clear line into what does the CEO of this highly disruptive company think? Where does he think the future is headed? What's the role in it for the vendors? What's the role in it for the customers? How is this happening with this AI revolution? Changing so many things is what Palantir's proposing what they're offering. Is it going to make life better for customers, or is it going to make it more challenging, more difficult? I think Karp and Sankarp make very persuasive cases why their approach is going to lead to better business outcomes for everyone. So I hope you'll take a look at this. And I just find myself throughout the call listening and watching Karp, who always wears a white t-shirt. These aren't it calls very nicely pressed and a good nice looking white t-shirt, but that's what he wears. And he is just completely unabashed in holding back or in stating his opinions. I think we need more of that in this business, especially these very critical time, these very critical times when businesses are betting their futures on what's going to happen. Thanks for being with us here at Cloud Wars Minute from Newark Airport. And I hope you have a fantastic day.