Palantir CEO Alex Karp: Why the West is Destroying Itself, Data Empire, Skeptics, How to Win

**Chamath Palihapitiya** (0:01)
Sometimes, traditional stock analysis just lets you down. That's how I feel about the stock of Palantir.

**Jason Calacanis** (0:06)
A billion dollars in quarterly revenue for the first time ever. The stock has just ripped.

**David Sacks** (0:10)
They have delivered here beyond the expectation, and the expectations were obviously remarkably high.

**Jason Calacanis** (0:17)
Karp's the kind of guy who kicks you, you know what, and then he gets in your face afterwards, and he tells you that he just did that.

**Alex Karp** (0:23)
As usual, I've been cautioned to be a little modest about our bombastic numbers. If you work for Palantir, everyone knows you're good. And to all supporters of Palantir, Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, and to all people who hated on us, enjoy your call.

**Chamath Palihapitiya** (0:40)
Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Palantir CEO Alex Karp.

**David Sacks** (0:54)
Great to see you.

**David Sacks** (0:55)
Thanks for coming out. Hey, man. How are you?

**David Friedberg** (0:59)
Good to see you.

**Chamath Palihapitiya** (1:02)
How are you?

**Alex Karp** (1:02)
Doing well.

**Chamath Palihapitiya** (1:03)
Thanks for coming out.

**Alex Karp** (1:04)
By the way, thank all of you guys. Great crowd. You have the best people.

**Chamath Palihapitiya** (1:10)
You have a lot of fans here. Yesterday, we also had a number of protesters.

**Alex Karp** (1:16)
Hopefully enough.

**Chamath Palihapitiya** (1:18)
What are they protesting? They're protesting Alex Karp being here. Categorize for me, what's going on? Who are the protesters? Why do they protest? Who are the fans? Why do they love you? What can you see?

**Jason Calacanis** (1:32)
Good taste.

**Alex Karp** (1:37)
Well, there is an issue of taste. I think actually, you always have to try to steal man the other side. And so, like, probably the people protesting may just have heard that they should protest me. But, you know, if you ask why could they have an argument or why should you like me, love me in some cases? Honestly, some of you guys like and love me more than I like myself, which takes a little work.
But I think this audience, as an example, although is almost unfair because builders basically learn from watching, like highly, highly talented people basically put a discount rate on everything anyone says and measure accomplishment based on outperformance against that discount rate. And you'll find if you're managing future builders, a lot of, anyone who's Palantirian shaped that de facto you get street cred by outperforming against expectations where expectations are kind of multiplied against a high discount rate. So I think what you would find in this audience is two things converging. One, you know, the journey of Palantir is completely counterintuitive and especially technical experts. You know, the FDE thing was viewed as like you weren't going to get a multiple. I was viewed as like this magical wizard who could get the smartest people in the world to work on something that was de facto stupid.
We were a quote unquote terrible at public relations and we stood up for the US government even when it was really really unpopular. And then there are a lot of people in the audience who agree with that. But I think as importantly, look at the results. Look at the fruits we bore. Look at the people we have on our side. And then you get to the other side. And again, it would be easy just to dismiss the other side is, I don't know, stupid. They don't know what's going on. Let's just take the intellectually rigorous version of why you would be against what we're doing. There's a misconception that AI and tech is going to exclude everyone who's not in this room. And so a lot of people who are protesting, actually what they're protesting is there's no way to get in this room. And in fact, the way aptitude and the way the implementation of things has worked, they're just wrong. And because they've assumed that, they then go into what I would call super-aggressive, non-working, philosophical or empirical models where they assume the losers are noble. But actually what they're really assuming is they can't win. And then you get to more subtle things. I do think there's an issue with our lead institutions that have taken the best and brightest and most valuable things you could teach someone and have turned it into some kind of Stalinistic bullshit that is anti-correlated with everything that works in the West, which is like individual accomplishment and if you had to say what is the central thing we do in America better than anyone else, it's like allowing people to express their individual artistry in a way where you fucking win, like with no apologies. And then because they think they're on the loser side of this, they assume morality can't be against them. And then they are trained to believe that and to understand it. Of course, if you're a professor at Berkeley teaching about Heidegger, you think losing is good because you lost. That's of course the whole reason you think that. You think that because you are the noble loser. But again, where it gets super, super dangerous and where I do think we have to do a better job is you can't just assume there's no truth in what they believe, which is like we have not done an even adequate job of helping people at the bottom.