Palantir’s Alex Karp on welcoming a Democratic Congress

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Hello and welcome to Decoded by POLITICO. I'm Calder McHugh. Today on the show, I talked to my colleague Adam Wrenn about his wide ranging conversation with Alex Karp, the CEO of Palantir, as well as former Montana Senator Jon Tester. We talked about Karp's relationship with the president, Democrats, and his contracts with federal agencies.

Adam Wren (0:53)

Calder, it's great to see you. How are you doing? Are you in New York?

Calder McHugh (0:57)

I am not. I am currently in transit on my way to Denver, where I believe I will be seeing you. So that'll be fun.

Adam Wren (1:05)

Yeah. I'm looking forward to that. It feels like all of Washington is descending upon Denver. But I did just come from New York, and I'm here a little bit to chat with you about what has been a crazy week at the intersection of politics and tech, particularly around the news around Jensen Hong and NVIDIA.

Calder McHugh (1:26)

Yeah. Adam, like you said, it has really been a crazy week in tech news. It feels like that is true of every week these days, but I think that that's especially true this week. The story is perfect for tech folks.

They like to pretend like they are not invested in the drama. They're just here to build and all of that. But this is the perfect story that both has real important broad implications and is also quite dramatic and involves this figure who many people consider a real singular figure in the AI race and the AI build out, one of the most important characters in Silicon Valley.

Adam Wren (2:05)

Well, I want to get into more of that, but we're here to talk about another tech giant, which is Palantir. So Calder, as you know, Palantir is taking stock of what happened last week in the midterms.

And as you have chronicled the brushback pitch that voters sent Big Tech. And as part of that, they're hiring former Democratic Senator from Montana, Jon Tester, to advise them. Now he's not lobbying, but he's providing them advice as they steer through the stiffer regulatory winds in Washington. Calder, what do you make of this news?

Calder McHugh (2:45)

Yeah, I mean, in one sense, it's not a huge surprise, right? We see hires like this happen fairly frequently when, as parties are shifting power, as one party comes back into power, there's lots more folks who are advisors on that side, who get hired at many of these powerful companies.

In the other sense though, I think Karp himself is often considered such a singular figure who has his own very particular politics. So I found it quite notable that he has decided, okay, we really need Tester in this moment. We really need somebody who has ties specifically to the Democratic establishment and to the Democratic party in a way that, maybe in the last couple years, since Karp has been more friendly with the Trump administration, he does not anymore if he ever did.

Adam Wren (3:39)

Yeah, and we should say that Palantir has on staff, as their head of defense, the former Wisconsin GOP congressman, Mike Gallagher. So in a lot of ways, this balances out their portfolio. And Karp, even though he has had a significant role in Trump 2 in Washington, in terms of raking up tens of billions of contracts, he is a long described progressive, I think he's even gone so far as to call himself a progressive socialist. He's someone who's donated to Harris and Obama and both sides of the lines. But, you know, Calder, it's interesting, these comments coming after last week's elections, and I want to get into that a little bit more. Let's play this clip here.

So your donation to MAGA, Inc. and to the White House ballroom, those were not, you did not view those as...

Alex Karp (4:30)

Okay, look, I'd love for you guys to disclose all my giving. My giving is equal Democrat, Republican. It's like, if you want to, you know, the first thing you would do in basic math is balance it out. I can tell you, without going into things, I'm not going to disclose, I'm very balanced. And everyone in the political arena knows it. And I'll tell you what, I'm also not the village idiot. Of course I give to everybody. What, you expect me to be stupid? Like, that's just how I roll. And I have a responsibility to my company, to its shareholders, to the American people, to the people on the front line. And how do I impose that? By not being the village idiot. But do I give to all sides? Have I always given to all sides? Does everybody in power understand that I'm not a caricature of either side?