Palantir CEO Alex Karp says the biggest threats to his defense tech company aren’t competitors in the field, but the “woke left” and right-wing conspiracy theorists.
“Our competition is actually political. The woke left and the woke right wake up every day, figuring out how they can hurt Palantir. And if they get into power, they’ll hurt Palantir,” Karp told Wired’s Steven Levy in an interview published on Monday.
“If, like, the Mamdani wing of the Democratic Party takes over — I viewed that as my party. But if that’s the party, I’m not in it,” Karp said, referring to New York City mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani.
Karp added that another threat is the “right woke wing.” He said that includes people who think “everything is a conspiracy” and that “any use of technology is actually going to only be used to eviscerate and attack us.”
During the interview, Levy pressed Karp on how Mamdani could be a threat to Palantir. Karp said messaging about AI cutting jobs has driven what he sees as electoral hysteria.
“If you explain to the world that labor is going to be valueless, people are going to elect the most ridiculous people ever,” Karp said.
He said working-class people need to see that their labor will become more valuable, not less, because of products like Palantir’s.
“If you run around saying that, you know, ‘Oh, the economy is gonna completely shift to value creation only owned by 10,000 people,’ people on the left and the right are gonna go nuts,” Karp added.
Mamdani’s press team did not respond to a request for comment sent by Business Insider about Karp’s statements.
In recent interviews with Axios and CNBC, Karp slammed the mayor-elect.
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“The percentage of Democrats who know that nothing Mamdani is saying can ever work is very high,” Karp told Axios in an interview published on November 8.
Karp has long eschewed party-line politics. On a November earnings call, Karp said that Palantir is “the first company to be completely anti-woke.”
Separately, Karp has found himself tangling with famed “The Big Short” investor Michael Burry.
Earlier this month, Burry’s Scion Asset Management filed documents showing it bet against Nvidia and Palantir last quarter.
Karp responded on CNBC, calling Burry’s bet against “chips and ontology” a “batshit crazy” move.
Burry hit back at Karp on Sunday.
“Doesn’t surprise me one bit that Alex Karp and his ‘ontology’ @PalantirTech cannot crack a simple 13F,” Burry wrote on X.
