Palantir designed to 'power the West to its obvious innate superiority,' says CEO

Palantir CEO Alex Karp says one of his aims when building the controversial spy‑tech company was to "power the West to its obvious innate superiority."

Speaking to investment analysts following Q4 results, Karp reckoned the founders and early employees had taken a "long bet over decades" in Palantir's positioning.

He said the company assumed that if it built the products its partners – particularly those in the West and the US – ought to build, rather than what they said they wanted to build or what investors or VCs said it should build, then it would be rewarded in time.

"That company would generate so much value that we would get a small percentage of that, and we would end up as a massive, significant, and much more importantly, impactful company that could power the West to its obvious innate superiority, expose things that weren't working, rebuild the whole infrastructure of a company," he said.

Palantir was founded by Peter Thiel, who made his money and name by co-founding PayPal. It attracted early investment from the US Central Intelligence Agency's venture capital arm In-Q-Tel, and won early contracts in US defense and intelligence applications of its data analytics technologies, along the way supporting US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which was accused of separating children from their families.

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Karp strays from the well‑rehearsed narrative in which CEOs assure investors that their money is in safe hands, instead exploring his talent for geo‑historical bombast.

Last year, he claimed the only reason goose-stepping had not returned to the streets of Europe was due to Palantir's products. He has also labeled the social justice movement "woke" as "the central risk to Palantir, America, and the world."

Palantir posted Q4 revenue up 36 percent on the same period last year to $828 million. Net income reached $76.9 million, down from the same quarter a year earlier, although full-year income for 2024 was up considerably on the previous year.

The company beat its Q4 estimates and saw its share price climb 18 percent in late trading following the financial update. ®