Palantir CEO Alex Karp accused leading artificial intelligence companies of overcharging customers, exploiting business data and putting U.S. national security at risk during an interview on CNBC on Wednesday.
Karp made the remarks while discussing Palantir’s partnership with Nvidia, which aims to help the U.S. government deploy advanced AI more securely.
Palantir’s CEO just exposed Sam Altman and Dario Amodei for robbing every Fortune 500 company.
Within two minutes, Alex Karp took the entire frontier AI industry apart on national television.
His exact words:
“Every single enterprise in this country, these people are LIVID.… pic.twitter.com/132b5s6dQG
— Ricardo (@Ric_RTP) July 1, 2026
During the interview, Karp criticized the token-based business models used by ChatGPT maker OpenAI and Claude developer Anthropic, saying executives across the business world have privately expressed frustration with the model.
Tokens are the small units of text that AI models process and generate, and companies such as OpenAI and Anthropic typically charge customers based on the number of tokens consumed.
“Every single enterprise in this country, these people are livid. They are paying for tokens that create no value,” Karp said.
He argued that AI companies profit twice by charging customers for AI services while also using customer data to improve their own models.
“If it was so valuable, let’s say I can make you $1 billion tomorrow. Wouldn’t I say I’ll make you $1 billion and I want 30 percent? Why are they charging for tokens if it’s so valuable?” Karp added.
Ahead of Karp’s interview, Palantir on Tuesday released a nine-point manifesto on the importance of “AI sovereignty.” The post criticized tokenmaxxing as a business model and urged companies to retain ownership of their data.
Our thoughts on the importance of AI sovereignty.
1. Your AI sovereignty dictates your institution’s future. Sovereignty is the precondition for choice. Relinquishing sovereignty transfers the future choices of your institution to others, who are likely to exploit it for their…
— Palantir (@PalantirTech) July 1, 2026
“What aligns me with Nvidia, and I think is what the technical customers want, which is control over their compute, their models, their data stack and their alpha,” Karp said. “They want to know they own the means of production. It’s not being transferred to someone else.”
Karp also criticized the idea of relying on private AI companies to shape U.S. military capabilities. “Are we really going to outsource the battlefield of this country to the consensus view in Silicon Valley? That is effing insane,” he said.
Shares of Palantir rose more than 9% following the interview.
Karp’s comments come as AI companies face increasing scrutiny from the U.S. government over national security and defense applications.
In March, the Pentagon designated Anthropic a “supply chain risk” after the company said it would not remove safeguards preventing its AI models from being used for mass domestic surveillance or fully autonomous weapons.
In June, President Donald Trump signed an executive order directing companies to allow federal oversight of new AI models before they are publicly released.
Just last Tuesday, the Commerce Department had lifted export controls on Anthropic’s Claude Fable 5 and Mythos 5 models after working with the company to address national security concerns.
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said the government had “worked closely” with Anthropic to “analyze and improve” Fable 5 and “strengthen America’s leadership in AI.”
