‘They want to drug addict us’: Palantir CEO Alex Karp’s explosive warning about AI firms

Speaking to CNBC, Karp said, “We have people trying to drug addict us to a future they [frontier AI models] believe they control.”

“I’ve spent a lot of time with Dario [Amodei] and the Anthropic crew. They want to tell you we have to march into a future where we own nothing, where our businesses aren’t profitable, where none of us have jobs, and where our adversaries win,” he said.

Karp’s remarks come amid the rapidly growing adoption of AI models and services worldwide.

US-based Palantir develops AI and data analytics software for businesses and governments. Karp said he believes enterprises should maintain control over their own AI models and work with companies such as Palantir, which provides an application layer on top of a company’s technology stack.

In recent months, OpenAI and Anthropic have said that customer data is protected and is not used to train their models.

Reacting to such assurances, Karp told CNBC: “Every enterprise we interact with, and that includes some of the biggest and most important government enterprises in the world, is saying, ‘Why would we tokenmaxx [and] pay people for something that’s not useful and then not control the means that allow us to advance our business while keeping the value of the business inside?’”

According to the Tokenmaxxing website, “tokenmaxxing” refers to maximising AI token usage across chat, coding agents, model routers or internal AI workflows. The term relates to AI usage and costs rather than cryptocurrency. A useful definition of tokenmaxxing links token volume to measurable outcomes, review quality and cost.

Known for his outspoken and often brash style, Karp was the first executive to publicly target OpenAI and Anthropic in early July, criticising their token-based pricing structure in comments that went viral on CNBC.

Several technology leaders subsequently expressed support for Karp’s position.

“All-In” podcast co-host and tech investor Chamath Palihapitiya told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” in July that Karp “deserves a medal.”

On July 12, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella also appeared to endorse Karp’s argument. Sharing Karp’s remarks on X, Nadella wrote: “As Alex Karp put it: ‘What the technical customers want is control over their compute, their models, their data stack, and their alpha. They want to know they own the means of production, and it's not being transferred to someone else.’ The current regime does precisely the transfer Karp and companies fear.”

Last month, Palantir joined Nvidia, Microsoft and other companies in signing an open letter defending open-weight AI models as essential for national security.

“In a world where cybersecurity attackers use advanced AI, defenders need access to models with comparable capabilities so they can detect, simulate, and respond to emerging threats. Open models broaden defensive capability, increase transparency, and allow vulnerabilities to be discovered and remediated across many teams,” the letter said.

“In fact, openness may be one of the most important paths to AI safety and security. Relying solely on closed models is not inherently safe: they can be breached, misused, or fail in ways that outsiders cannot detect. And concentrating advanced AI capabilities behind a small number of closed models compounds that risk. It results in a small number of single points of failure, weakens competition, and leaves critical technology in the hands of a few providers,” it added.