Alex Karp

Alexander Caedmon Karp (born October 2, 1967) is an American businessman and the co-founder and CEO of software firm Palantir Technologies. He began his career investing in startups and stocks, and co-founded Palantir with Peter Thiel in 2003. In 2025, ''Time'' magazine named him in the Time 100 list of the world's most influential people.

In 2025, his net worth has at times exceeded US$11billion, ranking him among the wealthiest 300 people in the world by ''Forbes'' and the ''Bloomberg Billionaires Index''.

Early life and education

Alexander Caedmon Karp was born in New York City,Curriculum vitae of Mr Alexander C. Karp
– website of the German digital publishing house Axel Springer SE] the eldest son of Robert Joseph Karp, a Jewish clinical Pediatrics, pediatrician, and Leah Jaynes Karp, an African American artist. He was raised with his younger brother, Oliver "Ben" Karp, in Philadelphia. Like his father, he attended Central High School and graduated in 1985. He has said he struggled with dyslexia from an early age. Karp was influenced by his parents activism for civil rights and social justice during his youth.

Karp initially wanted to be a social theorist in academia. He earned a B.A. in philosophy from Haverford College in 1989, then enrolled at Stanford Law School, where he earned a Juris Doctor (J.D.) in 1992. While at Stanford, Karp met Peter Thiel.

After his undergraduate studies and law school, Karp earned a Ph.D. in neoclassical social theory from Goethe University Frankfurt in 2002. Karp's doctoral thesis, supervised by Karola Brede, was titled "''Aggression in der Lebenswelt: Die Erweiterung des Parsonsschen Konzepts der Aggression durch die Beschreibung des Zusammenhangs von Jargon, Aggression und Kultur''" (Aggression in the Lifeworld: The Extension of Parsons' Concept of Aggression by Describing the Connection Between Jargon, Aggression, and Culture).

Karp is fluent in German and speaks French.

Career

Karp started his career as a research associate at the Sigmund Freud Institute in Frankfurt.

Karp has said he invested in startups and stocks after receiving an inheritance from his grandfather. His success led him to found London-based money management firm Caedmon Group to manage the money of high-net-worth individuals who were interested in investing with him.

In 2004, along with Peter Thiel (who had been a classmate at Stanford) and others, he co-founded Palantir Technologies as CEO. ''The New York Times'' ranked Karp the highest-paid CEO of a publicly traded company in 2020, the year the company went public, with compensation worth $1.1billion. In 2024, he was the highest-paid CEO of a publicly traded company in the United States, with a "compensation actually paid" of almost $6.8 million. ''The Economist'' chose Karp as the 2024 CEO of the Year.

In 2024 he was 1143rd on the ''Forbes'' annual ''World's Billionaires List'' with a net worth of US$2.9 billion. In 2025 his net worth increased by several billion dollars, at times exceeding US$11 billion and ranking him among the 300 wealthiest people in the world on the ''Forbes Real-Time Billionaires List'' and the ''Bloomberg Billionaires Index''.

Board and advisory roles

* Axel Springer SE, Member of the board of directors (2018–2020)
* BASF, Member of the board of directors (until 2020)
* Bilderberg Meeting, member of the steering committee
* The Economist Group, former member of the board of directors

Views

Political views

On the West

In 2025 ''Time'' magazine listed Karp as one of the world's 100 most influential people, calling him "the embodiment of a new kind of Silicon Valley billionaire: an unashamed techno-nationalist who evangelizes Western power."

In naming him to the Time 100 list, the magazine noted that in a letter to investors Karp quoted Samuel P. Huntington's ''The Clash of Civilizations'': "the rise of the West was not made possible 'by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion ... but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence.'" Karp wrote that "Westerners often forget this fact; non-Westerners never do." During a ''New York Times'' interview, Karp stated "you scare the crap out of your adversaries" and "are we tough enough to scare our adversaries so we don’t go to war? Do the Chinese, Russians and Persians think we’re strong?", which journalist Maureen Dowd described as "brimingwith American chauvinism".

In 2024 The New York Times quoted Karp saying he and his company Palantir have "a consistently pro-Western view, that the West has a superior way of living and organizing itself".

On US politics

In 2018, Karp described himself as a socialist and a progressive, and said he voted for Hillary Clinton. ''Current Affairs'' editor Nathan J. Robinson wrote in 2024 that Karp "seems to have some idiosyncratic personal definition in mind that has nothing in common with the socialist tradition". In 2024, Karp stated that while he is "not thrilled" with the direction of the Democratic Party, he would still be "voting against Trump".

Karp has condemned "woke" ways of thinking, calling them the central risk to his company Palantir, and to the United States as a whole. He has called Palantir a "counter-example" to companies he considers "woke".

On the United States government

Karp has said that technology companies like Palantir have an obligation to support the U.S. military. Karp has said that he and Palantir are "active in defending the values of the West" and "our belief that the West is a superior way to live". He has defended Palantir's contract with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) during the controversy over family separations, saying that while separations are "a really tough, complex, jarring moral issue," he favors "a fair but rigorous immigration policy". He has said the U.S. government should have a strong hand in tech regulation and that western countries should dominate AI research.

On the Gaza war

Karp has made a number of remarks on the Gaza war strongly supporting Israel. Karp has strongly condemned the 2024 pro-Palestinian protests on university campuses, calling their views a "pagan religion" and "an infection inside of our society". He further remarked that "the peace activists are war activists" at the AI Expo for National Competitiveness. Karp has said that protestors should be sent to North Korea. In December 2023, speaking about the demonstrations at Columbia University, he said "There is literally no way to explain the investment in our elite schools, and the output is a pagan religion — a pagan religion of mediocrity, and discrimination, and intolerance, and violence." Palantir announced they would set aside 180 positions for Jewish college graduates, citing alleged antisemitism on college campuses related to the protests.

Business views

Karp is a critic of short sellers, and said he loves "burning the short sellers". He has compared them to cocaine addicts, and said that they "just love pulling down great American companies". Despite his criticism of short sellers, Karp sold $1.9 billion of Palantir shares in 2024. In February 2025, during a talk promoting his book, he said "I love the idea of getting a drone and having light fentanyl-laced urine spraying on analysts that tried to screw us."

Personal life

Karp lives in Grafton County, New Hampshire. When a reporter observed that he owns "10 houses around the world, from Alaska to Vermont, from Norway to New Hampshire", Karp joked that "You have to reframe that as I have 10 cross-country ski huts."

He is described as a wellness fanatic who swims, skis cross country, and practices martial arts. He has stated that he practices tai chi and that it should not be confused with qigong. He keeps tai chi swords in his offices. He is highly skilled with handguns, and a reporter observed him "expertly hit targets...from 264 yards" with a BUL Armory SAS II Bullesteros 9mm competition pistol.

Karp never learned to drive a car. He said, "I was too poor. And then I was too rich.”

Karp said the thought of having children "gives me hives".

His uncle, Gerald Jaynes, is the A. Whitney Griswold Professor of Economics, African American Studies, and Urban Studies at Yale.

In media

Karp is the subject of the 2024 German documentary film ''Watching You: The World of Palantir and Alex Karp'', directed by , which explores Palantir's influence and Karp's career, and includes interviews with former colleagues, politicians, and critics; Karp chose not to participate in the documentary.

Karp is the co-author with Nicholas Zamiska of a No.1 ''The New York Times'' Best Seller list book, ''The Technological Republic: Hard Power, Soft Belief, and the Future of the West''. Published by Vintage Books in February 2025, and identified as , the book offers a critical perspective on Silicon Valley's complacency and the West's waning ambition, arguing that the software industry must partner with government to tackle urgent challenges, particularly the AI arms race.

References

External links

New York Times profile of Alex Karp, August 17, 2024

{{DEFAULTSORT:Karp, Alex
1967 births
Living people
Haverford College alumni
Stanford Law School alumni
Stanford University alumni
Businesspeople from Palo Alto, California
Central High School (Philadelphia) alumni
Goethe University Frankfurt alumni
American billionaires
American company founders
20th-century American Jews
21st-century American Jews
African-American Jews
African-American billionaires
Palantir people