# Alex Karp

Alexander Caedmon Karp (born October 2, 1967) is an American billionaire businessman, and the co-founder and CEO of the software firm Palantir Technologies. In 2025 his net worth has at times exceeded US$10 billion, ranking him among the top 300 on the daily Bloomberg Billionaires Index and the Forbes Real-Time Billionaires Index.

## Early life

Alexander Caedmon Karp was born on October 2, 1967, in New York City, the son of Robert Karp, a Jewish clinical pediatrician, and Leah Jaynes Karp, an African American artist. He was raised in Philadelphia and graduated from Central High School in 1985. He has said he struggled with dyslexia from an early age.
Karp earned a BA in Philosophy degree from Haverford College in 1989, a JD degree from Stanford University in 1992, and a PhD in neoclassical social theory from Goethe University Frankfurt in 2002. He was initially advised by Jürgen Habermas, but a disagreement regarding his dissertation topic led to him switching his adviser. 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", which means "Aggression in lived world experience: The extension of Parsons' concept of aggression by describing the connection between jargon, aggression, and culture."

## 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 $1.1 billion.
In 2024 he was 1143rd on 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$10 billion and ranking him among the top 300 on the Forbes Real-Time Billionaires List and the Bloomberg Billionaires Index The Economist chose Karp as the 2024 CEO of the Year.

## Other activities

* Axel Springer SE, Member of the board of directors (2018–2020)
* BASF, Member of the board of directors (until 2020)

## Views

Karp is known for making bold and provocative statements.
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".

### Political views

Karp has described himself as a socialist and a progressive, and said he voted for Hillary Clinton. He has condemned "woke" ways of thinking, calling them the central risk to his company Palantir, and to the United States as a whole. Karp has called Palantir a "counter-example" to companies he considers "woke".

#### Views on the United States government

He 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.

#### Views of the Israel-Hamas war

Karp has made a number of remarks on the Israel-Hamas 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". Karp has said that protestors should be sent to North Korea. In December 2023, Palantir announced they would set aside 180 positions for Jewish college graduates, citing alleged antisemitism on college campuses related to the protests.

#### Views on the West

Karp has a consistently pro-Western view, that the West has a superior way of living and organizing itself.

## 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.”

## In media

Karp is the subject of the 2024 German documentary film Watching You: The World of Palantir and Alex Karp, directed by Klaus Stern [de], 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, along with Nicholas Zamiska, of The Technological Republic: Hard Power, Soft Belief, and the Future of the West. Published in February 2025, 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.