Palantir CEO Alex Karp said some staff at his software company have left because of his public support for Israel. And he expects more people to get out.
“We’ve lost employees. We’re going to lose employees,” Karp said in an interview with CNBC’s “Money Movers” on Wednesday. “If you’re in a position that doesn’t sacrifice losing employees at all, it’s not the position.”
Karp was responding to a question from anchor Sarah Eisen about personnel changes at the company stemming from his controversial stance.
Palantir is known for its government contract work in the defense and intelligence fields, and has provided its technology to support the Ukrainian and Israeli militaries in their respective wars. Israel has vowed to defeat Hamas after Palestinian militants rampaged through southern Israel on October 7, killing nearly 1,200 people. Israeli shelling since then has killed more than 30,000 Palestinians.
“I’m very proud that in the coming weeks since October 7th, we’ve been on the ground and engaged in operationally significant operations in Israel,” Karp said during Palantir’s earnings call last month. Stated.
Palantir held its first board meeting of the year in Tel Aviv, Israel, in January, after which the company agreed to a “strategic partnership” with the Israeli Ministry of Defense to supply technology for military operations. In November, Karp declared during an earnings call that Palantir only supplies products to Western allies, claiming the company supports the U.S. government and Israel.
In an interview Wednesday, Karp reaffirmed his pro-Israel views. Eisen noted the company’s decision to take out a full-page ad in the New York Times in October, saying the company “stands with Israel.”
Peter Thiel, co-founder and chairman of Palantir Technologies Inc., speaks at a press conference in Tokyo, Monday, November 18, 2019.
Kiyoshi Ota | Bloomberg | Getty Images
“We have precedent in this culture that people should have a voice,” Karp said of how Palantir operates. He said he doesn’t promise to “tell them what they want to hear” when communicating with employees.
“We’re going to get as close as legally and ethically permissible to telling you how we see the world,” he said. “We do this externally as well.”
Palantir last week signed a $178.4 million contract with the U.S. Army to develop 10 artificial intelligence-powered ground stations as part of a project called Tactical Intelligence Targeting Access Nodes (TITAN).
“From my perspective, this is not just an Israel issue,” Karp, who co-founded Palantir with conservative venture capitalists Peter Thiel and Joe Lonsdale, told CNBC. “It’s like, ‘Do you believe in the West? Do you believe that the West created a superior way of life?’
Long before the recent crises in Israel and Gaza, Mr. Karp has been vocal about controversial social and political issues, contrasting his positions with those held by people in San Francisco and Silicon Valley more generally. I have tried to show a clear contrast.
In 2020, Palantir moved its headquarters from Palo Alto, California to Denver. A year ago, Karp told CNBC that the tech community accused tech companies of violating their social contract with the United States and refusing to work with the federal government to keep the country safe.
“That’s a loser’s position,” Karp said in a 2019 interview on the World Economic Forum’s “Squawk Box” in Davos, Switzerland. “It doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t make sense to the general public. It’s not academically sustainable. And I’m very glad we’re not on that side of the debate.”