Palantir CEO calls AI labs “Marxist” after record quarter

Palantir CEO Alex Karp is accusing frontier AI labs of trying to take control of the businesses that depend on them, calling the industry’s approach “Marxist” in a shareholder letter released after the company reported a record quarter.

Karp, who studied philosophy and holds a PhD in social theory, argued that AI companies could use enterprise partnerships to absorb customers' intellectual property, expertise, prompts, and operational context. He wrote:

“There are Marxist overtones and undertones to our business. Others, including many of those building large language models, intend, knowingly or otherwise, to capture the means of production of their purported partners.”

The criticism echoes concerns raised in Karp’s warning about AI-driven wealth inequality, but this time focuses on the relationship between AI labs and their enterprise customers rather than on the distribution of AI-generated wealth.

Palantir’s model-agnostic alternative

Karp expanded on the argument during Palantir’s quarterly call with Wall Street analysts. He said companies risk paying AI providers to transfer their intellectual property, know-how, and expertise into models that could eventually support competing businesses without their original customers or employees.

Palantir presents its own software as an alternative. The company provides model-agnostic AI and analysis tools for governments and enterprises, while allowing customers to retain control of their data and their AI “exhaust”—including prompts, orchestration, and context.

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Karp described the competing approach in unusually hostile terms:

“You are paying for the right for them to migrate your IP, your know-how, your expertise to their model, so that they can build a competitive business that doesn’t require your business or people.”

TechCrunch reported that a similar concern is increasingly being voiced elsewhere, including by Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. The argument points to partnerships in which companies fund or work with OpenAI and Anthropic, while AI labs expand into adjacent markets such as design tools, healthcare operations, legal services, and drug discovery.

Record growth complicates the warning

Palantir’s own results show why enterprises continue to adopt AI despite those concerns. For its second quarter, the company reported:

• $1.9 billion in revenue, up 93% from the year-ago quarter
• $1.1 billion in profit

Karp said the profit earned in the quarter exceeded Palantir’s total revenue in the same period a year earlier. The figures indicate that the rapid expansion of AI is creating substantial demand for Palantir’s software, even as its CEO warns customers against becoming too dependent on the companies building the underlying models.

Karp’s critique is therefore less a rejection of AI than a case for controlling the layer around it. The company’s quarter provides the sharpest evidence for both sides: AI labs may be gaining strategic leverage over enterprise customers, but that same spending is helping Palantir deliver its strongest results yet.