- Alex Karp pursued a Ph.D. and invested on behalf of wealthy European clients before founding Palantir.
- The secretive and controversial big-data company went public in 2020 and recently posted strong quarterly earnings.
- Karp is an outspoken CEO who hasn’t held back in defending the company against critics.
Alex Karp, longtime CEO of data mining company Palantir, has been taking a victory lap on the heels of the company’s latest blowout earnings and rising stock price.
Palantir, which creates software to manage, analyze, and secure data, saw its stock hit an all-time high earlier this month.
Karp, who has been CEO since 2004, is known as an unusual leader, even by Silicon Valley standards. He pursued a Ph.D. in philosophy before joining the startup and sometimes works from a barn.
He and the company have courted controversy over the years, and he’s known to be outspoken in defending the company’s work with government agencies and the military, saying at a recent talk that he’s proud « the death and pain that is brought to our enemies is mostly, not exclusively, brought by Palantir. »
Here’s how the 57-year-old Karp got his start, took the helm of the secretive startup, and built it into a multi-billion-dollar company.
2024-12-17 16:25:14
