Palantir CEO Alex Karp Blasts OpenAI and Anthropic in Unscripted CNBC Tirade

Quick Facts

• Palantir CEO Alex Karp called out OpenAI and Anthropic on CNBC’s Squawk Box on July 1, saying ‘something has gone completely wrong’ with the token model.
• Karp’s interview followed a June 29 announcement of a joint Palantir-Nvidia Sovereign AI Operating System designed for air-gapped and classified environments.
• Karp’s criticism lands as enterprise AI budgets spiral out of control, with some companies burning through full-year token budgets by April.

Palantir Technologies CEO Alex Karp went off-script during a live CNBC interview on July 1, spending nearly 20 minutes attacking the AI industry’s token-based business model and criticizing U.S. reliance on OpenAI and Anthropic for national security applications.

The interview, on CNBC’s Squawk Box, began with a question about Palantir’s new partnership with Nvidia. It quickly turned into a wide-ranging attack on how AI labs charge enterprises for access to models.

‘I’m not throwing shade at them, but something has gone completely wrong,’ Karp said, referring directly to Anthropic and OpenAI. He described enterprise sentiment as companies expecting to ‘get no value’ while surrendering their intellectual property to model weights.

Karp framed the issue as a wealth transfer. ‘These people are stealing the weights and alpha of my business, and they’re creating a wealth tax,’ he said. When co-anchor Becky Quick noted he sounded angry, Karp responded: ‘This is the voice of American business that is being channeled through me.’

On national security, Karp was sharper. ‘Are we really going to outsource the battlefield of this country to the consensus view in Silicon Valley? That is effing insane,’ he said.

The interview was tied to a concrete product announcement. On June 29, Palantir and Nvidia unveiled a Sovereign AI Operating System reference architecture. The platform runs customized Nvidia Nemotron open models inside air-gapped environments on Nvidia’s Blackwell Ultra GPUs, layered on Palantir’s AIP, Ontology, Foundry, and Apollo products. It is built for mission-critical and classified workloads, with features including explicit data authorization, secure perimeter enforcement, and complete auditability.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said the collaboration shows how open AI models can power national security systems. Karp said the partnership gives customers ‘control over their compute, their models, their data stack and their alpha.’

Before the interview, Palantir published a 9-point manifesto on X criticizing what it called ‘tokenmaxxing’ as a business model and urging companies to maintain ownership of their data.

Karp’s criticisms come as enterprise AI costs spiral across the industry. Uber burned through its entire 2026 AI coding budget by April. Microsoft revoked developer access to Claude Code licenses months after enabling them. J.R. Storment, executive director of the FinOps Foundation, told TechCrunch that in April and May companies began reporting they were three times over their full-year token budgets. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella publicly urged employees to match AI models to task complexity as internal AI bills climbed.

The broader backdrop includes an active legal and political dispute between the U.S. Defense Department and Anthropic. In February 2026, President Trump directed federal agencies to stop using Anthropic’s technology. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth designated the company a supply chain risk. Anthropic filed two federal lawsuits against the DOD in March after the two sides failed to reach agreement over access terms and use restrictions for autonomous weapons and surveillance. Anthropic is currently excluded from DOD contracts but continues working with other government agencies while litigation proceeds.

Karp claimed his view is widely shared. He suggested people call CEOs privately and mention his name, predicting those executives would say they are ‘twice as livid’ as he is.

The interview ended awkwardly. CNBC anchor Andrew Sorkin thanked Karp and cued him to leave. Karp responded by asking if the cameras were off. The hosts confirmed they were still live.

Read more: Palantir CEO Alex Karp doesn’t hold back in interview as he rails against AI industry