Palantir’s Alex Karp says AI industry has ‘gone completely wrong’ with tokens; slams OpenAI, Anthropic

Published 2 July 2026 · tech

Alex Karp, the CEO of Palantir, lashed out at AI companies like OpenAI and Anthropic on Wednesday for using token models amid soaring costs. In

Alex Karp, the CEO of Palantir, lashed out at AI companies like OpenAI and Anthropic on Wednesday for using token models amid soaring costs. In an interview on CNBC's Squak Box, Karp said, “I’m not throwing shade at them, but something has gone completely wrong,” adding, “The basic view among enterprises in this country is I’m going to chillax and waste my time with tokens.” Karp's comments come at a time when the costs of AI models continue to surge and the newer models keep getting costlier compared to their predecessors. Amid this, companies are moving away from their tokenmaxxing models (tokenmaxxing is the process of maxing out the consumption of AI tokens and treating the high volume of the same as a metric to calculate the productivity of an AI model) to a more return-on-investment approach.

Also Read | Palantir locked in a battle with Pentagon DIA over key intelligence deal This setup is now ushering companies to adopt models that are open-weight, thus being able to perform similar tasks at considerably lower costs. Models made in China are also boosting up their capabilities, and could soon pose serious challenge to the US labs. Karp, in the interview with CNBC, warned that the AI industry should not take lightly the speed at which Chinese AI models are progressing. Karp also said that technical customers want complete control over what they compute, and raised questions about who owns the data being fed into the AI models. This week, Palantir entered a deal with Nvidia in order to use the latter's AI tools to build custom models which can be used by the agencies of the United States government.

Regarding his company's relationship with Nvidia, Karp said, “What the technical customers want is control over their compute, their models, their data stack, and their alpha. They want to know they own the means of production, and it's not being transferred to someone else.” Also Read | Anduril, Palantir and SpaceX are changing how America wages war "Who owns the data? Are the prompts secure? Is this being transferred to you?" he added. "If it was so valuable, and I can make you a billion dollars, wouldn't I say I'll make you a billion dollars and I want 30%? Why are they charging for tokens if it's so valuable?" Karp asked about the AI companies. Before the interview of Karp on CNBC, Palantir published a nine-point statement on the company's beliefs when it comes to AI sovereignty.

Here are the nine points: 1. Your AI sovereignty dictates your institution’s future. 2. Data retention is your treasure. Transfer it at your own peril. 3. Tokenmaxxing hijacks your value orientation and decreases your institutional fortitude and intelligence. 4. Controlling your weights is controlling your fate. 5. There is no contradiction between sovereignty and alpha. 6. Politicizing the technical issues involving sovereignty is what your adversary wants. 7. Real expertise is existential. 8. Learn from institutions that are winning or that have consistently delivered.