Alex Karp

Alexander Caedmon Karp (born October 2, 1967) is a billionaire businessman, and the co-founder and CEO of the software firm Palantir Technologies. , his estimated net worth is US$1.9billion.

Early life
Alexander Caedmon Karp was born on October 2, 1967, in New York City, the son of a Jewish clinical pediatrician father and an African American artist mother, Karp was raised in Philadelphia and graduated from Central High School in 1985. He has said he struggled with dyslexia from an early age.

Karp earned a bachelor's degree from Haverford College (Haverford, Pennsylvania) in 1989, a juris doctor (JD) degree from Stanford University in 1992, and a PhD degree in neoclassical social theory from Goethe University Frankfurt in 2002. He was initially advised by Jürgen Habermas, but a disagreement regarding his dissertation topic led to him switching his adviser. Karp's doctoral thesis, supervised by Karola Brede, was titled "Aggression in der Lebenswelt: Die Erweiterung des Parsonsschen Konzepts der Aggression durch die Beschreibung des Zusammenhangs von Jargon, Aggression und Kultur", which means "Aggression in the life-world: The extension of Parsons' concept of aggression by describing the connection between jargon, aggression, and culture."

Career
Karp started his career as a research associate at the Sigmund Freud Institute in Frankfurt.

Karp has said he invested in startups and stocks after receiving an inheritance from his grandfather. His success led him to found London-based money management firm Caedmon Group to manage the money of high-net-worth individuals who were interested in investing with him.

In 2004, along with Peter Thiel (who had been a classmate at Stanford) and others, he co-founded Palantir Technologies as CEO. The New York Times ranked Karp the highest-paid CEO of a publicly traded company in 2020, the year the company went public, with compensation worth $1.1billion.

Other activities

 * Axel Springer SE, Member of the Board of Directors (2018–2020)
 * BASF, Member of the Board of Directors (until 2020)

Views
Karp is known for making bold and provocative statements.

Karp is a critic of short sellers, and said he loves "burning the short sellers". He has compared them to cocaine addicts, and said that they "just love pulling down great American companies".

Political views
Karp has described himself as a socialist and a progressive, and said he voted for Hillary Clinton. He espoused socialist views whilst at Stanford. He has condemned "woke" ways of thinking, calling them the central risk to his company Palantir, and to the United States as a whole. Karp has called Palantir a "counter-example" to companies he considers "woke".

Views on the United States government
He has said that technology companies like Palantir have an obligation to support the U.S. military. Karp has said that he and Palantir are "active in defending the values of the West" and "our belief that the West is a superior way to live". He has defended Palantir's contract with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) during the controversy over family separations, saying that while separations are "a really tough, complex, jarring moral issue," he favors "a fair but rigorous immigration policy". He has said the U.S. government should have a strong hand in tech regulation and that western countries should dominate AI research.

Views of the Israel-Hamas war
Karp has made a number of remarks on the Israel-Hamas war strongly supporting Israel. Karp has strongly condemned the 2024 pro-Palestinian protests on university campuses, calling their views a "pagan religion" and "an infection inside of our society". He further remarked that "the peace activists are war activists". Karp has said that protestors should be sent to North Korea. In December 2023, Palantir announced they would set aside 180 positions for Jewish college graduates, citing alleged antisemitism on college campuses related to the protests.

Personal life
Karp lives in Grafton County, New Hampshire. Karp also owns a property in Palo Alto, California.

He is described as a wellness fanatic who swims, skis cross country, practices Qigong meditation and martial arts, and keeps Tai Chi swords in his offices.