Palantir’s “Excessively Proud” Pro-Israel Stance Stirs Internal Conflict, Causing Employee Departures

By Moon Harper

Mar 14, 2024 01:29 AM EDT

Palantir CEO Alex Karp mentioned that some employees have left the company due to his public support for Israel and anticipates more departures.

Palantir CEO Alex Karp addressed anchor Sara Eisen's question in an interview with CNBC's "Money Movers" on Wednesday. He said the company has experienced employee departures due to his public support for Israel, emphasizing that if a stance does not risk losing employees, it is not a true position.

Palantir Stances on Israel's Operations Involvement

Palantir is a company known for its government contracts in defense and intelligence, providing technology support to the Ukrainian and Israeli militaries who are determined to defeat Hamas after a violent incident on October 7 in southern Israel, where nearly 1,200 people were killed and resulted in over 30,000 deaths in Gaza, according to the Hamas-run Health Ministry.

Karp expressed pride on Palantir's recent earnings call, stating that shortly after October 7, the company was exceedingly proud to be actively involved in significant operations in Israel.

Palantir held its first board meeting of the year in Tel Aviv, Israel, in January and later entered a strategic partnership with the Israeli Ministry of Defense to provide technology for its military. In November, Karp reaffirmed the company's support for the U.S. government and Israel, stating on an earnings call that Palantir only supplies its products to Wey.

Expressing Solidarity with Israel in a Full-Page News Ad

In Wednesday's interview, Karp reiterated his support for Israel. Eisen mentioned the company's decision in October to place a full-page ad in The New York Times, expressing solidarity with Israel.

Karp highlighted Palantir's culture of speaking up and being transparent, emphasizing that he does not promise to tell his workforce what they want to hear but aims to provide a truthful perspective within legal and ethical boundaries, both internally and externally.

A Million-Dollar Contract for AI-Powered Ground Stations for TITAN

Last week, Palantir secured a one hundred seventy-eight million, four hundred thousand dollars contract with the U.S. Army to build 10 AI-powered ground stations for the Tactical Intelligence Targeting Access Node (TITAN) project.

Karp, one of the co-founders of Palantir with conservative venture capitalists Peter Thiel and Joe Lonsdale, emphasized to CNBC that his support is not solely for Israel but framing it as a broader belief in the values and accomplishments of the Western world.

Karp was vocal on social and political matters even before the recent Israel and Gaza crises and took differing stances from those prevalent in San Francisco and Silicon Valley.

Palantir relocated from Palo Alto, California, to Denver in 2020. A year prior, Karp informed CNBC that the tech industry had violated its social contract with the United States and criticized tech companies that declined to collaborate with the federal government for national security purposes.

In a Squawk Box interview in 2019 from the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Karp stated that such a stance is unproductive, arguing that it lacks clarity and is not viable from an academic standpoint and expressed satisfaction with being on the opposing side of the argument.