Who is Alex Karp? Billionaire CEO driving US tech firm Palantir’s role in Western intelligence

Palantir Technologies, an artificial intelligence (AI) and data analytics firm led by tech billionaire Alex Karp, has renewed a multi-year contract with France’s domestic intelligence agency, the DGSI, underscoring the company’s role in Western security and intelligence operations.

Founder and CEO of Palantir

Alex Karp is the co-founder and chief executive officer of Palantir Technologies, a US-based software company that builds data-analysis platforms used by intelligence agencies, militaries, law-enforcement bodies and large corporations.

Under Karp’s leadership, Palantir has become a key partner to Western governments. In Europe, France is its second-largest market after the UK, with Palantir’s software used by the DGSI since 2016, including during major national events such as the 2024 Paris Olympic and Paralympic Games.

Early life and education

Born on October 2, 1967, in New York City, Karp grew up in Philadelphia. He is the son of a Jewish clinical pediatrician and an African American artist and has often spoken about how his mixed heritage, dyslexia and his parents’ civil-rights activism shaped his worldview.

Karp attended Central High School in Philadelphia before earning a bachelor’s degree in philosophy from Haverford College in 1989. He went on to Stanford Law School, receiving a Juris Doctor in 1992, where he met co-founder Peter Thiel.

From philosophy to Silicon Valley power broker

Before Palantir, Karp worked as a research associate at the Sigmund Freud Institute in Frankfurt and briefly ran a London-based money management firm. In 2004, he became CEO of Palantir.

Karp has repeatedly ranked among the highest-paid CEOs in the US, and in 2025 his net worth at times exceeded $18 billion, placing him among the world’s 200 richest people. That year, Time magazine named him to its Time 100 list of the world’s most influential people.

Author and public intellectual

In 2025, Karp co-authored The Technological Republic: Hard Power, Soft Belief, and the Future of the West, arguing that Silicon Valley must abandon complacency and actively partner with governments to confront geopolitical and technological challenges, particularly in AI.

He is also the subject of a 2024 German documentary, Watching You: The World of Palantir and Alex Karp, which examines Palantir’s rise and Karp’s influence in Europe.