TBPN Live - Palantir CEO Alex Karp on Tokenmaxxing & Taste

Episode Date: June 4, 2026

This is our full conversation with Alex Karp, recorded live at AIPCon 10.We discuss why he believes taste is the most important competitive advantage in the age of AI, how enterprises are struggling to turn AI hype into real business value, why "tokenmaxxing" and AI overuse can distract companies from solving meaningful problems, and the growing risk of AI regulation and nationalization.Sign up for TBPN’s daily newsletter at TBPN.comFollow TBPN:https://TBPN.comhttps://x.com/tbpnhttps://open.spotify.com/show/2L6WMqY3GUPCGBD0dX6p00?si=674252d53acf4231https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/technology-brothers/id1772360235https://www.youtube.com/@TBPNLive

Yeah, yeah, get in here, class. This is good. Okay. How is it going? How is AIPCon this time around? What's changed? Well, we're in a phase. Yeah.

Each one of these things like marks a time. First of all, you guys are even more baller, more successful. Thank you. Some tendies in your pocket. I think it might have been part to you. We gotta say thank you. You know, it's like, you're looking, biggest guests.

You're looking bigger and stronger. Thank you. Hey, are you more attractive in your personal life now, randomly? Well, here's what we're actually focused on dead hang. Yeah. So you came on last time you said your dead hangs around like five. Oh no, it's it's well it's plateaued and the last cold once at 5.30.

5 30. Okay. So we, the thing is like people are going to hear that. They're going to think hanging on a bar. Five minutes. How hard could be. You got to go and do it. The audience has to go try to do it.

We've started doing it. We're still in the under two minutes. Yeah, between one and two minutes. Somewhere around a minute and 30, you feel like your tendons are going to rip. A 30, 1.30 dead hang is respectable. Okay. Two minutes is super elite. It doesn't feel respectable when you have the five minute number.

You're looking at the time. Strength matters. Now, the thing is, I don't want to go into rabbit hole in training. The single biggest mistake people make is they try to hang every day. You need recovery. It's like anything else. So if you want to mimic and get progress, you just do what I do, which is once a week you hang as long as you can.

It doesn't have to be super macho. And then that's your day. So like to say you can do 130. But multiple sets? No, no. No, no. One day a week, you do your maximum. Max.

Wow. So, like, let's say you could do two minutes. Okay. You try to do at least 1.30. You fight to get to 1.30, but you don't fight to get to 2 minutes. Got it. That's your dead hang day. And then you can basically fuck around the next day.

We do whatever you want. Don't overdo it, but you could do two times one minute with a long break. And then, can you just screw around, do less and less and less. Two days before, if you had two minute dead hang, you do like four times 15 seconds, the day before you take off. And you do that. Just keep doing that. And your day, what the mistake people make is they hear my ball at time.

They got a crown. Fuck that guy. I mean, the mistake you're making is not doing a course. This could be a whole new revenue line. It's a whole new revenue line. I mean, you guys have a more for you guys. Yeah. You can be like, hey, call in.

The car. So, yeah, I mean, the dead hang is it, it's like, and also some of it's just genetic. Like my other metrics are elite, but that this is somehow alien territory. God given gift. What about, uh, what about breath hold? water. I don't do that. Okay. And I'm not sure I have it. Like I grew up swimming and I think I'm weaker at that. Like I bet you I'd be in your guys. I'm a dive master. I can hold my breath for three minutes. I'm just say I'm just yeah. So I think yeah you'd be crushing me on that honestly. But you have like the lung capacity of a that's true. I mean like you got like you got like you're like like a like a whale floating out there. to the ocean waiting to surface.

So, you know, I say, I'll tell you the difference. God, they're always minding me out there. But like, okay, when we first met, it was like, AI, maybe real. Then I would say somehow until about two weeks ago, there was like a holy fuck, this is real, but somehow it's not working, but we're not allowed to say it publicly because we'll look stupid. And then there's a lot of investor hype. There still is like investors printing tendees. So you have the investors on one side. I think people realize it's real, but you know, it's like, you know, you have the whole token maxing.

And people are on onto that. And then so there's a whole value lecture there. You have a political situation where, you know, people who do not understand basic economics are winning the political argument. So you can, we could talk about where. Yeah, there's a lot here. Let's break it. Let's break it up. Let's start with the token maxing thing. Let's start with what's real. How are you actually thinking about deploying AI? First of all, what is what is Palantir's philosophy around token consumption? Well, like we, okay, we have a product that will allow you to be.

I mean, internally it's called something, but externally, but really we call it the demastipatory, like get off masturbation thing internally. It's like people are just like print, like sitting there all day, kind of like a porn addiction. and enterprises are like, okay, we knew this, we believe this will create value, but we cannot have people, just like some people. Checking the weather with it and just rearranging deck chairs on their personal Titanic. It is literally like porn. Okay. Like people are like full on.

It feels so. Yeah, tool shaped objects. Yeah. Tool shaped objects you're looking at more than you want. You hope no one notices. You're kind of before dinner after dinner. It feels productive to have every email classified with tag. Here's what it comes down to, like business problems.

problems can never be, I mean, sometimes they can be solved purely with money and just spending more. But very often... Actually, I think it's the opposite. So just to give you a weird analogy. No, and I was going to say very often it's more the opposite where it's about figuring out the right way to do something. And then you can use capital to fuel that process. Well, let me give you a thing that's too generous for you guys. Okay.

It's taste plus money. Okay. Yeah. And there is no, like AI, like if you look at, like to pick any issue, what we talk about. Token mechanism maxing, what's going on with deploy codes, are other people going to build ontologies? Why are, why does our political class not understand AI, especially in Europe? It's like, yes, because all these things can be scaled in a very valuable but largely going to commodified way, but you can't scale the taste of like what is the business

problem you want to have to solve and need to solve? At the end of the day, whether it's in the whether it's the Ukrainians fighting, the Israelis, commercial entities. There's somebody sitting there who's like, okay, but this problem is valuable, this problem isn't. And once that value, that problem is always, that problem, almost always, but not always has attributes. So there are some problems you could solve with this. Like, I want to write a report on GDP growth in China, right? Okay, but if it's a problem that requires a knowledge store, like I want to understand this specialized way I underwrite, we're going to have a guest here. I want to understand the specialized way I drill for oil and gas that's both legal, ethical, and reduces the cost of production.

I want to change the supply chain of my industry, whether that's military or whether that's building boxes or whether that's cars. These things require actual, precise, ongoing processes. They are enhanced by large language models. They are not replaced by large language models. And then you get to security issues. But for us, like the whole myth of those things is just a boon. like, yeah, we could take any model, their model, open AIM model,

open model, we can identify, we can now identify vulnerabilities at like 10, 100X. Yeah, but then who patches them? How do you patch them on-prem? How do you patch them on-prem so that your specialized knowledge stays on-prem? Like, if you're any business or Intel service, a lot of these things are very similar. Sure, sure. Like, you're not putting your classified data in a public cloud.

Yeah. Same thing if you're like, you have a special way of, farming soybeans. Yeah. But you're not. So it's like, how do you have, how do you, so all these problems are exposed, identified. And then you always have a thing of where's the charisma, which people really underestimate. And it's, it's not global. There's no global charisma now. Like so right now, the large language models are very frontier companies are super chrismatic with investors. I'll give you some news. They're super not unchrismatic with enterprises and the people. Like in a way even with enterprise no no I mean it's I understand what the people

no no the enterprise people I have a secret I have a secret like every company has a secret way of selling yeah you know what my secret way of selling is don't even call don't don't come talk to us there's a frontier company go spend two days with them and if you're lucky after you're done I'll let you in my door they're like clamoring they're like hey I'll take your bad brand which we have a great brand in enterprise but like it's like it's like secret knowledge because the investors love this are like hey my stocks are all up everything's up i mean palliatures done very well where i get but it's like and you know you guys are doing very well i imagine right and it's okay we're you know we can but i'll tell you what

you go down the street you talk to a marine you talk to a bus driver you talk to the person who owns the bus driving company they are not happy they do not like this people they're tired of people token maxing yeah it looks like masturbation at their uh that's cost them money they they're like And honestly, then you have something we're not allowed to talk about in this country, likeability. Like, the Palantir, we have, I think we have like 50, 100 million global fans. We have like 5 million people that wake up in the morning, literally calling me Satan. I didn't know I had that kind of warm hand. But, you know, it's like, that's what they believe.

Yeah. And like, and they really believe it. Okay. What people are not allowed to really address is like, we have fans and enemies. Yeah. These people are polarizing. Yeah. We're polarizing, which means both sides.

Yep. these people have one side. Yep. They're just, it is. So it's like, and it's like, it's a really big. Social media companies too have the same problem. Yeah, no, but no one likes them. Yeah, but then they also live in a circle.

And that circle's printing money. Yep. So it's like, you know, when you look in the mirror and you just printed a lot of money, you look pretty fresh. Is part of it is part of it that some element of the technology, let's just say LMs is so magical that the company is involved, that the companies that are making and selling frontier intelligence can be bad at a bunch of other things and still grow.

Well, no, no, no, they are magical at a certain kind of thing, allowing you to write, for example, code. Now that code can't be used as a knowledge store. So if you look at code in like three different ways, like just using pounders and models, we have code that's basically infrastructure. So what are the Ukrainians using? What is the Department of War using? What do a lot of our enterprises, we call that primitives?

It's basically hard-coded things that understand the world's the way do you do, It would take millions of technical hours and an understanding of all these enterprise to do it. So it's much more like how do you build a steel beam. Then you have like code that is written by FDE's. Okay, so that's kind of managed. The reason why FDE's work, the secret is it's actually managed in something that we as a product. So you're writing to a code base, we're managing that we're increasing our product. It's not just random people, right?

Then you have, let's call it free code. That free code is, that's magical. like you can do it very quickly it's almost right it doesn't have to be exact dashboards dashboards financial stuff little flow probabilistic stuff where you just have to one-off analysis you know what it was it magical yep by the way it's magical it not only creates and it's magical in a way on it i don't know people don't like the porn thing but it's also addicting it's like you know it's not good for you but you know it may lead to damage one more dashboard one more time it can't hurt that much i know my doctor says it i shouldn't do it

but it's like it's like that right and you just keep going and then you just keep going and then And if you're involved in that thing, you're also making money. Yeah. And then, last not least, in certain circles. Like, if you have, you want to be a researcher, or you believe essentially it's a religion. So, like, you know, and like one of the things, it's very charismatic, especially the people who've never had a religion,

because all of a sudden that hole in your heart that was yearning for, I don't know, I would say, you know, a established religion, Judaism, Christianity, Islam is like being filled. Yeah. And all the answers are there. But it's very, very successful at doing things that a company has to do. But it is not actually solving the problem

that enterprises are, it is, now it can solve them, that's the trick, it's not binary, it's not like, you can't say they're not valuing. They're totally putting our business on steroids. Like without LLMs, nobody would be talking about our ontology, about Apollo managing exploits, about our ability to manage an enterprise essentially, turning all these companies into FDEs, these deploy codes, we love them, because now every

company wants to deploy code, you know how you do that? You re-platform on Pallentier. And like, and it actually works. It's not somebody with no taste who's never done enterprise, who has no earthly clue how these things work, who's done something else and there's like just imagining they know how to do it, right? Yeah, as part of this moment, quite entertaining for you because you guys have been working on understanding businesses at a deep fundamental level creating you guys have effectively been doing the work that it that people are promising AI could do for 20 years now but actually doing it finding all the really rough finding all the really rough edges and and not and and being at a point where you don't have to

oversell the technology you can sell both things but now there's maybe here we go we got it together but now there's maybe oh it's the wrong side that's why flip it around yeah there you go there you go living the brand living we got that i don't know there all this stuff i i trailed off but uh no i but it is part of it entertaining to you that it feels like you know pallioteer has always been in some ways um not had competitors because there's nobody with alex carp running a company that is does what does besides Palantir. But at the same time, there's been tens of billions of dollars deployed now to effectively do what Palantir does, but just selling the intelligence part, not selling all the underlying kind of infrastructure that you know. Well, they're doing two things.

They're selling, they're trying to sell the intelligence part, and they're trying to pretend if you just hire a bunch of people and let them run around their FTs. Now, the very cool thing is when you've been in your basement doing your thing and everyone kind of use it as the freak show it's really interesting and it great to have adoption the pretty ironic thing is half the people adopting now don't even know they're copying but now the copying thing it helps and hurts where it hurts is in the beginning it puts clutter in the market yeah and there's there's no doubt about it where it helps and then we saw this with defense tech honestly so like in

defense tech we were the only people we're the first people despite what it's I I love these honestly other podcasters they're interviewing people who are parroting things I said 20 years ago they don't know it and it's like oh that's so insightful it's like yeah of course it's insightful carps said 25 years ago and like but it says but so that kind of that part is super weird but uh and like but but it's but what really happens when we see is like it expands the market so like in defense tech, we would not be doing this well in just purely in government unless there weren't 50 companies that were doing similar things because then the people are like, okay, first of all. You view it as like off balance sheet sales resources where other people are basically

well it's off. Well, no, that's the large way. It's they do two things. They increase the size of the market because de facto nobody wants to find it underwriter market where there's only one person. Sure. So like if you're the one person, the percentage of the defense budget you can get is much smaller. And two, they set up a comparator. It's like, you know, you may not like the freak show. Okay. But have you noticed the people who are serious by it? And then it changed. And then three, it changes the standard. Now, what you're seeing now is like that times 100x. Yeah. And it does change like recruiting, retention and like how you build a company and we're always think you have to think about how to being dyslexic huge advantage there. Because like,

you don't have a playbook and now that you need things to shift and we're doing that. The central thing, though, that it's just cannot be developed, even if you understood the playbook, a lot of these things are like appear like, it's like, you know, L-M code appears like Pounder code, but it isn't a forward-deployed thing, appears like Pounder, it isn't ontology. You could theoretically copy parts of it, but they're essentially structures that are built deep into organizations that we own. And by the way, take you three years. And then three years, we're in a completely different world.

there is this magical thing called taste. Like in the end of the day, the reason why you guys have done so well, of course there's aptitude and diligence and showing up and all those things. Yeah, but you have to be able to differentiate between two people who are in business, one of whom is saying something that sounds weird that is insightful, one of whom is parenting something that sounds weird and that's all they're doing. And a lot of people, very few people can do that. And you have the same thing, like the enterprises that succeed, there is a taste arbiter. And at Pallinger, we have taste in every product, taste in every deployment, taste in every casting. Who puts the people there?

How do you put them there? How do you organize the thing? Our ontology then does that technically. How do you manage the whole ARG with taste? Who should be in charge? What data sets should come in? What are the ways in which you protect? What should you push into the public crowd?

What should be on-prem? What should, I mean, leaving aside the law and like wars or ethics, what do you want to protect? What should you protect? What should you not protect? Because quite frankly, you want that to be out there so you can get more data. All those things are arbitrated by taste. And then you have to have the credibility of having taste. That's a real problem for a lot of these places because they don't have, they're popular with their friends.

They really don't understand how unpopular they are in enterprise. They think it's like, oh, yeah, it's like the way I think I have a problem with like professors at Columbia. It's like, no, it's a real problem. Like, they think I'm Satan. And, you know, it's like, I think, you know, we grew up in the same community. Let's talk about Heidegger. They're like, they don't want to talk about Heider. So it's like, it's like, yeah.

And so that's just a, it's a weird thing. It's going to be a super. The one thing I would say for anyone listening, if you're listening to this and you're chillaxing and not active, I'm not saying you have to agree with me politically or anything. Yeah. They're, like, partly because of this dynamic and very, self-inflicted because I tell you I can't name names I called many of the titans of this world

and in like started the six months ago like every couple days we're going to be national every couple days like some of them are like yeah we're going to be I mean you know it's like honestly they're like they they find me very entertaining like I don't know like so they call because yeah it's like yeah it's like oh yeah this is going to be entertaining you're going to pick up yeah so any case so I've been telling them for six months we're going to be nationalized yeah yeah We're going to be nationalized. And they're like, why would anyone nationalize? Never happened in America.

It's never. Why would anyone nationalize us? We're so likable. We're creating so much value. Like, okay, I'm not going to debate that. I know how likable I am. I'm not going to tell you how likable you are. But I am telling you.

And you know, the momentum on this is on the side of people on nationalized. And we don't get our act together and figure out ways we can say, hey, look, there are problems here we're going to deal with. These things are not going to, yes, they are going to create opportunities. you have to talk openly about how these things are valuable because we have adversaries. You can't just say these, all that stuff. So the primary risk, honestly, to Palantir, and a lot of these other countries is,

and then it's going to be nationalized, before nationalized, it's going to be regulated by people who don't understand this. And now, they'll tell you in private, I'm working on this. I'm da-da-da-da-da. And this, it's not going to work. So, like, that's something, like, if you're listening to this and you're like, look, you know, you don't have to agree with me on all my proclamations. I got a lot of, by the way, there's some people.

who think, I'm saying we should have a draft, too lazy to read. I'm just saying we should, like, in a world where everything is changing, everything is changing, don't we have to find some communal structure to remember we're American? You don't like my idea of like, we all do a week in the park? Great. Come up with some other idea. We can't have no idea? You know, and then they're like, well, I'm saying, I do not want a draft just to be explicit. They're like, oh, that's pro-war. No, honestly, you know what most of our wars are fought because no working class person is making a decision. You start making sure everyone is involved in everything. I'll see you have few wars we fight. It's actually the anti-war position. But in any case,

disagree with everything. We have on the right and on the left people, people who have no earthly clue what they're talking about, right and left. All they're talking about is how much they hate us. And those of us who are sensible in the middle, you know, too many of us are chill-waxing. Like, like nationalization, it can't happen. America would never do that. Walking. Sleep walking into and you guys have tendies to protect now. You guys should be on the front line of this. Like you got full to. Oh, sorry. I have a I have a full on very impressive corporate leader coming on. So I got to turn it down. Last question. Last question if we have time.

How are your conversations going with Fortune 500 CEOs around head count planning? There's been so many layoffs this last year that people were saying, hey, we're getting so much out of AI. were able to, you know, cut back here or there. People inside tech often know, like these, maybe there's just a reduction because there needed to be a reduction or got bloated. Maybe they do need to fund some AI initiative. Or yeah, or getting out computed by something new. But how are those conversations going? What does it look like? Like I, by the way, I talked to Fortune Vying companies. I talk to unions. I talk to soldiers. I talk to fire. If you upscale,

somebody they're more valuable sure and like all these whether it's people working on batteries people were driving trucks people corporate leaders and again this is where i think we have to be very careful to be more disciplined on the corporate side like if you run around saying i allowed you to fire two-thirds of your workforce and you did it because maybe your competitors kicking your ass yeah that could that is a really like you might as well just go sign up for burney 30 Sanders manifest. And part of the thing is they really believe that can't happen. So they're free riding on the fact that it could. Like we have and it just cannot work anymore. These things are very, very explosive. The American people sense that there is something dangerous here. And when

people are playing with that fire, it's like it's a they assume the fire won't burn their hands. That's not the world we're in. That fire is going to consume us. And what we see again, the war fighting example is just the most neutral, not for everybody. But like the soul at the bottom have gotten much more valuable. And I don't even just mean the special operators, which obviously they're in a different league. But like every, the people doing a lot of the operations now are doing our product.

They're high school vocationally trained. You see this everywhere. The modern enterprise is going to have, like we have a, a true, like very, very, very smart person coming on. And it's like you're going to have a very smart executive. He's much better at hiding it than I would be if I were him. but that's you can talk to him about that but um uh um and uh and then very talented creative people with taste all up and down the stack any case i think this is time for me to we we uh thank you so

much yeah great to catch up it was fun