Palantir CEO Alex Karp on Tokenmaxxing & Taste

Dead hangs and fitness catch-up

00:00Yeah, yeah, get in here class. This is good. Okay, how is it going? How is ARP con this time around? What's changed? >> Um, well, we're in a phase. All each one of these things like marks a time. First of all, you guys are even more ball or more successful. >> Thank you. >> Some tendies in your pocket. >> I think it might have been part two you got to say thank you. You blew us up. You were the biggest guest. >> You're looking bigger and stronger somehow. [laughter] Hey, are you more attractive in your personal life now randomly? >> Well, here's what we're actually focused on dead hangs. >> 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

00:36in the last couple months 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 how long could it 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. >> in one between yeah, between somewhere around a minute 30 you feel like your tendons are going to rip. >> 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 strength strength matters. Now, the the the thing is I don't want to go into rabbit hole in training. The single biggest mistake people make is they try

01:14to hang every day. You need recovery second thing 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. Doesn't have to be super macho. And then that's your day. So, let's just say you can do 1:30. >> sets? >> No, no, you know, one day a week you do your maximum. >> Maximum. Wow. >> So, like let's say you could do two minutes. You try to do at least 1:30. You fight to get to 1:30, but you don't fight to get to two minutes. >> Got it. >> That's your dead hang day. And then you can basically [ __ ] around the next day and do whatever you want. Don't overdo it, but you could do two times one minute with a long break. And then can't

01:47you just screw around and do less and less and less. Two days before if you two minute dead hang you do like four times 15 seconds. The day before before off. And you do that. just keep doing that, and your day What The mistake people make is they hear my ball or time. >> [laughter] >> [ __ ] that guy. I'm going >> I mean, the mistake you're making is not doing a course. This could be a whole new revenue Wait, you guys I mean, you guys have a war for you guys. You could be like, "Hey, call in." >> So, um yeah, I mean, the dead hang is that 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 What about breath hold under

02:28water? >> I don't do that, and I'm not sure I have a Like, I grew up swimming. I I think I'm weaker at that. Like, I bet you I would be in your guys' >> [laughter] >> I I I'm a I'm a dive master. I can hold my breath for 3 minutes. >> I'm just say I'm just say So, I think you'd be like I think you'd be crushing me on that, honestly. But, you have like the lung capacity of a whale. >> That's true. That's true. >> I mean, like >> Yeah. >> You got like you got >> Yeah, if I'm not moving, I'm not using any oxygen. >> It's like you're like you're like you're like a like a like a whale floating out there [laughter] under the waiting to surface. >> That's true. >> So, you know, I'll say I'll tell you the

AI hype vs. real value

02:59difference. Uh it is just I got they're always minding me out there. But, like okay, when we first met, it was like, "AI maybe real." Okay. Then, I would say somehow until about 2 weeks ago, there was like a holy [ __ ] this is real, but somehow it's not working, but we're not allowed to say it publicly cuz we'll look stupid. And then there's a lot of investor hype. >> Yep. >> Um there still is like investors printing tendies. 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. >> Yep. >> And people are on onto that. And then so, there's a whole value lecture there. Um uh you have a political situation um where, you know, people who do not

03:43understand basic economics are winning the political argument. So, you can you could we could talk about where AI >> 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 what's real. How are you actually thinking about deploying AI >> First of all, what what is your what is what is Palantir's philosophy around token consumption? >> Well, like we okay, we have a product that will allow you to be able I mean, internally it's called something, but externally, but really we call it the de-masturbatory like get off masturbation thing internally. >> It's like >> People are just like print like sitting there all day kind of like a porn

04:21addiction, 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, just like and just re-re-rearranging deck chairs on their personal Titanic. >> literally like porn. >> Like people are like full on >> It feels it feels so >> objects, right? >> Tool-shaped objects you're looking at more than you want. You hope no one notices. You're kind of before dinner after dinner. >> Yeah, and every email classified with tags. >> It comes down to like business 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,

Taste plus money

05:00just to give you a weird analogy >> No, and I was going to say very 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, but >> Let me give you a thing that's sui generis for you guys. Okay. It it it's taste plus money. >> Okay. >> And there is no the like AI Like if you look at like to pick any issue we want to talk about. Token maxing is a maxing uh what's going on with deploy codes. Are other people going to build ontologies? Why are why why does the our political class not understand AI, especially in Europe? It's like, "Yes, because all of these things can be scaled in a very valuable, but largely

05:40going to commoditized 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 four whether it's the Ukrainians fighting, the Israelis, commercial entities, it's 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 has that problem alway 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 the specialized way I underwrite. We're

06:17going 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 the 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 like But for us like the whole myth of things is it's just a boon because like yeah, we can take any model, their model, OpenAI model, open model, we can identify we can now identify vulnerabilities at like 10 100x. Yeah,

Charisma and enterprise skepticism

07:00but then who patches them? Yeah. 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, there's a lot of these things are very similar. 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. Well, you're not So, it's like how do you have how do you get 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 charismatic

07:39with investors. >> Mhm. >> I'll give you some news. They're super not un-charismatic with enterprises and the people. >> Yeah. >> In a way even with enterprise. >> No, no. I mean it's >> Cuz I understand with the people. >> no. The enterprise people I have a secret I have a secret like every company has a secret way of selling. You know what my secret way of selling is? Don't even call it don't don't come talk to us. There's a frontier company. Go spend 2 days with them. And if you're lucky after you're done, I'll let you in my door. They're like [laughter] clamoring. >> Yeah. >> They're like hey, I'll take your bad brand. >> Yeah. >> We have a great brand in enterprise. But like it it's like it's like secret

08:13knowledge cuz the investors love this. They're like hey, my stocks are all up everything's up. I mean Palantir's done very well. We're like it but it's like and you know you guys are doing very well I imagine, right? And it's okay. We're 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. >> Mhm. >> They are not happy. They do not like these people. They're tired of people token maxing. >> Yeah. >> It it looks like masturbation at their 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.

08:48>> Mhm. >> Like Palantir, we have I think we have like 50 100 million global bands. We have like 5 million people that wake up in the morning literally calling me Satan. >> Mhm. >> I didn't know I had that kind of >> Mhm. >> warm hand. But uh you know it's like that's what they believe. >> Yeah. >> 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. >> 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 you and then it's like it's a really big >> Social media companies too have the same

09:21problem. >> Yeah, no. >> Everyone uses them but no one likes them. >> Yeah, but 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 is part of it that that some element of the technology, let's just say LLM's, is so magical that the companies 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 doesn't can't be used as a knowledge store. So, if you look at code in like

Three kinds of code

09:59three different ways, like just using pound as a model. We have code that's basically infrastructure. So, what what are the Ukrainians using? What is the Department of War using? What do a lot of our enterprises that that we call that primitives? So, they're basically hard-coded things that that understand the world. Well, way do you do? It would take millions of technical hours and an understanding of all these enterprises to do it. So, it's it's much more like how do you build a steel beam? Then you have like code that is written by FDEs. Okay, so that's kind of managed. It's The reason why FDEs work, the secret is it's actually managed in something that we as a product. So, you're writing to a

10:33code base for managing that. We're increasing our product. It's not just random people writing. 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 little flow stuff. >> probabilistic stuff where you you just have to get it >> One-off analysis. >> it was it magical. >> Yep. >> By the way, it's magical and not only creates it and it's magical in a way I don't I don't know people 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 time. It can't hurt that much.

11:07I 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 like and if you're involved in the 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 research researcher or you believe, essentially it's a religion. So, like, you know, and like one of the things is very charismatic, especially people who've never had a religion, cuz all of a sudden that hole in your heart that was yearning for I don't know. I would say, you know, a a established religion, Judaism, Christianity, Islam is like being filled. And and all the answers are there. But it is very very successful at doing things that a

11:46company 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 It's not binary. It's not like You can't say they're not valuable. They're totally putting our business on steroids. Like without LLMs, nobody would be talking about our ontology, about Apollo managing secure exploits, about our ability to manage an enterprise essentially, uh turning all these companies into FDEs. These deploy codes, we love them cuz now every company wants to deploy code. You know how you do that? You re-platform on Palantir. And like and it actually works. It's not somebody with no taste who's never done enterprise, who has no earthly clue how

12:25these things work, who's done something else and is like just imagining they know how to do it, right? >> Yeah, is part is 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 uh 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. Um now there's maybe >> Oh, it's the wrong side. That's why. Flip it around.

Copying, clutter and market expansion

13:12>> There you go. There you go. There you go. Living the dream. Living the dream. >> I I trailed off, but uh but is part of it entertaining to you that it feels like you You Palantir has always been in some ways um not had competitors because there's nobody with Alex Karp running a company that is does what Palantir 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 guys >> 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

13:58people and let them run around their FTEs. Now, the 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 it's really interesting and and and great to have adoption. The pretty uh 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. >> Um 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

14:41who 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. Karp said it 25 years ago." >> [laughter] >> Uh and like but it's it's but so that kind of that part is super weird. But uh and like but um but it's but what really happens 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 people are basically doing it themselves. >> now that that's the largely it's They do

15:19two things. They increase the size of the market because de facto nobody wants to find it under in a 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. If like but have you noticed the people who are serious buy it? And then then it it change and then three it changes the standard. Now, what you're seeing now is like that times a 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 cuz like you don't

15:58have a playbook and now that we need you need things to shift and we're doing that. >> Um >> The the the central thing though that it's just cannot be developed it even if you understood the playbook a lot of these things are like appear like it's like, you know, LM code appears like Palantir code but isn't for a deployed thing appears like Palantir it isn't. Ontology you could a 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 3 years. And then 3 years we're in a completely different world. But there is this magical thing called taste. Like it in the end of the day the reason why you guys have done so well.

Taste as the differentiator

16:36It's 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 parroting something that sounds weird and that's all they're doing. And a lot of people very few people can do that. And it's the same thing like the enterprises that succeed there is a taste arbiter. And at Palantir we have taste 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

17:16org with taste? Who should be in charge? What data sets should come in? What What are What are the ways in which you protect What is What should you push into the public crowd? What should be on prem? What What should I mean, leaving aside the law and like wars war 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 cuz they don't have They They're popular with their friends. They don't They really don't understand how unpopular they are in enterprise. Like

17:50[laughter] 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 I I 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 Heidegger. 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. There the like partly because of this dynamic and it very self-inflicted because

18:27I I I tell you I can't name names. I called many of the titans of this world and and like started this 6 months ago like every couple days. We're going to be nationalized. >> them every couple days? >> Uh like some of them I'm like, "Yeah, we're going to be I mean, you know, it's like honestly they're like the batch They They They find me very entertaining." [clears throat] Like I'm not sure Like so they call cuz yeah, it's like it's like Yeah, this is going to be entertaining. >> to pick up. >> Yeah, so in any case, so I've been telling them for 6 months 6 We're going to be nationalized. >> Yeah. Yeah, you talked about >> We're going to be nationalized. And they're like, "Why would anyone nationalize? Never happened in America.

Nationalization risk

19:00It'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 in national 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 that 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 are All that stuff." So, the primary risk, honestly, to Palantir and to a lot of these other countries is And then,

19:35it's going to be nationalized before national is going to be regulated by people who don't understand understand this. And now, they'll tell you in private, "I'm working on this. I'm da da da and this and this lobbyist." It's like, "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 You don't like my idea

20:07of like we all do a week in the park. Great. Come up with some other idea. But, we can't have no idea. You know, and like and then they're like, "Well, I'm saying I I do not want to draft." Just to be explicit. They're like, "Oh, that's pro-war." Now, 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 how few wars we fight. It's actually the anti-war position. But, any case, disagree with everything. If you're 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

20:43sensible in the middle, you know, too many of us are chillaxing. Like, it Like, nationalization, it can't happen. It's America would never do that. Sleepwalking into And you guys have tendies to protect now. You [laughter] guys should be on the front line of this. Like, you got full Oh, I'm sorry. I have a I have a full-on very impressive corporate leader coming on. >> Yes. >> So, I got to I got to turn it down. >> Last Last question if we have time. How are your conversations going with Fortune 500 CEOs around headcount planning? There's been so many layoffs this last year that people were saying, "Hey, we're getting so much out of AI. We're able to, you know, cut back here or there." People inside tech often know like these

Headcount and upskilling

21:27maybe there's just reduction because there needs to be a reduction. The org got bloated. Maybe they do need to fund some AI initiatives. >> business model like they're getting out competed by someone else. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, the business just doesn't have momentum. But how are those conversations going? >> What does it look like? >> Like the like I talk By the way, I talk to Fortune 500 companies. I talk to unions. I talk to soldiers. I talk to fire If you upskill somebody, they're more valuable. And like all these whether it's people working on batteries, people driving trucks, people, corporate leaders, and again, this is where I think we have to be very careful to be more disciplined on the

22:01corporate side. Like if you run around saying AI allowed you to fire 2/3 of your workforce and you did it because maybe your competitor's kicking your ass. That could that is a really like you might as well just go sign up for Bernie Bernie 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 then 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. Well, that's not the world we're in. That fire is going to consume us. And what we see again, the

22:39war-fighting example is just the most neutral, not for everybody. But like the soldiers at the bottom have gotten much more valuable. Well, and 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 their high school vocationally trained. You see this everywhere. The 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

23:22people with taste all up and down the stack. In any case, I think this is time for me to >> this is time. >> We uh >> Thank you so much. >> Great to be here. >> Yeah, always fun.