Alex Karp’s net worth: From broke academic to billionaire Palantir CEO
https://www.thestreet.com/personalit...karp-net-worth
Palantir Technologies rakes in billions of dollars in revenue analyzing data for the U.S. government and its allies, as well as for large corporations. The company has helped track down terrorists, and at the same time, helps companies combat fraudulent transactions.
Palantir’s stock price rose almost 20-fold between late 2022 and early 2025, and that has helped lift the net worth of its founders.
Alex Karp, Palantir’s current CEO and one of its five cofounders, was a broke academic in the early 2000s and is now a billionaire and CEO of Palantir.
Here’s how much he’s worth in 2025 and how he spends his money.
Alex Karp has a net worth of $10.2 billion as of mid-February 2025, according to Forbes.
His wealth largely comes from his shares in Palantir, though, so it changes frequently by massive amounts any time the company’s stock experiences notable volatility. His 4.3% stake in Palantir was valued at $11.7 billion as of mid-February 2025.
Who is Alex Karp?
Alexander C. Karp was born in New York City in 1967. He grew up in Philadelphia, where he attended Central High School, of which notable alumni include the linguist Noam Chomsky.
Despite his dyslexia, Karp graduated with a bachelor’s degree in philosophy from Haverford College in 1989, and a J.D. from Stanford University (where he met fellow entrepreneur Peter Thiel) in 1992.
A fluent German speaker, Karp also earned a Ph.D. in neoclassical social philosophy from Goethe University in Germany in 2002. After his postgraduate studies, Karp founded Palantir Technologies with Thiel and former PayPal software engineers in 2003.
How did Alex Karp start Palantir?
Shortly after graduating from Goethe, Karp worked at the Sigmund Freud Institute but left to return to America to pursue opportunities that would not leave him as a broke academic. Karp said in a 2009 interview with Charlie Rose that he was better at making money than he was at getting paid as a worker, so he helped start businesses with like-minded individuals with “academic proclivities” and were interested in business.
Karp reconnected with Peter Thiel, his Stanford law classmate, and developed a belief that, after 9/11, Silicon Valley should be involved in fighting terrorism and protecting civil liberties. By using data mining strategies similar to those employed at PayPal (which was founded by Thiel and Elon Musk, among others), Karp hoped to develop an “approach [that] would be very effective in this context” (of fighting terrorism).
Karp, Thiel, and a few former PayPal software engineers started Palantir in 2003 — with money from Thiel who made a fortune from his stake sale in PayPal — and $2 million in startup capital from the Central Intelligence Agency’s venture capital arm In-Q-Tel. Palantir expanded from working with the military and foreign governments friendly to the West to commercial operations with large corporations.
Thiel made Karp serve as the face of Palantir by letting him become CEO in 2005, while Thiel stepped back and pursued other opportunities.
As President Trump serves a second term, and the use of artificial intelligence (AI) is on the rise, investors in Palantir view the company as essential in boosting the military’s strength as well as aiding the nation’s intelligence agencies in combating criminal and terror activity.
How did Palantir Technologies get its name?
Karp said that Palantir was named after the seeing stones mentioned in the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy that allowed characters like Sauron and Saruman to communicate with each other and remotely view events in the past and present.
his metaphor proved to be apt, as Palantir’s technologies allow users to see into — and extract actionable insights from — large databases while still protecting certain information in those databases from unauthorized access.
“The basic idea is that the West or Western values will win if we in the West believe what we're doing,” Karp told Rose. “There's no point in having a war on terrorism if civil liberties are being undermined to the extent that we aren't willing to fight that war and this is particularly true in the cyber context.”
How does Alex Karp spend his money?
Karp is an avid cross-country skier and has homes in various mountainous regions around the world. In a 2024 interview with The New York Times, when asked about having 10 houses from Alaska to Vermont and from Norway to New Hampshire, he responded by referring to the homes as “10 cross-country ski huts.” Aside from skiing, Karp spends his time outside of work practicing tai chi and shooting firearms at practice ranges.
Karp has donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to politicians of both the Democratic and Republican Parties, as well as independents, in their run for office. Politicians he has supported include U.S. Senator John Fetterman of Pennsylvania and Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, who now serves as the U.S. Secretary of State.
Cofounders Karp and Thiel have been friends for decades, but they are considered to be somewhat opposite of one another on the political spectrum. While Thiel takes a conservative stance, Karp told the Times that he was “progressive.”