- Palantir’s stock surge—over 600% in one year, before this week’s slide—has made its CEO Alex Karp a wealthy man. Karp sold nearly $2 billion worth of company shares last year, with the bulk of sales taking place in a single month around the presidential election.
Defense contractor Palantir has been one of the hottest stocks of this political cycle. Before this week’s stock slide, Palantir’s value has shot up over 600% since the start of last year. And CEO Alex Karp has profited handsomely from the surge.
Karp has sold 38 million shares of Palantir since the start of 2024, at a value of $1.88 billion, according to data from Washington Service, an investment data provider. Most of that value—$1.4 billion—came from the sale of 25 million shares in the weeks surrounding the 2024 presidential election. Another 9 million shares were sold between Sept. 13 and 17 last year for a value of $325.6 million.
Karp also plans to sell up to 9,975,000 shares of the company this year, Barron’s reported, citing securities filings. At the current share price of just over $101, the sale would net over $1 billion.
The previous and future sales are part of a 10b5-1 trading plan, which company executives or board members use to pre-plan transactions in company stock which are then carried out without the exec’s involvement.
Palantir did not respond to a request for comment.
The Palantir co-founder had an unusual route to heading a defense contractor, studying philosophy after college before launching Palantir with a group of Stanford graduates in 2004. The company, initially intended to be a fraud-detection tool, was bankrolled by PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel, and later by the venture-capital division of the Central Intelligence Agency, the Wall Street Journal reported.
Karp has set himself apart from the conservative views of his co-founder, describing himself variously as a “socialist” and “progressive but not woke.” Thiel is the chairman of the board at Palantir, a role he has held since 2003. (Thiel, who currently holds just over 4% of the company’s shares, sold 48 million shares last year, at a value of $1.5 billion). Karp threw his support behind former Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election, and complained that Thiel’s vocal backing of Trump “made it harder to get things done.”
Palantir’s work with Immigration and Customs Enforcement during the first Trump administration, which included identifying immigrants in the country illegally, garnered pushback from employees and others who were concerned that the software was being used in ways that violated human rights.
Karp has said that Palantir does not work with the division of ICE that carries out deportations, but has otherwise defended the company’s work with the government. In an Atlantic essay this month, Karp writes that Palantir “serves our most significant and vital needs, including those of U.S. defense and intelligence agencies, instead of merely catering to the consumer.”
Palantir has to date received $2.7 billion from the federal government, including $1.4 billion from the Department of Defense, according to federal spending data.
