- Palantir CEO Alex Karp may have three degrees to his name—but he’s fed up with higher education. The billionaire took a shot at elite universities, including Harvard and Yale, during his AI firm’s earnings call on Monday, saying degrees don’t matter once you land at Palantir: “This is by far the best credential in tech. If you come to Palantir, your career is set.”
With Gen Z facing an uphill battle in today’s job market, and many facing mounds of student loan debt, a growing number of young people have conceded that pursuing a degree may have been a worthless endeavor—and some business leaders are agreeing.
In fact, top employers today aren’t “even talking about degrees” anymore, the Great Place to Work CEO Michael Bush, previously told Fortune. “They’re talking about skills.”
Now Alex Karp, the CEO of Palantir, is the latest exec to publicly question the value of traditional schooling.
“If you did not go to school, or you went to a school that’s not that great, or you went to Harvard or Princeton or Yale, once you come to Palantir, you’re a Palantirian—no one cares about the other stuff,” Karp said during Monday’s earnings call.
The 57-year-old added that his company is building a new credential “separate from class or background.”
“This is by far the best credential in tech. If you come to Palantir, your career is set,” he said.
Palantir’s hot streak is thanks to workers who want to ‘bend the arc of history’
Palantir pulled in a record $1 billion in revenue last quarter, or 48% year-over-year. The AI analytics company’s stock is now up nearly 600% over the past year, with its market cap rising $12 billion yesterday alone. As of publication, its market cap was around $430 billion.
And according to Karp, the secret to their rise hasn’t been luring workers with a bougie headquarters or scooping up Ivy League talent—it’s bringing together a workforce that isn’t prideful of their fancy college degree, or lack thereof.
It’s a feeling echoed by Shyam Sankar, Palantir’s chief technology officer who just recently joined the billionaires club thanks to the recent increase in company value.
“We are able to attract and retain and motivate people who actually want to bend the arc of history here, work on the problems that drive outcomes,” Sankar said on the earnings call.
Palantir’s disdain for existing methods of education and talent development goes beyond just talk. Karp and fellow Palantir cofounders Peter Thiel and Joe Lonsdale have been supporters of the University of Austin, a new four-year school that prides itself on being centered around free speech and being “anti-woke.”
Fortune reached out to Palantir for comment.
Palantir wants to attract young talent—but also cut its workforce
Palantir is currently hiring for dozens of roles across the company, including in product development and U.S. government roles—alongside multiple positions specifically for interns and new graduates.
This past spring, the company also notably established the Meritocracy Fellowship, a four-month, paid internship for high school graduates who may be having second thoughts about higher education. Program admission is solely based on “merit and academic excellence,” but applicants still need Ivy League-level test scores to qualify. This includes at least a 1460 on the SAT or a 33 on the ACT, which are both above their respective 98th percentiles.
According to Karp, the internship was created in direct response to the “shortcomings of university admissions.”
“Opaque admissions standards at many American universities have displaced meritocracy and excellence,” the Palantir posting said. “As a result, qualified students are being denied an education based on subjective and shallow criteria. Absent meritocracy, campuses have become breeding grounds for extremism and chaos.”
“Everything you learned at your school and college about how the world works is intellectually incorrect,” Karp added to CNBC in February.
Successful interns will be interviewed for full-time roles. “Skip the debt,” the posting read. “Skip the indoctrination. Get the Palantir Degree.”
However, this young talent may be hired just to build programs that will eventually lead to their replacement by AI. Karp admitted this week that he hopes to reduce his workforce by 500 employees.
“We’re planning to grow our revenue … while decreasing our number of people,” Karp told CNBC this week. “This is a crazy, efficient revolution. The goal is to get 10x revenue and have 3,600 people. We have now 4,100.”
