The career rise of billionaire Alex Karp, Palantir’s outspoken CEO

• Alex Karp pursued a Ph.D. and invested on behalf of wealthy European clients before founding Palantir.
• The secretive and controversial big-data company went public in 2020 and recently posted strong quarterly earnings.
• Karp is an outspoken CEO who hasn’t held back in defending the company against critics.

Alex Karp, longtime CEO of data mining company Palantir, is taking a victory lap on the heels of the company’s latest blowout earnings.

Palantir, which creates software to manage, analyze, and secure data, recently hit its highest stock price since going public in 2020 following a huge beat on Q3 earnings.

Karp, who has been CEO since 2004, is known as an unusual leader, even by Silicon Valley standards. He pursued a Ph.D. in philosophy before joining the startup and sometimes works from a barn.

Here’s how the 57-year-old Karp got his start, took the helm of the secretive startup, and built it into a multi-billion-dollar company.