Founder Profile
Alexander Karp
Last reviewed: October 2026 · By Swet Parvadiya
Who is Alexander Karp?
Alexander Karp is a founder of Palantir Technologies Inc., which was founded in 2003 with Peter Thiel, Joe Lonsdale, Stephen Cohen and Nathan Gettings.
- Company founded
- Palantir Technologies Inc.
- Founded
- 2003
- Co-founders
- Peter Thiel, Joe Lonsdale, Stephen Cohen and Nathan Gettings
Background
Alexander Karp was born in 1967 in New York and raised in Philadelphia. He attended Haverford College before earning a JD from Stanford Law School and completing a PhD in neoclassical social theory at Goethe University Frankfurt under sociologist Jürgen Habermas. Before Palantir, Karp managed a European hedge fund. He has no formal engineering background but was recruited by Thiel as CEO based on his intellectual rigor, comfort with philosophical ambiguity, and perceived ability to navigate complex institutional relationships, qualities Thiel believed were more important for Palantir's mission than conventional tech startup experience.
Founding Story
Alexander C. Karp has been Palantir's CEO and a director since 2004. He led the company through its September 2020 direct listing, its first GAAP-profitable year in 2023, S&P 500 inclusion in 2024, and the 2026 headquarters move to the Miami area. Karp often argues in public that Western technology companies should support democratic militaries, and he co-wrote the 2025 book 'The Technological Republic'. He is one of Palantir's largest individual shareholders and holds Class F voting shares. (Exact birth year remains publicly undisclosed).