Alex Karp

Alexander Caedmon Karp (born October 2, 1967) is billionaire businessman, and the co-founder and CEO of the software firm Palantir Technologies.

, his estimated net worth is US$1.9billion.

Alexander Caedmon Karp was born on October 2, 1967, in New York City, the son of a Jewish clinical pediatrician father and an African American artist mother, Karp was raised in Philadelphia and graduated from Central High School in 1985.

He has said he struggled with dyslexia from an early age.

Karp earned a bachelor's degree from Haverford College (Haverford, Pennsylvania) in 1989, a juris doctor (JD) degree from Stanford University in 1992, and a PhD degree in neoclassical social theory from Goethe University Frankfurt in 2002.

He was initially advised by Jürgen Habermas, but a disagreement regarding his dissertation topic led to him switching his adviser.

Karp's doctoral thesis, supervised by Karola Brede, was titled "Aggression in der Lebenswelt: Die Erweiterung des Parsonsschen Konzepts der Aggression durch die Beschreibung des Zusammenhangs von Jargon, Aggression und Kultur", which means "Aggression in the life-world: The extension of Parsons' concept of aggression by describing the connection between jargon, aggression, and culture."

Karp started his career as a research associate at the Sigmund Freud Institute in Frankfurt.

Karp has said he invested in startups and stocks after receiving an inheritance from his grandfather.

His success led him to found London-based money management firm Caedmon Group to manage the money of high-net-worth individuals who were interested in investing with him.

In 2004, along with Peter Thiel (who had been a classmate at Stanford) and others, he co-founded Palantir Technologies as CEO.

The New York Times ranked Karp the highest-paid CEO of a publicly traded company in 2020, the year the company went public, with compensation worth $1.1billion.

Karp has described himself as a socialist and a progressive, and said he voted for Hillary Clinton.

He espoused socialist views whilst at Stanford.

He has said that technology companies like Palantir have an obligation to support the U.S. military.

He has defended Palantir's contract with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) during the controversy over family separations, saying that while separations are "a really tough, complex, jarring moral issue," he favors "a fair but rigorous immigration policy".

He has said the U.S. government should have a strong hand in tech regulation and that western countries should dominate AI research.

Karp lives in Grafton County, New Hampshire.

Karp also owns a property in Palo Alto, California.

He is described as a wellness fanatic who swims, skis cross country, practices Qigong meditation and martial arts, and keeps Tai Chi swords in his offices.