Palantir CEO Alex Karp Says Executive Told Him to Stop Hyping Foundry
Palantir CEO Alex Karp recounted at Zeta Live '26 how an executive told him to stop talking up Foundry to employees, as the platform now drives the company's fastest-growing business with U.S. commercial revenue up 149% year over year.
Palantir CEO Alex Karp said one of his top executives once told him to stop telling employees how big the company's Foundry platform would become, a rare public glimpse into how the data-analytics firm's leadership manages internal expectations as its commercial business surges.
Speaking Thursday with Zeta Global CEO David Steinberg at Zeta Live '26, Zeta's annual AI marketing conference, Karp recalled that Ted Mabrey, who now runs Palantir's commercial business, delivered the message bluntly. «Please stop talking to Palantirians about how big Foundry is going to be,» Karp quoted Mabrey as saying. «It's depressing, and everybody knows you're out of touch.»
Karp said the constant hype was landing poorly with employees who had to hear him boast about Foundry repeatedly. The feedback stuck, at least for a while. «I had stopped talking to people for like six months,» Karp said.
The anecdote underscores the unusual position Foundry now occupies at Palantir. The platform pulls a company's data into one place and controls who can see it, and it sits at the center of Palantir's fastest-growing business. In the second quarter, U.S. commercial revenue grew 149% year over year to $764 million, according to the company's earnings release. Palantir raised its full-year U.S. commercial revenue guidance to more than $3.4 billion, a growth rate of at least 134%. After those results, Karp told investors that «for the first time people believe us.»
Zeta Global is among the companies building on Foundry. In June, the two firms announced a deal under which Zeta's Data Cloud will be rebuilt on Palantir's platform. Steinberg told Adweek the seven-year partnership would bring in «over $100 million a year in sales» within «the next year or so.»
During the talk, Karp explained that getting Palantir to its current position required plenty of convincing because investors did not understand the business. He said the company struggled to raise money in its early years because it refused to build software the way investors wanted. «Normal software is built to force you to adopt something that's parasitic,» he said. «They take every one of those things, turn it into a commodity, and sell it to everyone else.»
According to Karp, venture capitalists wanted to hear that clients would be unhappy but unable to leave. «'Sticky' is a metaphor for parasitic,» he said. «I get your data. I get it into something you can't get rid of. The thing turns into something I can sell to everybody else.» When he pitched making special operators «more lethal» and bringing them home, Karp said, investors asked, «But where's the parasite?»
He said Palantir was also mocked for sending engineers to work inside client companies, a model it calls forward-deployed engineering. That approach has since become one of the fastest-growing jobs in Silicon Valley. Steinberg said Zeta has copied it. «We pivoted a huge part of our business to follow you guys on this because it's so freaking efficient,» he said.
Karp said Palantir has about 4,500 employees and is «not everyone's cup of tea.» Some of its best references, he said, come from former staff who left after «another crazy lecture from Karp» and later wanted to return. In March, Mabrey publicly called on «former hobbits» to return to «the Shire,» making more references to its namesake from the Lord of the Rings.
Also during the AI-focused lecture, Karp argued the technology has changed what poor execution costs a business. In the past, a second-rate software rollout cost a company time and money but rarely sank it, since a firm with a strong moat could get by. He used defense as an example. A German government will buy a German company's missile «even if it's B minus because it flies and it's German,» he said. But a missile that cannot hit targets against Russian weapons is no longer good enough, and getting it there now depends on an AI application layer. «Your B-minus missile is a triple-plus with this, and your A-plus missile is useless,» he said. «So that's just binary.»
He said the same logic applies to every company. Asked what one decision the CEOs in the room should make, Karp told them to identify what makes their business special, get full visibility from the factory floor to the cost of goods, and use AI to strengthen it without letting a model company or a rival learn how it works. «If your person down the street gets it right, even if they're inferior to you, just like the missile, they will outperform you,» Karp said.
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