Palantir CEO Alex Karp said some staffers at his software company have exited due to his public support for Israel. And he expects to see more walk out the door.
“We’ve lost employees. I’m sure we’ll lose employees,” Karp said in an interview Wednesday with CNBC’s “Money Movers.” “If you have a position that does not cost you ever to lose an employee, it’s not a position.”
Karp was responding to a question from anchor Sara Eisen about personnel turnover at the company resulting from its controversial stances.
Palantir, known for its government contract work in defense and intelligence, has provided its technology to support the Ukrainian and Israeli militaries in their respective wars. Israel has vowed to defeat Hamas following the Palestinian militant group’s rampage on Oct. 7 in southern Israel that killed nearly 1,200 people. More than 30,000 people have been killed in Gaza since the war began, according to the Hamas-run Health Ministry there.
Karp said on Palantir’s earnings call last month he was “exceedingly proud that after Oct. 7, within weeks, we are on the ground and we are involved in operationally crucial operations in Israel.”
Palantir held its first board meeting of the year in Tel Aviv, Israel, in January, after which the company agreed to a “strategic partnership” with the Israeli Ministry of Defense to supply the country with technology for its military efforts. In November, Karp asserted the company’s support of the U.S. government and Israel, declaring on an earnings call that “Palantir only supplies its products to Western allies.”
In Wednesday’s interview, Karp reaffirmed his pro-Israel views. Eisen referenced the company’s decision in October to take out a full-page ad in The New York Times, stating it “stands with Israel.”
Peter Thiel, co-founder and chairman of Palantir Technologies Inc., speaks during a news conference in Tokyo, Japan, on Monday, Nov. 18, 2019.
Kiyoshi Ota | Bloomberg | Getty Images
“We have a precedent in this culture where people are supposed to speak up,” Karp said, regarding the way Palantir operates. He said that in his communications to his workforce, he doesn’t promise to “tell you something you want to hear.”
“We’re going to get as close to telling you how we see the world as we’re legally and ethically allowed to,” he said. “We also do this externally.”
Last week, Palantir secured a $178.4 million contract with the U.S. Army to develop 10 artificial intelligence-powered ground stations, part of a project called Tactical Intelligence Targeting Access Node, or TITAN.
“From my perspective, it’s not just about Israel,” Karp, who co-founded Palantir alongside conservative venture capitalists Peter Thiel and Joe Lonsdale, told CNBC. “It’s like, ‘Do you believe in the West? Do you believe the West has created a superior way of living?'”
Long before the latest crisis in Israel and Gaza, Karp has been vocal on controversial social and political issues, and has attempted to show a clear contrast between his positions and the views more commonly held by people in San Francisco and Silicon Valley.
In 2020, Palantir relocated its headquarters to Denver from Palo Alto, California. A year earlier, Karp told CNBC the technology community had breached its social contract with America, and blasted tech companies that refuse to work with the federal government to keep the country safe.
“That is a loser position,” Karp said in a 2019 interview on “Squawk Box” from the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. “It is not intelligible. It is not intelligible to the average person. It’s academically not sustainable. And I am very happy we’re not on that side of the debate.”
Clarification: This article has been updated to clarify that more than 30,000 people have been killed in Gaza since the war began, according to the Hamas-run Health Ministry there.
Paxton sued Google in 2022 for allegedly unlawfully tracking and collecting the private data of users.
The attorney general said the settlement, which covers allegations in two separate lawsuits against the search engine and app giant, dwarfed all past settlements by other states with Google for similar data privacy violations.
Google’s settlement comes nearly 10 months after Paxton obtained a $1.4 billion settlement for Texas from Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, to resolve claims of unauthorized use of biometric data by users of those popular social media platforms.
“In Texas, Big Tech is not above the law,” Paxton said in a statement on Friday.
“For years, Google secretly tracked people’s movements, private searches, and even their voiceprints and facial geometry through their products and services. I fought back and won,” said Paxton.
“This $1.375 billion settlement is a major win for Texans’ privacy and tells companies that they will pay for abusing our trust.”
Google spokesman Jose Castaneda said the company did not admit any wrongdoing or liability in the settlement, which involves allegations related to the Chrome browser’s incognito setting, disclosures related to location history on the Google Maps app, and biometric claims related to Google Photo.
Castaneda said Google does not have to make any changes to products in connection with the settlement and that all of the policy changes that the company made in connection with the allegations were previously announced or implemented.
“This settles a raft of old claims, many of which have already been resolved elsewhere, concerning product policies we have long since changed,” Castaneda said.
“We are pleased to put them behind us, and we will continue to build robust privacy controls into our services.”
Virtual care company Omada Health filed for an IPO on Friday, the latest digital health company that’s signaled its intent to hit the public markets despite a turbulent economy.
Founded in 2012, Omada offers virtual care programs to support patients with chronic conditions like prediabetes, diabetes and hypertension. The company describes its approach as a “between-visit care model” that is complementary to the broader health-care ecosystem, according to its prospectus.
Revenue increased 57% in the first quarter to $55 million, up from $35.1 million during the same period last year, the filing said. The San Francisco-based company generated $169.8 million in revenue during 2024, up 38% from $122.8 million the previous year.
Omada’s net loss narrowed to $9.4 million during its first quarter from $19 million during the same period last year. It reported a net loss of $47.1 million in 2024, compared to a $67.5 million net loss during 2023.
The IPO market has been largely dormant across the tech sector for the past three years, and within digital health, it’s been almost completely dead. After President Donald Trump announced a sweeping tariff policy that plunged U.S. markets into turmoil last month, taking a company public is an even riskier endeavor. Online lender Klarna delayed its long-anticipated IPO, as did ticket marketplace StubHub.
But Omada Health isn’t the first digital health company to file for its public market debut this year. Virtual physical therapy startup Hinge Health filed its prospectus in March, and provided an update with its first-quarter earnings on Monday, a signal to investors that it’s looking to forge ahead.
Omada contracts with employers, and the company said it works with more than 2,000 customers and supports 679,000 members as of March 31. More than 156 million Americans suffer from at least one chronic condition, so there is a significant market opportunity, according to the company’s filing.
In 2022, Omada announced a $192 million funding round that pushed its valuation above $1 billion. U.S. Venture Partners, Andreessen Horowitz and Fidelity’s FMR LLC are the largest outside shareholders in the company, each owning between 9% and 10% of the stock.
“To our prospective shareholders, thank you for learning more about Omada. I invite you join our journey,” Omada co-founder and CEO Sean Duffy said in the filing. “In front of us is a unique chance to build a promising and successful business while truly changing lives.”
Liz Reid, vice president, search, Google speaks during an event in New Delhi on December 19, 2022.
Sajjad Hussain | AFP | Getty Images
Testimony in Google‘s antitrust search remedies trial that wrapped hearings Friday shows how the company is calculating possible changes proposed by the Department of Justice.
Google head of search Liz Reid testified in court Tuesday that the company would need to divert between 1,000 and 2,000 employees, roughly 20% of Google’s search organization, to carry out some of the proposed remedies, a source with knowledge of the proceedings confirmed.
The testimony comes during the final days of the remedies trial, which will determine what penalties should be taken against Google after a judge last year ruled the company has held an illegal monopoly in its core market of internet search.
The DOJ, which filed the original antitrust suit and proposed remedies, asked the judge to force Google to share its data used for generating search results, such as click data. It also asked for the company to remove the use of “compelled syndication,” which refers to the practice of making certain deals with companies to ensure its search engine remains the default choice in browsers and smartphones.
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The DOJ also proposed the company divest its Chrome browser but that was not included in Reid’s initial calculation, the source confirmed.
Reid on Tuesday said Google’s proprietary “Knowledge Graph” database, which it uses to surface search results, contains more than 500 billion facts, according to the source, and that Google has invested more than $20 billion in engineering costs and content acquisition over more than a decade.
“People ask Google questions they wouldn’t ask anyone else,” she said, according to the source.
Reid echoed Google’s argument that sharing its data would create privacy risks, the source confirmed.
Closing arguments for the search remedies trial will take place May 29th and 30th, followed by the judge’s decision expected in August.
The company faces a separate remedies trial for its advertising tech business, which is scheduled to begin Sept. 22.