Palantir CEO says outspoken pro-Israel views drove employees to quit

Palantir CEO Alex Karp said some employees at his software company quit because of his public support for Israel. And he expects to see more coming out the door.

“We lost employees. I’m sure we’re going to lose employees,” Karp said in an interview Wednesday on CNBC’s “Money Movers.” “If you have a position that doesn’t cost you to lose an employee, it’s not a position.”

Karp answered a question from host Sarah Eisen about staff turnover at the company as a result of her controversial positions.

Palantir, known for its work on defense and intelligence government contracts, provided its technology to support the Ukrainian and Israeli militaries in their respective wars. Israel has vowed to defeat Hamas after the Palestinian militant group’s October 7 uprising in southern Israel left nearly 1,200 dead. More than 30,000 people have been killed in Gaza since the war began, according to the Hamas-run health ministry there.

Karp said during Palantir’s earnings call last month that he was “extremely proud that after October 7, within weeks, we are on the ground and participating in operationally important 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 Israel’s defense ministry to supply the country with technology for its military efforts. In November, Karp reaffirmed the company’s support for the US and Israeli governments, declaring on an earnings call that “Palantir only supplies its products to Western allies.”

In Wednesday’s interview, Karp reiterated his pro-Israel views. Eisen referred to the company’s decision in October to run a full-page ad in The New York Times saying it “stands behind Israel.”

“We have a precedent in this culture where people have to speak up,” Karp said of how Palantir operates. He said that in his communications with the workforce, he doesn’t promise to “tell you anything you want to hear.”

“We’re going to come as close to telling you how we see the world as we’re allowed by law and ethics,” he said. “We do that externally, too.”

Last week, Palantir secured a $178.4 million contract with the US military 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 with conservative venture capitalists Peter Thiel and Joe Lonsdale, told CNBC. “It’s like, ‘Do you believe in the West? Do you believe that the West has created a superior way of life?’

Long before the latest crisis in Israel and Gaza, Karp has been active in speaking out on controversial social and political issues and has tried to show a clear contrast between his positions and the views more often held by people in San Francisco and Silicon Valley.

In 2020, Palantir moved its headquarters to Denver from Palo Alto, California. A year earlier, Karp told CNBC that the tech community had broken its social contract with America and criticized tech companies that refused to work with the federal government to keep the country safe.

“It’s a losing position,” Karp told Squawk Box in a 2019 interview from the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. “It is not understandable. It is not comprehensible to the common man. Academically not sustainable. And I’m very happy that 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 Ministry of Health there.