Palantir lost money for seventeen years, was mocked by Silicon Valley as a government contractor in a hoodie, and was run by a philosophy PhD who had never written a line of code. Then its shares rose more than tenfold and Alex Karp became the loudest man in the software industry. This episode follows the whole story: the Frankfurt thesis, the friendship with Peter Thiel built on arguing, the PayPal fraud software that became a spy tool, the CIA's venture fund when nobody else would invest, the engineers sent to sit with soldiers and analysts, the lawsuit against the US Army, the Denver move, the direct listing, the slide to six dollars, and the artificial intelligence boom that finally needed exactly what the company had built.
It also covers the civil liberties objections, the valuation argument, and Karp himself. Founder Stories tells the story of one founder per episode, told plainly and in order.
