Watch CNBC's full Interview with Palantir CEO Alex Karp at Davos

Alex thank you for doing this thank you very so this was a very big year for you we got a number of huge contracts this is true we did very well so what happened well you know I guess the longer version is about five years ago we looked at our product offering and decided to rebuild our core offering for the government start with a commercial product which can be used commercial and government and revitalize our strategy of going to market and we saw the results last year but dramatically this year and so that ended up with two very very large contracts that are public an umber of contracts that are not public and a mission impact that I think we're very proud of and just so we're clear that's least publicly 1.5 billion dollars in new contracts government that's true can you speak about those contracts well two of them are public one of them is to centrally give the DoD a global operating system in software with a you know on a timeline that otherwise wouldn't be realistic so transform the way decisions are made inside what amounts to the largest data organization in the world in a timeline that is very very aggressive another is a little more classified and and we're we're just pouncing forward the core mission of our company always was to make the West especially America the strongest in the world the strong has ever been and for the sake of global peace and prosperity and we feel like this year we really showed what that would mean how much of the business today do you believe is being driven by the government work versus the corporate work well in the last couple years most of our revenue has been commercial most of our clients have been government the government our government work inside and outside of America is so strong because of how it compounds that it's gone from being 6040 commercial government to probably 50/50 the mission impact of our government work is the thing we are obviously the most proud of and how has the past year this sort of larger geopolitical conversation around decoupling what does that meant to the business well you know decoupling and and and strict regulation is a bonanza for pound here when we looked at what date which should be done with data fifteen years ago most people weren't thinking about it and instead of thinking of it this simplistic problem of aggregation of data we thought about data as how can you aggregate and disaggregate disaggregation meaning how can you have silos while at the same time being able to call up at a granular level what you're allowed to see in that silo and what does that mean at a political level as countries and States both need to have a horizontal view but want to have a more vertical view they need a sought-for platform that can allow say two countries to work together without sharing all the information or two jurisdictions to work together or two companies that for example a global company will have data stores in America and data stores in Europe where only a subset can be shared in our architecture is liz is quite frankly built to deal with that and was built 15 years ago to deal with that and revitalized five years ago so this decouple these these of this decoupling world combined with regulation quite frankly also combined with deep skepticism towards consumer in the valley is very much helping us I want to get to the deep skepticism of the valley in just a moment but I want to ask you specifically about the protests this year about your work price and that ice contract and what it's meant for your business we as everyone who's followed our company knows we take what amounts to strong but often controversial positions a position of our company from the beginning was we were going to make America and the West stronger and safer by integrating world-class software into what amounted to legacy data systems one of our contracts is at ice and there's and we started this contract under Obama and obviously there's there's a lot of concern legitimate concern about what happens on our border how it happens and what is the enforcement look like certainly it's a de minimis part of our work finding people in our country who are undocumented but it's a legitimate complex issue my personal position is we acknowledge the complexity the people protesting whom I respect should also announce a complexity is an issue that is controversial and complex enough that the small island in Silicon Valley that would love to decide what you eat how you eat and and monetize all your data should not also decide who lives under country and on what your conditions there are elections there are rules they should be enforced a transfer of one presidency another and the view of Silicon Valley that we get to decide should not be the way these things are decided of course this led to protests my house has been protested for many months almost every day our office isn't protested many Palantir Ian's who do not just follow what I say but are critical people protested against it internally some people were so upset by it that they left these are very hard decisions I respect the people that had to decide they can't be involved in this but we have a position and are you comfortable though with the Trump administration's approach on the border look everybody who knows me personally like you knows that I've been a card-carrying progressive my whole life my family is progressive I have a degree in what amounts to progressive thought obviously there are many things I would do differently and I've never stopped being critical of this administration I'm not planning to vote for this administration so there are things I do differently the core issue though is who decides and let me to the people who want to reduce the complexity it's commonly known that our software is used in operational context at work do you really think the warfighter is going to trust a software company that pulls the plug because something becomes controversial with their life currently when you're a warfighter your life depends on your software they will never trust you if you pull the plug just because you're unpopular make decisions about which government allies to work with if if they are in the West broadly defined and if the rule of law has a check and balance system we work within the context of the law if it are if it's other countries they have to either be allied with America or we give them a special way of deciding what we're going to do that concrete if you're Germany France America Sweden Japan it's a very quick process if you're a country say that's not one of them we want to know what are you doing this software how are you doing it and we make it very clear they're checks and balances I'll make it more complicated yeah so Saudi Arabia clearly considered an ally of this country the administration's made that very very clear and yet just over the past 48 hours there's been a huge question about whether the leader of that country was using malware in jeff bezos 'as well first of all we meet we've always made the decision not to be involved in intrusive software so offensive attacks inside the cyber context precisely because contest because in the cyber context intrusive infiltrations are are questionable often and a done almost ubiquitously but we in that if we were involved in that country and in those things this would be a very serious discussion it happens we're not involved and so it's not a serious discussion but we we do we do talk very seriously and with consequences with our non Western allies it's plausible that he sent malware like well I don't do business I don't I don't know the details I do know that it's plausible that a nation-state can hack your phone it fairly quickly any phone let me ask you a separate question you have reportedly taken over project maven from Google which was a very controversial program in Silicon Valley well I can't discuss the specifics of a classified prop program but I can't say if this were true I'd be very proud and I have to say you know it's like now many people have criticized Google my version of it is AI military military I will determine our lives the lives of your kid this is a zero-sum thing the country with the most important AI most powerful AI will determine the rules that country should be either us or a Western country that doesn't mean your ante our adversaries it just means would you rather have them with the equivalent of tech nuclear arms or us if a company decides not to work with the US government on this I think we all need to understand why and they need to guarantee they're not implicitly or tacitly transmitted this program will quite literally determine who is standing here and what they're saying in five years and where are we to be involved with it I would be enormous ly proud when you look at the capabilities of China and what they're doing technologically relative to where we are and where you are how do you see them well there's the thing if America brings its a game and software what is America the world's best at what are we so good at that it scares everybody what is it what is the community that there isn't it there second to none in the world software so if we bring our AGame we will win if we bring our d+ game because most people in that in the valley live on an island where this seems like a questionable project they will win our a game wins our c game loses we've had low conversations about privacy over the years there is a new debate of about apples phone and whether that phone should be opened in the context of terrorism where do you stand well first of all the government we should I believe that the government should decide things in with the checks and balances involved in the court the government needs to provide clear rules tech companies need to obey those rules if there's a problem with those rules we should go to court and I think all companies should should basically get part of the problem is we need a clear codex of what you're allowed to do under what context when data can be encrypted and when it shouldn't I think we're gonna reach the consensus around this but quite frankly partly for the wrong reason and the consumer Internet companies this is not Apple but the other ones have basically decided we're living on an island and the island is so far removed from what's called the United States in every way culturally linguistically in the normative ways that we'd rather be regulated as a foreign island then be part of the United States proper and that's the core problem you are part of the United States proper regulation is part of the problem part of the problem is there are you are part of a larger whole that made your company possible that is protecting you against tariffs that's protecting you against regulation that is allowing you to build your company you cannot create an island called Palo Alto Island that is only subject to regulation much like a Canton system but Silicon Valley really wants is the canton of Palo Alto we don't have a Pinto system in America we've United States of America not the United States have a Kant on one of which is Palo Alto that must change let me pivot real quick there has been so much speculation for so many years right here in Davos and elsewhere about when your company may go public how do you think about it now especially in the context of the success or dare I say failures of some of the the IPOs took place over the last year well what I can tell you is in the past we talked about externally and internally we said look we're going to defer now we've told the company we are going to IPO and we are preparing internally IPO I think we will we will do very well in that context and when you look though at some of the other offerings well this is just saying you can basically look at this last 10 years as a the capable way of look at tech is that it was a bull market the way we look at a pound here have looked at it for the last 10 years is it's a bull market for monopolistic companies in a bear market for everyone else and if you look at it that way you don't finance growth with the sweet vapors of foreign venture funds you focus on growth with high-quality revenue that's what we've done for the last ten years we've told people internally that IPO will happen and you'll see the results okay thank you Alex appreciate it take care thank you so much you you

Channel: CNBC Television

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Keywords: Squawk Box U.S., CNBC, business news, finance stock, stock market, news channel, news station, breaking news, us news, world news, cable, cable news, finance news, money, money tips, financial news, stock market news, stocks, Davos World Economic Forum 2020, World Economic Forum 2020, wef 2020, wef davos 2020, economic forum, davos Economic Forum, Davos Switzerland, Palantir CEO Alex Karp cnbc interview

Id: MeL4BWVk5-k

Length: 11min 40sec (700 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 23 2020