Alex Karp, co-founder and CEO of Palantir, attends a meeting at the U.S. Capitol in Washington on October 18, 2023.
Jonathan Ernst | Reuters
and Palantir’s Shares plunged more than 11% this week despite a better-than-expected earnings report, and CEO Alex Karp took aim at investors betting on the software company.
Karp, who co-founded Palantir in 2003, gave a two-part interview on CNBC this week to explore short stocks. After ‘The Big Short’, investor Michael Varley reveals his bet on Palantir, NvidiaKarp on Tuesday accused short sellers of “market manipulation.”
He reiterated that message Friday in an interview with CNBC’s Sarah Eisen, once again trashing Berry’s bet on the stock.
“In order to get out of my position, I had to denigrate the best financials in history that were helping me as an investor (and) ordinary people on the battlefield, and ruin the entire economy,” Karp said.
Despite Palantir’s decline this week, the stock is up 135% in 2025, a 25x increase over the past three years, extending the rally and lifting the company’s market cap to more than $420 billion. While sales and profits are growing rapidly, its multiples are rising even faster, with the company’s stock currently trading at about 220 times forward earnings, a multiple comparable to Tesla’s stock price.
with Nvidia metaIn contrast, the forward price-to-earnings ratios are approximately 33 and 22, respectively.
In August, noted short seller Andrew Left of Citron Research called Palantir “disconnected from fundamentals and analysis” and said the stock should be priced at $40. Friday’s closing price was $177.93, as the stock rose on late gains.
Palantir, which builds analytical tools for large companies and government agencies, on Monday reported profit and sales that beat analysts’ expectations and also beat Wall Street forecasts.
However, the stock price fell about 8% following the news, and was down nearly 7% on Thursday. Mr. Karp told Mr. Eisen that the recent surge in Palantir’s stock price was not just on Wall Street.
“We provide venture results to individual investors,” he said.
Although Palantir has faced some pretty significant short interest in the past, relatively few investors are currently making big bets on Palantir. The short interest rate, or the percentage of outstanding shares sold short, peaked at more than 9% in September and now stands at just over 2%, the lowest level since the company went public in 2020.
Still, Karp is no stranger to criticizing doubters, previously telling CNBC that if you “don’t like the price,” you should “get out.”
“There’s no need to buy our stock,” Mr. Karp said in May, after the company’s stock price plummeted following the company’s earnings report.
“We are happy,” he said. “We’re going to partner with the best people in the world and get an edge. You can and don’t have to be together.”
The company has also faced backlash for its work with government agencies such as U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and Karp acknowledged that his strong pro-Israel stance led some employees to quit.
Loud CEOs were particularly vocal this week. On Monday’s earnings call, he questioned how happy people who didn’t invest in the company were, telling them to “buy some popcorn.”
And on CNBC, investors focused much of their anger on Barry after revealing short positions in Palantir and Nvidia.
“The two companies that he’s shorting are making all the money, which is very strange,” Karp told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” on Tuesday. “The idea that Chip and Ontology are things you want to short is batshit…crazy.”
WATCH: Palantir CEO Karp talks about short selling
