TLDR
- Palantir CEO Alex Karp said Anthropic and other frontier AI labs don’t understand real enterprise deployment
- Karp claimed most of what Anthropic talks about publicly runs on Palantir’s platform
- PLTR stock was up 0.64% in premarket Thursday, trading around $131.04
- The stock is down 26.75% year to date and sits below all major moving averages
- Wall Street price targets range from $220 to $255, with multiple Buy ratings maintained
Palantir (PLTR) CEO Alex Karp used a CNBC interview this week to draw a hard line between what frontier AI labs do and what Palantir actually delivers inside enterprises.
Palantir Technologies Inc., PLTR
PLTR stock was up 0.64% in premarket Thursday, trading around $131.04. That comes after a rough stretch — the stock is down 14.43% over the past week and 26.75% year to date, well behind the S&P 500 over both periods.
Karp’s comments came as Anthropic moves closer to a U.S. IPO. The Claude maker filed on June 1 and was last valued at $965 billion post-money — more than double its $380 billion valuation from February.
Karp wasn’t backing down from the comparison. He said enterprise AI is about more than having a good model or smart engineers.
“It’s a real question that no one in enterprise factually is worried about,” he said, referring to whether Anthropic could replicate Palantir’s role.
His argument: AI model companies are solving “the simplest, easiest problems that sell tokens.” Palantir, he said, works where errors have real consequences — manufacturing, aerospace, defense.
“If you want to manufacture a car and you need a part or you want to send a rocket to the moon or you want to put a missile on your adversary’s head and bring home Americans safely, that stuff doesn’t ship,” Karp said.
He also called out a mentality he sees in the AI lab world — the idea that customer problems will simply dissolve as models get better. “Their basic vibe is we don’t have to solve your problem today because tomorrow you’re going to go away,” he said.
On Anthropic directly, he was pointed: “Most of the things they talk about in public are running on Palantir.”
AI’s Wealth Warning
Beyond the Anthropic jab, Karp raised a broader concern about what AI does to the economy.
He warned that AI could accelerate wealth concentration and spark political instability. “We’re going to have massive resources, but they’re going to disproportionately go to people who are already wealthy,” he said. “That is a political problem.”
He said the real issue isn’t just job losses — it’s that governments and businesses haven’t been honest about the scale of disruption coming.
PLTR Stock and Valuation
The technical picture for Palantir isn’t pretty right now. The stock trades below its 10, 50, 100, and 200-day moving averages — sitting nearly 18.6% below its 200-day SMA. A death cross formed in February, and MACD remains below its signal line.
Valuation is also a sticking point. PLTR trades at 90.24 times forward non-GAAP earnings — around 260% above the sector median.
Despite that, several Wall Street analysts are sticking with their bullish calls. BofA Securities maintains a Buy rating with a $255 price target. Wedbush holds its Outperform with a $230 target. Citi raised its target to $225, and Rosenblatt lifted theirs to $225 as well. Loop Capital reiterated a Buy at $220.
For context on the scale of opportunity: Gartner forecasts worldwide AI spending will hit $2.59 trillion in 2026. Palantir expects 2026 revenue of $7.65–$7.66 billion — about 1/339th of that total, after Q1 revenue jumped 39% year over year to $1.63 billion.
Key resistance sits at $149.50. Key support is at $128.50, near the lower end of the 52-week range of $122.68 to $207.52.
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