TLDR
- Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella says companies pay for AI twice — once with money, once with proprietary knowledge
- Palantir CEO Alex Karp warned on CNBC that AI firms are “stealing the weights and alpha” of enterprise customers
- Apple sued OpenAI on July 10 for alleged trade secret theft by former employees now working at OpenAI
- Palantir’s Ontology product is designed to let companies use AI without exposing their underlying data
- Former White House AI czar David Sacks backed Karp’s warnings, citing Anthropic expanding into customer verticals
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has backed up warnings from Palantir CEO Alex Karp about the hidden cost of using AI — your company’s own knowledge.
Nadella wrote in a recent blog post that businesses are effectively paying for AI twice. First with money, then with the proprietary data they must hand over to make the AI work properly.
“You essentially pay for intelligence twice, once with money, and again with something even more valuable: the proprietary knowledge you must reveal to make that intelligence useful,” Nadella wrote.
He added that AI models learn from the prompts employees write, the tools agents use, and the corrections people make when a model gets things wrong. Every correction, he said, becomes institutional knowledge — knowledge that flows to the model provider.
Karp’s CNBC Warning
Palantir CEO Alex Karp made similar points during a recent appearance on CNBC’s Squawk Box. His comments were blunt.
“I am paying for tokens that create no value. These people are stealing the weights and alpha of my business,” Karp said, describing frustration he hears from enterprise clients.
He also questioned the token pricing model itself. “If I can make you $1 billion tomorrow, wouldn’t I say I’ll make you $1 billion, and I want 30%? Why are they charging for tokens if it’s so valuable?”
Former White House AI czar David Sacks publicly supported Karp’s position. Sacks pointed to Anthropic launching products like Claude Design, Claude Code, and Claude Legal — moving directly into markets served by companies that were building on top of Anthropic’s own models.
Apple Sues OpenAI Over Alleged Theft
The warnings gained new weight when Apple filed a lawsuit on July 10 in a federal court in Northern California.
Apple alleges that former employees Chang Liu and Tang Yew Tan, now working at OpenAI, stole Apple’s trade secrets to help develop OpenAI’s consumer hardware.
The filing stated: “At every level, from members of its Technical Staff to its Chief Hardware Officer, and in coordination with business partners, OpenAI has been stealing Apple’s trade secrets and confidential information.”
OpenAI denied the claims. Spokesperson Drew Pusateri said: “We have no interest in other companies’ trade secrets.”
The lawsuit adds to OpenAI’s mounting problems. A previous leak of its audited financials, verified by the Financial Times, showed the company’s net loss grew from $5.09 billion in 2024 to $38.53 billion in 2025.
Palantir’s answer to the data exposure problem is its Ontology product. Karp says it lets companies use AI without exposing their data, preventing models from caching or replicating sensitive business information.
Palantir Technologies Inc., PLTR
Palantir stock is down over 26% year-to-date but still trades at 88 times non-GAAP forward earnings, well above the sector median of around 25 times.
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