So let me get this straight. Alex Karp, the CEO of Palantir, is watching his company’s stock go on a three-year, 25-fold tear that would make a dot-com bubble investor blush, and his reaction to one bad week is to go on national television and cry about "market manipulation"?
Give me a break.
This is the kind of thin-skinned, self-serving whining you expect from someone who just lost their fantasy football league, not the CEO of a $420 billion company. His stock drops a measly 11%—after rising 135% this year alone—and suddenly the sky is falling and a legendary short seller like Michael Burry is trying to "screw the whole economy." The outburst was widely reported, as the Palantir CEO Karp twice slams short sellers as stock suffers worst week since April.
The whole economy? Really? Karp’s performance is so detached from reality, it’s almost performance art. He’s standing on a mountain of cash, pointing at a guy in the valley with a pair of binoculars, and screaming that he’s being attacked. It’s pathetic. No, 'pathetic' doesn't cover it—this is a five-alarm bonfire of executive ego.
A Price Tag Built on Hype, Not Reality
Let’s talk about the numbers, because that’s where this whole narrative completely falls apart. Karp is acting like short sellers are attacking some salt-of-the-earth, fundamentally sound business. But Palantir trades at 220 times forward earnings.
Two hundred and twenty.
That’s not a valuation; it’s a typo. It’s a number you get when you let a cat walk across the keyboard. For context, Nvidia—the company literally powering the entire AI revolution—trades at 33 times forward earnings. Meta is at 22. Palantir's stock isn't a stock; it's a belief system. It’s a Jenga tower built with blocks of pure hype, stacked on a table doused in rocket fuel. The short sellers aren’t saboteurs; they’re just the first people brave enough to walk over and gently tap a block to see if the whole thing is even real. And offcourse, Karp is screaming at them to stop touching his masterpiece.
When Andrew Left of Citron Research says the stock should be priced at $40 instead of its current $178, he's not being a villain. He’s being an accountant. He's looking at the fundamentals and saying what anyone without a vested interest can see: the price is completely unmoored from the business itself. Is Karp genuinely trying to protect the "average person" who invested, or is he just terrified that someone might finally check his math?
The Cult of the CEO
I’ve seen this movie before. A charismatic founder builds a company with a cult-like following, the stock goes parabolic, and suddenly the CEO starts to believe his own PR. He’s not just a guy running a software company anymore; he’s a visionary, a protector of the common man, a warrior fighting evil short sellers on the battlefield of the free market. It’s exhausting. And it always ends the same way.
Karp’s claim that Burry had to "besmirch the best financials ever" is just... wild. The financials are fine, sure. Revenue is growing. But the stock has outrun the reality of the business by a country mile. Blaming the people who point that out is like getting mad at the weatherman for telling you a hurricane is coming. Don't they know you had a picnic planned?
The real question isn't whether short sellers are manipulating the market. The question is, what happens when the rocket fuel runs out? When the belief starts to waver and people start looking at that 220x multiple and ask themselves, "What the hell am I actually paying for?" Karp can blame Burry and Left all he wants, but they aren't the ones who built this impossibly tall tower. They’re just reminding everyone that gravity still exists.
This Isn't a Stock, It's a Religion
At the end of the day, Alex Karp isn't mad that someone is betting against his company. He's mad that someone is committing heresy. He’s the high priest of the Church of Palantir, and the short sellers are the apostates questioning the faith. This isn't about financials or fundamentals anymore. It’s a test of who can shout the loudest, and for a guy with a $420 billion megaphone, he sure sounds awfully insecure.
