Thought being the CEO of Palantir was hard? Try sitting still during an interview.
The company’s head honcho Alex Karp, who rose to fame and fortune by investing in startups alongside billionaire Peter Thiel since the early 2000s, made a baffling appearance at the New York Times DealBook Summit last week, arguing that president Donald Trump isn’t a fascist and defending his company’s business with ICE. He even went as far as to assert that legalized war crimes would be a good thing.
During that storm of amazing ideas, Karp could be seen squirming in his seat, often half rising to his feet and stammering as he struggled to form a sentence. Was it a demonstration of Karp’s ultra-focused commitment to warmongers and building out military surveillance tech — or, as many suggested online, could he have been under the influence of mind-altering substances?
“What type of drugs is he on?” pondered one observer on social media. “All of them by the looks of it,” another answered.
The ribbing lasted for days after the bizarre interview. And then, just as the dustup seemed to be fading, Palantir’s official account shared a new tweet on Sunday that embedded the controversial video and used a very particular choice of wording.
“While cross-country skiing this morning, Dr. Karp decided to launch a new program: The Neurodivergent Fellowship,” the company wrote. “If you find yourself relating to him in this video — unable to sit still, or thinking faster than you can speak — we encourage you to apply.”
The issue, as countless users pointed out in the comments, is that “skiing” is a common slang term for snorting cocaine.
“Nothing like a little fresh pow pow to clear the mind,” one user responded, adding an AI-generated clip of Karp performing handstand pushups while holding to the armrests of his chair.
“The craziest part of this is that you said skiing,” another user chided.
It’s not clear whether Palantir was intentionally trolling or simply picked the worst possible way to tamp down rumors of drug use by its CEO; we reached out to the company for clarification, but haven’t heard back.
If Karp is winkingly saying that he indulges in cocaine, he would only be the latest influential figure to partake in the stimulant. History is littered with noted politicians and oligarchs who were snorting the stuff behind the scenes. As recently as 2023, the Secret Service told reporters that they had found the substance in the White House, launching a lengthy investigation.
Other online observers pointed out that wealthy business executives have little to fear from being prosecuted from consuming illegal drugs.
“Hate to break it to y’all but using the word ‘skiing’ was very much intentional,” AI engineer and founder Kierra Dotson argued. “They can get away with it. They are getting away with it.”
There’s a good chance that Palantir’s tweet was designed to be a tongue-in-cheek mixture of fact and fiction, albeit in an unknown ratio. Karp does cross-country ski and has previously claimed that he owns ten “ski huts” across the world. As Fortune reported in 2023, Karp claims to ski five hours a day.
When the New York Times asked him last year what his social life consisted of, he had a simple reply.
“First of all, I’m a cross-country skier, so then I do all this training,” he said. “To have an elite VO2 max, an elite level of strength, it’s just consistency and the Norwegian-style training method.”
Whether the company’s Neurodivergent Fellowship is actually real or part of a facetious gag is unclear.
A description of the fellowship on Palantir’s website invites those who excel in “pattern recognition,” “non-linear thinking” and “hyperfocus” to apply.
Ironically, the company has quickly distanced itself from diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives under the Trump administration — despite the fellowship arguably sounding exactly like one.
“Palantir is launching the Neurodivergent Fellowship as a recruitment pathway for exceptional neurodivergent talent,” the website reads. “This is not a diversity initiative. We believe neurodivergent individuals will have a competitive advantage as elite builders of the next technological era, and we’re hiring accordingly for all roles.”
According to the company’s tweet, the “final round of interviews will be conducted by Dr. Karp personally.”
In the meantime, we’ll have to take Karp at his word.
“The critique I get on Wall Street is I’m an arrogant prick,” he said during the NYT summit. “Okay, great. Well, you know, judge me by the accomplishment.”
More on Karp: Palantir CEO Says Legalizing War Crimes Would Be Good for Business