Palantir's Alex Karp says AI's biggest names may never IPO — the play is telling Washington 'nationalize us, please'

Palantir's Alex Karp says AI's biggest names may never IPO — the play is telling Washington 'nationalize us, please'

Becky Robertson

Tue, September 22, 2026 at 12:30 AM GMT+3 4 min read

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The current and former tech staffers who blew the whistle on AI's ability to "kill us all" have had the internet abuzz since they made their revelations earlier this month, eventually spurring Elon Musk, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Anthropic head Dario Amodei to issue a joint call for the sector to ease up on the gas pedal.

But, there have been questions about the mixed motivations of tightening regulation surrounding emerging innovations, which could put greater control — and with it, more profits — in the hands of certain individuals and/or companies.

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New statements from Alex Karp at Palantir, a company that provides bridging software for cognitive computing programs, suggest further options of where experts see the industry going, up to and including complete government takeover to ensure public safety.

In an interview with CNBC on September 17, the chief executive spoke about how some of the aforementioned companies may soon be begging to nationalize; not necessarily just for the good of humanity, but to assuage the tremendous liability that they are now facing.

'Reasonable guidelines' for 'unlimited' risk

"These businesses have to be nationalized because if you don't nationalize it, every single one of [their] clients is going to sue," Karp said.

He also advocated for the Fed to impose a framework for greater civil and criminal punishments if and when firms developing machine learning "aren't being responsible."

"The first line of defense is you're liable for your own actions. So it's a weird twist they're asking for societal regulations to get out of the first line of defense, which is if you build a technology that can destroy 10% of the world, that has civil and criminal liability attached to it," he noted.

But, interestingly, his comments also serve Palantir's own interests, as he has preached about the need for greater AI sovereignty and oversight — which Palantir offers solutions for, of course.

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Nationalization vs. IPOs — 2 different versions of 'public' ownership

The nationalization debate may be part of the bevy of reasons that the biggest names in the sector have yet to issue public stock offerings, and may never.

Karp was asked, in his chat with CNBC, about how the liabilities of cognitive computing would be written into the documents if, say, OpenAI ever had an IPO.

"You're assuming there will be an S-1… [but] the only way to deal with this kind of liability is to go to the government and say, 'nationalize us, please!'"

Many have pointed out that Sam Altman had spoken to leaders about such a strategy a year ago, when he proposed granting Washington a 5% stake of OpenAI. He's also proposed a public wealth fund to allow everyday people to "participate directly in the upside of AI-driven growth" by owning a stake in the biggest players in the ring. Similar plans for public ownership have been proposed by the likes of Senator Bernie Sanders.

Critics rightfully wonder, though, if it's a good idea — or even possible.

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This article originally appeared on Moneywise.com under the title: Palantir's Alex Karp says AI's biggest names may never IPO — the play is telling Washington 'nationalize us, please'

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