Palantir CEO Alex Karp calls his company the first to be 'completely anti-woke'

Palantir’s Alex Karp didn’t just report a monster quarter—he lobbed a culture grenade. On the earnings call, he dubbed Palantir “the first company to be completely anti‑woke,” praised “meritocracy” and “lethal technology,” and bragged about a 63% revenue jump to nearly $1.2B. Cue instant chaos in the comments under the story. Anti‑woke or anti‑sleep? The thread was wide awake.

One camp asked, “What does ‘anti‑woke’ even mean?” with users pointing to “woke” as awareness of inequality, citing scholar Gordana Lazić and real‑world examples like NYC highways that excluded Black and poor communities (link). Others rolled their eyes, calling it a marketing bit to thrill the base while the company courts contracts with ICE (the U.S. immigration agency) and Israel—raising civil liberties alarms. The sharpest barb accused Karp of sleight of hand: performative flattery for the president while the data machine inches into Fourth Amendment territory. On the flip side, pragmatists shrugged: if the software delivers productivity and ROI (return on investment), that’s the only “culture” that matters. And yes, the memes flew—jokes about an “Anti‑Woke Mode” toggle, “ROI > woke” bumper stickers, and a “meritocracy DLC” dropped like confetti.

Bottom line: Karp’s label lit the fuse. The community is split between seeing a profit-first brand play, a civil‑liberties red flag, and a pure numbers flex—and none of them are quiet about it.