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Sourcery · 3 min · Nov 11, 2025

Palantir uses software to help US workers scale factory know-how

Alex Karp says Palantir’s next focus is US growth and product quality, then explains how its software can help American workers apply factory practices from other countries. He says the goal is to amplify workers’ capabilities.

Alex Karp

Alex Karp is CEO and cofounder of Palantir.

Co-founded Palantir with Peter Thiel and has run it as CEO, selling data and AI software to governments.

  • Molly O'Shea, Host · Founder, Sourcery

    Ex-Upfront Ventures investor; has interviewed Alex Karp and Palmer Luckey.

About this segment

Alex Karp says Palantir’s next focus is US growth and product quality, then explains how its software can help American workers apply factory practices from other countries. He says the goal is to amplify workers’ capabilities.

From “Alex Karp, CEO of Palantir: Exclusive Interview Inside PLTR Office”, Nov 11, 2025. Watch the full episode

“we can use foundry and ontology to bring out the advantages of American worker and give them the capacity to roughly work like a Japanese engineer.”
Alex Karpat 35:39 · Sourcery35:39

Takeaways

  1. He says US plants need to adopt the processes of the factories they emulate.
  2. Foundry and Ontology are meant to bring out American workers’ advantages.
  3. Karp says Palantir is showing these systems working in real operations.
Watch 3:09 from 33:17

In this episode

Full episode
  1. 22:38Palantir builds for what clients need, not what traps them4:52
  2. 27:50AI buyers now seek working systems, not proof that software works4:36

  3. 33:17Palantir uses software to help US workers scale factory know-how3:09

  4. 13:05Karp sees deterrence as a way to keep US troops from fighting4:02Up next
  5. 8:36Karp says his outsider background shaped Palantir’s worker focus4:32

Transcript

Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there.

  1. 33:20

    Mm-hmm. You have VC returns for retail investors, and now you're having PE outcomes for large companies. What's next? Just being very, very focused on the US, growing the US, growing the quality of the UX. There's a lot more, interestingly, when we're talking externally, of course, people want to know the financial metrics, like these rule of 114, the 77, all these things that are crazy valuable. But internally, it's like really back to the, like, how do we make sure this implementation is the best?

  2. 33:52

    How do we make sure the product is advancing? How do we make sure we're building the products of tomorrow? How are we in the U.S. government closest to the things that will give America a strategic advantage? And it's just not just now, but for decades. How do we, on the commercial side, how do we make sure that, oh, it's just Palantir. People are roving around, no hierarchy. This is just the Palantir thing.

  3. 34:17

    You're like, what are you doing here? Get out, I'm working. I have no time. CEO, move out of the way. Yeah, it's the other thing at Palantir. You know, we value our work. Like, he can have any opinion he wants. He can come in here and like do it. You get to, you perform here, you get to be you, not just me. You know, this concept of worker available GDP. Yeah. You know, you're going to participate in the AI revolution.

  4. 34:43

    He's going to participate in the air relation. We're building it here. The person on the factory floor right now wonders, are we going to get rich and are they going to get poorer? And is that, that will not work for our society. Yeah, no. So what's Palantir's role in re-industrialization? Making sure workers, I mean, first of all, there's like, how do you manufacture at scale? How do you manufacture in addition to this way?

  5. 35:10

    How do you bring – if you bring – let's say you bring Japanese, Taiwanese, Korean manufacturing to America. The interesting thing, people always think manufacturing is manufacturing. You actually have to manufacture their building the way you would do it in those countries because that's – then you have to scale American workers. So, like, for example, we have American workers working at factories, like Japanese factories especially, and, like, they're American workers.

  6. 35:39

    They're not Japanese workers, but we can get, we can use foundry and ontology to bring out the advantages of American worker and give them the capacity to roughly work like a Japanese engineer. And so like, and honestly, at this point, we're really just showing rather than telling because you really have to show people the narrative working. And now. U.S. military, that's going gangbusters because most of the people who actually do the work are domain expertise-specific individuals, and they're seeing, oh, wow, I can, like, like in special operations, as an example, people using our product are using our product.

  7. 36:19

    yeah it's not like there's not the like highly elite uh yale grad i think he actually is a yale