Palantir CEO Karp on TITAN, AI Warfare Technology
Summary
TLDRIn a conversation with Palantir CEO Alex Cobb, the discussion revolves around the company's significant progress with the US government, particularly the Pentagon, since 2016. Cobb highlights the shift in perception towards software's role in intelligence and warfare, emphasizing the superiority of software-driven systems over hardware-driven ones. He also addresses the company's new relationships with hardware providers and the expansion of Titan, comparing it to the MAVEN project. Cobb's passion for defending the West and providing allies with the best technology is evident, as he discusses the challenges and successes of Palantir's commercial business and its impact on the industry.
Takeaways
- 🚀 Palantir's Titan project is a significant development in the company's relationship with the Pentagon, marking a shift towards software-driven systems.
- 🛡️ The US government, particularly the Pentagon, has come to accept that software is a critical advantage in modern warfare and intelligence.
- 🤝 Titan's approach involves establishing new relationships with hardware providers, aiming to integrate the best software with existing hardware.
- 🌐 Palantir's success has led to a broader ecosystem of defense startups and a more receptive Pentagon, embracing the commercial software model.
- 🔍 The Pentagon's use of MAVEN has been transformative, despite some operational challenges, and is seen as a template for future defense initiatives.
- 🌟 Palantir's technology is being used commercially for tasks like satellite tasking, showcasing its versatility and potential for defense applications.
- 📈 Palantir's commercial business is experiencing a high demand, with the company struggling to keep up with the onslaught of interest from industry leaders.
- 📊 The company's bootcamp approach accelerates the implementation process, allowing clients to see tangible results in a fraction of the time compared to traditional methods.
- 🌍 Palantir's CEO, Alex Cobb, emphasizes the company's commitment to defending the West and providing allies with the best technology available.
- 🤖 The US administration's leadership in AI is seen as strong, with the country being the dominant player in the global technology landscape.
- 📱 Palantir is working on making its products more accessible, with the potential for a publicly available version in the future.
Q & A
What is the significance of Titan for Palantir and its relationship with the Pentagon?
-Titan represents a significant advancement for Palantir in its relationship with the Pentagon, as it marks a shift towards software-driven hardware systems, which are seen as superior to hardware-driven systems. This aligns with the Pentagon's recognition of software as a crucial component of America's strategic advantage.
How does Alex Cobb view the progress Palantir has made with the US government since 2016?
-Alex Cobb is very pleased with Palantir's progress, noting that the US government has come to terms with the importance of software in intelligence, war fighting, and health issues, which was previously viewed as esoteric and questionable.
What is the difference between Titan and MAVEN in Palantir's portfolio?
-Titan is unique in that it involves entering new relationships with hardware providers, unlike MAVEN, which focused on integrating America's best software into the hands of warfighters. Titan is seen as a logical extension of Palantir's capabilities, combining software products that have been used both on the battlefield and commercially.
How does Palantir's approach to software differ from traditional PowerPoint presentations?
-Palantir emphasizes actual product demonstration and results over PowerPoint presentations. They focus on showing the tangible impact of their software, which can transform enterprises by making them more efficient, safer, and capable of tracking their operations.
What is Alex Cobb's perspective on the current state of artificial intelligence in the US administration?
-Cobb believes that despite internal criticisms, the US is the dominant country and its approach to AI is working well. He suggests that the US is leading a revolution in AI technology, which is primarily produced in Silicon Valley.
How does Palantir manage its relationships with allies like Israel, especially when there are conflicting political interests?
-Palantir is happy to supply its products to allies, including Israel. Cobb emphasizes that while the US may push for a ceasefire, Israel has the right to purchase and implement the world's best technologies, including those from Palantir.
What is the purpose of Palantir's bootcamps and how have they evolved?
-Bootcamps are designed to rapidly demonstrate Palantir's product capabilities and address the high demand for their services. They have evolved from a three-month process to a much quicker, intensive experience, allowing clients to see the immediate benefits of Palantir's software.
How does Palantir's commercial business strategy differ from its competitors?
-Palantir focuses on showcasing its actual product and results, rather than relying on slick presentations or networking events. They compete based on the effectiveness of their software, which they believe is a structural advantage for their clients.
What is the potential for a publicly available version of Palantir's IP?
-While currently not available for individual consumers, Palantir is working on product development that may eventually be accessible to a broader audience. They are committed to showing more of their capabilities over time.
How does Palantir's software impact the workforce and the efficiency of enterprises?
-Palantir's software enables non-technical workers to perform tasks that traditionally required engineers, thus uplifting the workforce. It also streamlines operations, making enterprises more efficient, cost-effective, and safer to run.
What is the broader impact of Palantir's work on the US and its allies?
-Palantir's work contributes to the defense and technological advancement of the US and its allies. It helps assert dominance on the battlefield and in the commercial space, providing a structural advantage in the ongoing technological revolution.
Outlines
🤝 Palantir's Relationship with the Pentagon
Palantir CEO Alex Cobb discusses the company's progress with the Pentagon since 2016. He highlights the shift in perception regarding software's role in intelligence, warfare, and health issues, which were once considered esoteric. Cobb emphasizes that hardware-driven systems are now seen as inferior to software-driven systems, and that Palantir is at the forefront of this change. He also addresses the expansion of Titan, a project that involves new relationships with hardware providers, and compares it to MAVEN, a project that integrates software into the hands of warfighters. Cobb defends the company's work, citing the importance of defending the country and the success of Silicon Valley in contributing to America's strength.
🚀 Commercial Applications and AI
Cobb talks about Palantir's commercial applications, giving examples of how non-engineers can use the platform to task satellites and manage agricultural assets based on weather conditions. He contrasts this with the traditional PowerPoint presentations and emphasizes the importance of having a working product. Cobb also discusses the confusion surrounding the AI revolution, particularly in Europe, and expresses his desire for the West to win. He addresses the administration's leadership in AI and the company's work with Israel, emphasizing that Palantir's priority is to provide the best technologies to allies.
📈 Meeting Demand and the Importance of Product
Cobb addresses the overwhelming demand for Palantir's products and the challenges of scaling operations to meet this demand. He explains the concept of 'boot camps,' which are intensive training sessions that compress months of work into hours. Cobb emphasizes that Palantir's approach is to compete on the quality of its product rather than on sales tactics like PowerPoint presentations or steak dinners. He highlights the company's success in transforming enterprises, making them more efficient, safer, and able to track their operations. Cobb also teases the possibility of a publicly available version of Palantir's product, acknowledging the interest from investors and the public.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡Titan
💡Pentagon
💡Software
💡MAVEN
💡Hardware providers
💡Dominance on the battlefield
💡Commercial software
💡AI (Artificial Intelligence)
💡Bootcamps
💡Palantir's product
Highlights
Palantir CEO Alex Cobb discusses the company's progress with the US government and its commercial success.
Titan is highlighted as a significant development in Palantir's relationship with the Pentagon.
Cobb emphasizes the shift in the US government's perception of software's role in intelligence and warfare.
Palantir's approach to establishing dominance on the battlefield through software is mentioned.
Cobb addresses the comparison between Titan and MAVEN, explaining Titan's unique position in the market.
The importance of software in modern warfare and the Pentagon's embrace of this change are discussed.
Cobb's response to criticism of MAVEN's effectiveness in targeting operations.
The potential of Palantir's technology to assist in more than just intelligence, possibly recommending weapon usage.
Cobb's perspective on the confusion surrounding the technological revolution and its impact on society.
Palantir's stance on providing technology to allies, including Israel, despite geopolitical complexities.
The challenge of meeting the high demand for Palantir's commercial products and services.
The boot camp approach to rapidly implement Palantir's software, showcasing the company's product over PowerPoint presentations.
Cobb's commentary on the structural advantage Palantir provides to American industry and the potential for manufacturing in America.
The unique selling point of Palantir's software and its impact on the workforce and enterprise operations.
Cobb's vision for the future of Palantir's product development and its availability to the public.
Transcripts
Palantir CEO Alex Cobb. Thank you for having us at another IP
call. Yeah, I think the big news of the week
is Titan. And when I think about.
Your relationship in particular with the Pentagon since 2016?
Frame Titan as is how much progress you feel you've
made serving that part of our government?
Well, look, I'm very exquisitely happy about how well we're doing both in the
government and commercially. But the most important change in the US
government has nothing to do with Palantir.
When we got to, we started building this company.
The idea that software would power intelligence, war fighting, general
health issues was viewed as something esoteric, scandalous, obviously
questionable. The idea that America's primary
advantage premiere advantage would be software was viewed as also esoteric,
academic, self-serving. And every institution in America, and
especially the Pentagon, have begun to come to terms with the idea the reality
that hardware driven systems purely are inferior to software driven hardware
systems. And beyond that, our adversaries are as
good or better at building hardware systems and are have a deficit in
building software. What is different about Titan as
compared to, say, MAVEN, is that you are entering new relationships with other
hardware providers, right? Like and Merrill is one example.
Explain how that is working in this case.
Actually, what I see this as a commonality.
America needs to establish dominance on the battlefield.
Maven What's publicly known about MAVEN is one of these projects that actually
took what America's the best at in the world software, software, and put it in
the hands of our war fighter, by the way, at enormous costs.
You're sitting in Palo Alto. I had people protesting here, hundreds
putting up change in front of our office, calling us Nazis because we were
dedicated to serving the American people, because we had the sense God
gave a goat. And we realized that if you're going to
do really important things in this country, you should defend this country
with every asset we have. And what really happened on the Silicon
Valley side is that you've got because of that success, because of the power of
it and quite frankly, because of our success, people realize this is a place
where you should invest and make America even stronger.
And then what happened is you got a whole ecosystem of defense startups and
an ecosystem of people inside the Pentagon who are ready to embrace that,
that are doing things, by the way, that are very similar to what's happening in
the commercial space. And what are those things?
We're going to look at software not off PowerPoints.
We're going to look at we're going to buy software from people have actually
sold software commercially. And what's unique about Titan is not the
difference. It's that it's the logical extension.
And what is that logical extension? People who've built software products
that have been used on the battlefield and used commercially.
You have to ask yourself a question. If your software is so good, why have
you not sold it commercially and made yourself billions of dollars?
So that that simple insight which you see in the battlefield in Ukraine, which
you see in Israel, is something that is hard for institutions to internalize.
And the Pentagon, this step is one of the most historic steps ever, because
what it basically says is we're going to fight for real.
We are going to put the best on the battlefield.
What is the best? The best is not just some not one
company. It's a team of people led by the most
prominent software provider in defense in the world, Palantir.
There's something you said that that inside the Pentagon, people are ready
for this. Bloomberg did some quite deep reporting
on the use of MAVEN specifically in 2024 so far.
And the complaint from operators in the context that it's used for targeting is
that it's still not quite there. Still, this is I'm just offering you an
opportunity to respond to that. I'm not going to respond because I'd
have to tell you all sorts of things. There is no one, by the way, there was a
long and very important article everyone should read it with.
When I had the way I read the article was this is the most important thing,
one of the most important things the Pentagon has done in decades.
Right. I can tell you the way our adversaries
see Maven and our friends is like, What the f?
How did they actually produce this? And I tell you what, the average citizen
reads the articles like, Thank God we're spending the money on things that are
more valuable than what we're investing in.
And to go into more detail, I have to go to all sorts of class.
I said. That program is one of the shining stars
of what this country has done and serves as a template for We're going on the
offense, we are going to assert dominance and we're going to negotiate
after we're the best in the world. Alex I host the technology show and I
want to talk about the technology, its current capabilities and where it can
go. Is that platform ready to move from
assisting in targeting, which is intelligence basically to giving more
information? The article also looked at the idea that
there is a hope from intelligence services in the US government that it
can be one day in a position to recommend which weapon to use to give
more cuts. Let me give you let me give you
commercial examples because please, I can't go into I can't go into what it
can do and why it can't do. I can tell you what we're doing
commercially right now. You are going to see a normal non
engineer sitting at their terminal, tasking satellites,
exporting a logic inside the security model of the company just to to figure
out which satellite should be over, which part of their agricultural assets
and what should happen based on weather conditions.
Now, you can just imagine how you could do that with a weapon system.
This is exactly what pouch pouch. Your commercial, not pouch here, highly
classified environment, Palantir, with somebody that has been hired five days
ago. They can't write code that's very smart,
may not speak English and is just in awe of the enterprise, is doing that
workflow that is happening right now. And that is why the thing this
revolution, which is highly confusing, it's highly confuses.
Yeah, it's confusing because a lot of the stuff is BS.
Then there's the poetry side of it. I love poetry.
If I could go read more poetry, I would. Enterprises don't need more power.
Yes. You mean what?
Well, it's like, I don't know somebody who delivers PowerPoint.
We're going to give you a you know, it's like, look, everybody has to try to sell
something. If you don't have something to sell, you
sell words right now. So you're selling you're selling
something that doesn't work, can't work. You're explaining to your enterprise you
can't have the car you want, which is honestly Palantir, but you can have the
car you don't want because this and this and this and this and you have to buy
it. And that's that's by the way, that that
is a plague on many societies. Less so America.
There is this problem in Europe that there's really no high end software
vendors. Luckily, our adversaries have this
problem. And you've spoken about your
frustrations with Europe not being more adopted.
Well, I'm pro I spent half my life in Europe.
I want the West to win. So I want it.
But it's a confusing revolution. If you're sitting there and you're
sitting in a society that's led industrial revolutions for hundreds of
years and all of a sudden the industrial revolution is happening basically in one
place. And that's right here.
That's confusing. It's confusing because three vendors are
saying they're going to offer the same thing.
One thing is like, you know, I'm going to explain to you why this doesn't work.
You have to buy your best thing. The others like, oh, it does work, but
it's only poetry. And then there's a third category which
judges by the fruits we provide, which is exactly what we're doing, which is
like, great, We're not going to argue about this part of our product, that
part of our product. I'm happy to explain to somebody who's
technical, we're going to show you what happens in 4 to 6 hours as opposed to
what happened in your whole enterprise over the last two years.
We will talk about the commercial business.
We will talk about bootcamps. But let me just so we can talk about
whatever you it's a final point. You talked about the confusion of the
revolution. Okay.
Today probably will be the first time that a president says artificial
intelligence in a State of the Union speech.
So it's a very simple question. What is your summary of this
administration's leadership, so to speak, of the US in the context of A.I.?
You know, it's very helpful if you spend a lot of time abroad, because if you
look at this internally, like internally in America, there's a long list of
criticisms that you could make of anyone.
This country is the dominant country with no second country in the world.
So whatever we're doing, it's working out pretty damn well.
So it's like, yeah, could we be better? Could we have better regulation?
Could we understand these things better? But but again, we are dealing with a
revolution. That's one of the really confusing
things. Again, for Americans.
It's like normally you have a revolution and multiple countries are
participating. This is a revolution where the
technology is being produced in America, mostly in silicon, but you do have
multiple customers. So just bear with me on this one.
Take, for example, Israel, where you are doing some work with that country.
The administration, as an example, is pushing for a cease fire in that region.
But you are working with Israel. How do you manage that?
Because it sounds like your first priority is the United States.
How do we manage? Look, we.
I'm very happy. We very happily supply our products to
our allies, including Israel. I don't like Israel.
What's going on here is does America provide Israel with more aid?
I don't think there's any question of does Israel have the right to buy the
world's best technologies, assess them and implement them.
Israel, I think, has decided we have some of the world's best technologies.
They've implemented many of them and publicly discuss some of them.
And I Palantir, I think the really the orthogonal, maybe more in question was
why do we say in public what everyone else believes in private, i.e., we
should defend the West, we should not apologize for fighting terrorism, and we
are going to provide our sharp tools to our allies.
Let's talk about the commercial business.
Okay. You told my colleague Lizette Chapman
one month ago, almost to the day, quote, We don't know what to do with the
onslaught of demand in the commercial context.
Do you know one month on what to do now? Now, I mean, if you're going to see a
boot camp here, a series of things we've had to you know, we haven't been able to
meet demand. We've had to tell people we couldn't
accommodate them. We have hundreds of people coming, not
just people, but leaders of industry. And if you just look at it from the
internal dynamics of how do you deal with the contracting, how do you deal
with the implementation. It's true.
These things have gone from taking us three months to 4 hours.
But it's also true. The idea is you cram four months work
worth of work into a day in these boot camps, right?
We it is not even a day. It's 2 hours.
And so and so. Why is that?
Why is that important to Palantir? Why did you go down that route?
Well, the most important reason it's important to Palantir is we can fight
with people about power points and their ability to say, Why do you keep bringing
up PowerPoints is the point you're making that your competitors go in with
a debt? Absolutely.
This is what we do, but they don't have a product.
Is that. Well, I'm not saying anything.
What I'm really saying is if you have a what you did, you said palooka.
That's many. Exactly.
So what I'm telling to everyone there is like they may have a product.
We're showing you our product. Okay.
I can't comment about where they have a product.
I can tell you they're they're very buttoned up and not showing any leg.
We show our product. And why is it important?
Why it's important. I'm telling you why it's important
because a people fight us or fight enterprises that are doing the most
important work with slick PowerPoints and great steak dinners.
We're bad asleep PowerPoints. We're even worse at steak dinners.
We don't play golf. What we do do is we play software.
We will put if you want to actually compete, compete on your product.
And what's very special and yes, do I enjoy humiliating people who have better
steak dinners and sharper knives and better golf suites?
I do. You know what?
I really I really like that we win in that way.
It makes me very happy and it makes our clients happy because.
Let me. Sorry, let me finish.
Keep going. But wait.
We're. We're getting close.
Great. Well, then, people.
And why are our clients happy? Because American industry knows that
this is a structural advantage and it needs the best products.
And why is the bootcamp overrun? Because the clients themselves are tired
of these damn steak dinners and the golf.
They want to see products that actually work, that actually live up to what
people are saying. What is it?
What are people saying? You will transform your enterprise.
You'll make it cheaper to run your enterprise.
That will make it safer to run the enterprise.
You'll be able to track what you're doing and you'll be able to uplift
workers who formerly only could be engineers, and now they can be
everywhere. And by the way, you can do all this in
America. You can manufacture like you were
manufacturing Japan and Taiwan. In America, you can use workers that
used to have to be engineers right here in this country.
And why is it it's also fun for Palantir?
Because we are winning. Alex, I've got to ask you, before I lose
you, the actually the most common question that I get to ask you from the
audience I post on social media you're coming on is when will there be a direct
to consumer or a I don't even know what we would call it, but it but a publicly
available version of IP. And it's that would let me tell you
because they see you as a leader in this space, the Palantir, not necessarily you
as an individual whatever they see, that's I'm happy.
But okay, I look, Palantir, you are seeing the tip of the iceberg when you
are buying our product. Now, we've been working on these.
You can't buy it if you're a person off the street.
Great. You're seeing the tip of the iceberg of
our product development. And we are going to show more and more
and more of what we have. And I think people and I would also like
a lot of those people asking the question, by the way, are not academic.
They are investors in Palantir and they have supported us when we were down on
the ropes. And those are the people that we are
fighting for.
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