Palantir chief executive Alex Karp on Wednesday criticised the token-based pricing model used by US artificial intelligence labs Anthropic and OpenAI, saying rising costs have left enterprises frustrated with the current approach to selling AI.
"I'm not throwing shade at them, but something has gone completely wrong," Karp told CNBC's "Squawk Box," adding that the prevailing enterprise mindset had become one of wanting to "chillax and waste my time with tokens."
Karp's remarks come as AI costs surge and newer models turn out pricier than their predecessors, pushing enterprises away from what he called as "tokenmaxxing" and toward business models that prioritise return on investment.
This shift is reportedly prompting some companies to adopt open-weight models capable of performing similar tasks at a fraction of the cost, even as Chinese AI labs accelerate their own capabilities and raise concerns about catching up with US frontier developers.
Karp told the outlet that the industry should not underestimate the pace at which China is advancing its AI models, and noted that many businesses are moving away from using broad, general-purpose AI systems in favour of building more efficient, proprietary tools of their own.
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He positioned open-weight models, such as those Palantir uses in partnership with Nvidia, as a potential solution for chief executives frustrated with existing AI labs.
The comments followed Palantir's announcement earlier in the week of an expanded partnership with Nvidia to build custom AI models for US government agencies using the chipmaker's tools, CNBC reported.
Ahead of Karp's interview, Palantir also released a nine-point manifesto on the importance of "AI sovereignty" on X, criticising tokenmaxxing as a business model and urging companies to retain ownership of their data.
Our thoughts on the importance of AI sovereignty.
— Palantir (@PalantirTech) July 1, 2026
1. Your AI sovereignty dictates your institution's future. Sovereignty is the precondition for choice. Relinquishing sovereignty transfers the future choices of your institution to others, who are likely to exploit it for their…
"What aligns me with Nvidia, and I think is what the technical customers want, is control over their compute, their models, their data stack and their alpha," Karp said, according to CNBC. "They want to know they own the means of production. It's not being transferred to someone else."
Palantir continues to position itself against rivals reliant on proprietary, closed AI models.
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