Palantir’s AI Sovereignty Pitch Wins on Capitol Hill but Meets Resistance in Westminster

Palantir Technologies is riding a two-week spell of powerful headlines — an expanded Nvidia partnership, a presidential investor buying more shares, and a record-breaking quarter — yet the company’s chief executive has chosen this moment to launch a blistering attack on the business models of OpenAI and Anthropic. The stock, which gained 9.3% on the Nvidia announcement and is up 12.84% over the past seven days, now trades at €112.16, still nearly 22% lower year-to-date. The sharp disconnect between short-term euphoria and long-term uncertainty is the central story here.

Alex Karp used a CNBC “Squawk Box” appearance to accuse the two leading AI labs of running a “completely wrong” business model based on what he called “tokenmaxxing.” Under the current pricing structure, customers pay for tokens of data consumed, a practice Karp argued drives up costs without delivering real value. Palantir’s official X manifesto on Tuesday went further, stating that corporations should retain full control over their proprietary data rather than handing it to third-party AI providers. “You cannot leave the country’s battlefield to the consensus of Silicon Valley – that is insane,” Karp said, directly linking the critique to national security.

The rhetorical shift is notable. Karp had previously praised OpenAI chief Sam Altman and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei as thoughtful leaders. His tone has hardened markedly over recent months, with the underlying motive becoming clearer: Palantir competes with those same partners for lucrative government and enterprise contracts, offering a self-contained alternative where clients own the computing power, models, and data. The Nvidia pact, which integrates Nemotron models into Palantir’s Sovereign AI platform, is the technical backbone of that value proposition.

The political dimension emerged from a financial disclosure by US President Donald Trump, whose Office of Government Ethics revealed on Tuesday that he holds Palantir shares worth at least $1 million — and has added to the position. The filing lists 418 publicly traded investments alongside hotel, golf, and crypto income. For a firm that derives a large chunk of its revenue from federal contracts, the proximity to the Oval Office is not a neutral fact. It has already translated into concrete business: Palantir is now monitoring employees at the Social Security, Agriculture, and Veterans Affairs departments under a new contract that implements the administration’s controversial return-to-office policies, using software that optimizes seating in real time and enforces compliance.

Should investors sell immediately? Or is it worth buying Palantir?

Yet across the Atlantic, the mood is considerably cooler. British MPs recently blocked a £50 million deal with the London police, and while Palantir won a £9 million contract to replace the UK’s national firearms register – beating NEC and Accenture – a parliamentary committee chair has called for greater technological sovereignty. The most significant threat is the £330 million NHS contract awarded in 2023, which now faces a possible exit clause in 2027 as politicians reconsider foreign dependencies. Critics label the technology surveillance software; management calls it efficiency. For investors, it represents a clear geopolitical risk factor that no standard valuation model fully captures.

The operational numbers, however, remain compelling. Palantir just delivered the strongest growth quarter in its history and raised its full-year guidance. Analysts have responded with a consensus price target of €159.74, implying significant upside from current levels. That target, though, is stuffed with political variables. The stock’s 30-day annualized volatility of 64.61% shows how violently it reacts to headlines, and the chart is still far from healed: the price sits 2.76% below its 50-day moving average and 16.67% below the 200-day average. The relative strength index at 51.6 suggests neutral momentum, while the 37.68% gap to the 52-week high of €179.98 underscores how much ground has been lost.

Karp’s attack on token-based pricing is more than a sideshow. It crystallizes the strategic bet that Palantir is placing on the “AI sovereignty” narrative: that governments and corporations will eventually want to own their AI infrastructure rather than rent it from labs that profit three times over – from token fees, from insight into customer know-how, and from the subsequent commercialization of that knowledge. Whether that bet translates into new large contracts will become clearer over the next couple of earnings reports. For now, the stock’s recent recovery from the 52-week low of €93.30 has been swift, but the path ahead depends on how many more politicians – in both Washington and London – buy into the pitch.