Palantir Technologies Inc. (PLTR) CEO Alex Karp is not shy about picking fights with the rest of Silicon Valley. On Monday, during the company's earnings call, he took aim at frontier AI labs, arguing they're not trustworthy enough for enterprise use. His critique was sharp, sarcastic, and unapologetically political.

Karp's central argument: enterprises are essentially paying AI providers to use their proprietary knowledge and expertise to train models that could eventually compete with and replace their own businesses. And some AI companies, he claims, justify this as serving a broader mission they believe is morally superior.

"And why are they doing it? It's actually being done for what they believe are moral reasons. They are superior to you. They deserve to colonize your enterprise," he said sarcastically about frontier AI labs.

The CEO didn't stop there. In Palantir's quarterly shareholder letter, he suggested the AI business has "Marxist overtones and undertones," arguing that, unlike some large language model developers, Palantir does not seek to control its partners' means of production. He also said the company has consistently refused to adopt what it views as a "parasitic" relationship with partners, emphasizing that despite taking a different approach from much of the tech industry, it remains fully aligned with its customers' interests.

Karp's comments underscore Palantir's push for "AI sovereignty," the idea that businesses should retain control of their data and workflows instead of giving AI labs access to valuable intellectual property with limited returns.

Jacbon Bourne, an analyst for eMarketer, told Business Insider that Palantir benefits from positioning itself as a data analytics company that connects AI models to enterprise operations rather than building frontier AI models. While its accelerating growth challenges claims that enterprise AI struggles to scale, questions remain over whether AI could eventually replace the software layer Palantir provides, a factor that "has weighed" on its stock price this year.

Palantir beat second-quarter expectations with $1.94 billion in revenue and 41 cents adjusted EPS, raised its third-quarter and full-year 2026 revenue forecasts above Wall Street estimates, and ended the quarter with $9.2 billion in cash and short-term investments.

So while Karp is busy throwing rhetorical bombs at his competitors, the numbers suggest Palantir's approach is resonating with customers. Whether that's enough to keep the stock climbing is another question, but for now, Karp seems happy to keep fighting the good fight.