I only realized today that Bloom’s, the pub I’ve been going to for years near my office, is actually named after Leopold Bloom, the protagonist of James Joyce’s Ulysses. It took me all these years to make the connection—I’m honestly surprised at how oblivious I was.
The third photo was taken during the World Cup, when we watched Japan’s dramatic match against Brazil there. #nyc #纽约
Maybe this is how he pictures the structure of AI ecosystem:
Enterprise Data
↓
Ontology
↓
Permission
↓
Workflow
↓
Application
↓
Frontier Model
↓
Result
After listening to Alex Karp’s recent CNBC interview, I think many people are missing his real argument. He isn’t just attacking OpenAI or Anthropic. He’s arguing that we’re entering a new phase of AI, where the biggest question is no longer:
“Who has the smartest model?”
It’s becoming:
“Who owns the enterprise?”
Here’s how I interpret his thesis:
• A frontier model is only an engine.
• An enterprise’s real value isn’t its documents—it’s its workflows, decision-making, permissions, institutional knowledge, and accumulated “alpha.”
• If companies outsource too much of that layer, they risk giving up control over what actually makes them unique.
That’s why Karp keeps emphasizing Ontology.
Not as a knowledge graph, but as the operating layer that connects data, permissions, governance, business logic, and AI.
In his worldview:
Enterprise Data
→ Ontology
→ Workflow & Governance
→ AI Model
→ Business Outcome
—not—
Enterprise Data
→ AI Model
→ Answer
Whether you agree with him or not, I think he raises an important question.
The AI industry may be shifting from competing over model intelligence to competing over enterprise control.
The long-term winners may not simply be the companies with the best models.
They may be the companies that own the workflow, the distribution, the governance layer, and the trust of enterprise customers.
This feels like one of the most important debates in AI over the next decade
Palantir CEO Alex Karp on what customers actually want, the real business of frontier labs, and the importance of open source models:
“What the technical customers want is control over their compute, their models, their data stack, and their alpha. They want to know they own the means of production, and it's not being transferred to someone else.”
"Who owns the data? Are the prompts secure? Is this being transferred to you?"
"If it was so valuable, and I can make you a billion dollars, wouldn't I say I'll make you a billion dollars and I want 30%? Why are they charging for tokens if it's so valuable?"
@edzitron Before calling the AI boom BS, what about the actual use cases of AI already integrated in the day-to-day business workflows? Aren’t they the demand booster?
お悩み解消コーナー「#相談は踊る」 https://t.co/foCPAdMDt1 via @YouTube;About gender equality discussion—The biggest red flag isn’t disagreement. It’s refusing to understand. If someone has no interest in learning about their partner’s lived experience and only repeats what they already believe, the problem isn’t the opinion itself—it’s the lack of empathy. ジェーン・スー是个直肠子姐姐