Palantir Technologies is looking for a few good brains.
The company took to X on April 11 to declare that “college is broken” and announce a Fall internship “for the best and brightest graduating high school students.”
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“Admissions are based on flawed criteria,” the post said. “Meritocracy and excellence are no longer the pursuits of educational institutions. And chaos ensued on university campuses.”
In a news release, the company said that Palantir (PLTR) “builds the world’s leading software for data-driven decisions and operations.”
“By bringing the right data to the people who need it, our platforms empower our partners to develop lifesaving drugs, forecast supply chain disruptions, locate missing children, and more,” the statement read. “Skip the debt. Skip the indoctrination. Get the Palantir Degree.”
Alex Karp, chief executive officer of Palantir Technologies, believes a ‘pagan religion has infiltrated our universities.’ Photographer: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Palantir CEO says military has to be scary
Palantir provides AI-driven data analytics software to the U.S. government and military and commercial clients. Alex Karp, co-founder and CEO, has not been shy about his disdain for academia.
During an interview on CNBC’s Squawk Box in February, Karp said that “a pagan religion has infiltrated our universities.”
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“And that pagan religion basically says everything that’s good about. America, everything that actually works, that is ipso facto bad,” he said.
Karp was discussing the book he had co-authored, “The Technological Republic: Hard Power, Soft Belief, and the Future of the West.”
“Everything you learned at your school and college about how the world works is intellectually incorrect,” he said. “And here is a way of seeing the world that may not be right, but it’s not wrong….a country has to have a border.”
“The educational institutions have to work,” Karp said. “The military actually has to be scary.”
The stock market has been a pretty scary place recently as investors have been battered to and fro by President Donald Trump’s on-again, off-again tariff plan.
Several business leaders have warned that the economy could be heading in a recession, including CEO Larry Fink, who said on CNBC that he thinks the U.S. economy has weakened to the point of growth possibly turning negative.
“I think we’re very close, if not in, a recession now,” Fink said.
The president said he was pausing some of those import levies for 90 days, but that move is not enough to restore confidence in the economy, Fink said.
Trump himself reportedly said in private that he was aware that his broad and steep plan for levies could tip the economy into a recession, but he didn’t want a depression, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Ark Invest founder Cathie Wood told Barron’s that she sees opportunity in these rough waters, particularly in those companies helping businesses become more efficient.
Veteran trader: Palantir keeps landing contracts
“When businesses and consumers are scared, they’ll change the way they do things,” Wood said. “And that’s usually good for the companies that are helping others do things better, cheaper, faster, more creatively, and more productively.”
She said Palantir “will be one of the biggest beneficiaries as companies try and make themselves more efficient and move into the AI age.”
Related: Analyst sends eye-popping message on Palantir stock amid tariff drop
Stephen Guilfoyle has been big time bullish on Palantir and the veteran trader noted that the technical picture had not changed dramatically, “though the stock had worked its way in onboard market weakness.”
“Never mind that the company does not import anything,” he said TheStreet Pro column. “Never mind that CEO Alex Karp just keeps landing contract award after contract award.”
“The stock was and is expensive by historical fundamental metrics despite having one of the strongest balance sheets I have ever seen,” the veteran trader said. “Traders and investors needed to raise cash, and this was one spot where there were super-sized profits to be taken.”
Guilfoyle, whose career dates back to the floor of the New York Stock Exchange of the 1980s, boosted his price target for Palantir to $116 from $110.
Palantir, which has seen its stock price climb 275% from a year ago, is expected to release its first-quarter financial results on or about May 6.
Wall Street is looking for adjusted earnings of 13 cents per share, on revenue of nearly $874 million.
The company had forecast sales of $860 million at the midpoint, Guilfoyle noted, up from the year-ago comparison of 8 cents per share on year-over-year revenue growth of more than 36%.
“The company also projected operating cash flow for the first quarter of $356 million at the midpoint,” he said. “The size of the ‘beat,’ assuming there is one, for this metric could be crucial.”
Guilfoyle said that, all 11 sell-side analysts that he knows who cover the stock have increased their estimates for Palantir since the start of the quarter.
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