Palantir CEO Alex Karp has gone after the pricing model at the heart of the AI boom, taking direct aim at rivals OpenAI and Anthropic.
At issue is "token-based" pricing — the standard way leading AI companies charge customers, billing for the volume of text an AI model reads and generates. According to Firstpost, Karp called the approach "effing insane," while multiple outlets, including qz.com and Yahoo Finance, reported his blunt verdict that "something has gone completely wrong" with the model.
Karp's core argument, as summarized by MSN, is that enterprises are spending heavily on token-based AI without seeing clear returns, and now want lower costs. He contends businesses are beginning to move away from the model as a result. International Business Times reported that Karp accused OpenAI and Anthropic of promoting a business model that encourages companies to overspend.
His critique goes beyond price. According to 24/7 Wall St., Karp said enterprises are "livid" over AI models that "steal" their business value. Foreign Policy Journal framed his broader message as casting enterprise AI as a crisis of control and trust, with Firstpost noting his warning against allowing AI developers to retain control over customers' systems and data.
The sources do not include responses from OpenAI or Anthropic, nor detailed figures behind Karp's claims.
Why it matters: token pricing underpins the revenue of the biggest AI developers, so a prominent enterprise-software CEO publicly branding it broken signals growing tension over whether businesses are actually getting their money's worth from AI — and who ultimately controls it.