Palantir Technologies, a U.S. software company specializing in big data integration and artificial intelligence platforms, criticized the “charging per token” called “Tokenmaxxing” business model of AI companies like OpenAI and Anthropic, calling it an “addictive feeling of false progress”.
Its CEO Alex Karp went on a CNBC interview on Wednesday and criticized OpenAI and Anthropic AI companies for charging users money in the form of tokens and thus creating a “false sense of progress” by keeping IP rights for themselves (AI companies). The statement by Karp and Palantir Tech comes barely days after the company launched a collaboration with NVIDIA to deploy sovereign Nemotron artificial intelligence systems for U.S. government agencies.
In a statement made on X on June 30, Palantir Tech criticized the concept of “tokenmaxxing”, a term coined by the tech company for AI companies aggressively maximizing token consumption.
“Tokenmaxxing hijacks your value orientation and decreases your institutional fortitude and intelligence. The pursuit of high token usage incentivizes disposable scripts over robust software — with the addictive feeling of false progress. There is a reason why those selling tokens refuse to charge based on value,” read a statement by Palantir Tech.
Our thoughts on the importance of AI sovereignty.
1. Your AI sovereignty dictates your institution’s future. Sovereignty is the precondition for choice. Relinquishing sovereignty transfers the future choices of your institution to others, who are likely to exploit it for their…
— Palantir (@PalantirTech) July 1, 2026
Later in an interview with CNBC on July 1, Palantir Tech CEO Alex Karp they are not interested in fake deployment of some code that somehow charges them more tokens…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?”
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… pic.twitter.com/2hvTx7VSyj
— Palantir (@PalantirTech) July 1, 2026
Palantir Tech also spoke in favor of AI sovereignty in the sense of deploying AI systems that are customized and trained 100% on internal company data, putting customers in control of the AI agents.
“Your AI sovereignty dictates your institution’s future. Sovereignty is the precondition for choice. Relinquishing sovereignty transfers the future choices of your institution to others, who are likely to exploit it for their gain and your loss,” continued the statement by Palantir Tech.
For context, Palantir Tech and NVIDIA recently announced a collaboration to bring Nemotron open models into secure sovereign environments for U.S. government agencies. Under the new partnership, Palantir has developed new “intelligent engine” that integrates with Nemotron models, a family of open-weight AI models, enabling organizations to deploy, customize, fine tune/train AI models on their own infrastructure, thereby retaining complete ownership of data.
The company noted that there is no contradiction between AI sovereignty and competitive advantage. It further elaborated that an institution doesn’t have to choose between controlling their AI systems and being competitive as it can achieve both.
Also Read:NVIDIA, Palantir Put Nemotron Open Models Inside US Government Systems
