Palantir's Alex Karp says AI's biggest names may never IPO — the real play is telling Washington 'nationalize us, please'

New statements from Alex Karp at Palantir, a company that provides bridging software for cognitive computing programs, suggest further options of where experts see the industry going, up to and including complete government takeover to ensure public safety.

In an interview with CNBC on September 17, the chief executive spoke about how some of the aforementioned companies may soon be begging to nationalize; not necessarily just for the good of humanity, but to assuage the tremendous liability that they are now facing.

‘Reasonable guidelines’ for ‘unlimited’ risk

“These businesses have to be nationalized because if you don’t nationalize it, every single one of [their] clients is going to sue,” Karp said.

He also advocated for the Fed to impose a framework for greater civil and criminal punishments if and when firms developing machine learning “aren’t being responsible.”

“The first line of defense is you’re liable for your own actions. So it’s a weird twist they’re asking for societal regulations to get out of the first line of defense, which is if you build a technology that can destroy 10% of the world, that has civil and criminal liability attached to it,” he noted.

But, interestingly, his comments also serve Palantir’s own interests, as he has preached about the need for greater AI sovereignty and oversight — which Palantir offers solutions for, of course.

Nationalization vs. IPOs — 2 different versions of ‘public’ ownership

The nationalization debate may be part of the bevy of reasons that the biggest names in the sector have yet to issue public stock offerings, and may never.