Karp: Anthropic Seeks AI Nationalization to Escape Liability

Alex Karp, the chief executive of Palantir Technologies (PLTR), told CNBC on Thursday that the most vocal participants in the AI safety discussion are quietly aiming for nationalization.

Frontier laboratories such as Anthropic are leveraging the dangers posed by their own systems to contend that the state, rather than the judiciary, should bear the consequences, according to Karp.

Karp Links Safety Discussion to Liability Concerns

Karp, appearing on CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street,” asserted that the public discussion around AI regulation is not truly concerned with supervision. Instead, he claimed, the real objective for advanced AI labs is shielding themselves from legal action over damage their models might inflict.

“The view that I believe they have is, these businesses have to be nationalized because if you don’t nationalize it, every single one of my clients is going to sue.”

Alex Karp, CNBC

According to Karp, holding AI developers accountable through civil and criminal means is a more effective deterrent against careless conduct than voluntary safety commitments. He maintains that firms ought to be responsible for their own deeds before authorities introduce fresh regulations.

Anthropic's Exposure in the Nationalization Debate

Anthropic operates as a public benefit corporation (PBC), a corporate structure that permits balancing a declared social purpose with investor profits. It secured $65 billion in a private fundraising round, valuing it at roughly $965 billion, ahead of a confidential filing for its intended initial public offering. That arrangement raises uncertainty about its resilience to either nationalization or significant litigation.

Karp's remarks come at a time when other AI executives, among them Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, have advocated for a deceleration in cutting-edge research, after an AI slowdown caution unsettled stock markets earlier this month.

We Must Pace the Frontier: I’ve written a new essay on why the AI industry should slow down, with a three-part plan for doing so.

Anthropic is unilaterally committing to the first of these steps. We’ll provide third-party evaluators with permanent, employee-level access to our…

— Dario Amodei (@DarioAmodei) September 12, 2026

President Trump has also asserted that he holds criminal authority over AI firms, which adds another dimension to the wider discussion about liability when advanced AI inflicts damage.

The likelihood of nationalization actually happening is unclear. Nonetheless, Karp's comments introduce a significant and surprising viewpoint on a matter that investors in Anthropic and its competitors have not yet fully accounted for.