Palantir Releases AI Sovereignty Manifesto, Warns Against Outsourcing Data to LLM Providers

Palantir has released a nine-point manifesto targeting the artificial intelligence (AI) industry. The company warns corporations against handing over their proprietary data to elite Large Language Model (LLM) providers. In the statement published on X (formerly Twitter), the data analytics giant laid out its vision for “AI sovereignty” with a core message: keep your data strictly in-house, and do not outsource critical operations to commercial AI labs that Palantir says are untrustworthy. According to the manifesto, there is a strategic reason why tech companies selling “tokens”, which are the basic units of data processing used by LLMs” refuse to give up control, as they rely on corporate clients to feed and train their own models.

The Trap of 'Tokenmaxxing'

The manifesto takes direct aim at American companies’ current spending frenzy on generative AI tools. Palantir said that the trend of “tokenmaxxing”, a term describing the practice of companies throwing as much money as possible at cloud computing and raw AI processing without a clear business strategy. Alex Karp has long been critical of the frontier AI labs. Earlier in June, he said on CNBC that the AI companies “don't understand how unlikeable they are”, adding that their products “don't actually work the way” customers expect.

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 gain and your loss.2. Data retention is your treasure. Transfer it at your own peril. Your ability to win is dictated by your ability to recognize and use your unique edges, and you keep winning by compounding the underlying data to generate new insights. Transferring that data hands over access to your pre-existing winning plays and yields the means of production for new ones.3. 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.4. Controlling your weights is controlling your fate. Weights are the distilled form of hard-won, accumulated institutional knowledge. If you let others control your weights, you are allowing them to migrate the alpha of your business to theirs.5. There is no contradiction between sovereignty and alpha. The architecture that maximally preserves sovereignty is one that enables institutions to own their tribal knowledge, and to compound it as alpha.6. Politicizing the technical issues involving sovereignty is what your adversary wants. Techno-politicization is the wellspring of false sovereignty. Techno-politicization drives decisions that seem to reduce dependency, but ultimately limit agency — especially on the battlefield in the West.7. Real expertise is existential. Allowing politics or favoritism to determine your technical decisions rewards whoever is best at politics, not whoever is right. Listen to those closest to the problems, not those speaking most compellingly about them.8. Learn from institutions that are winning or that have consistently delivered. Institutions facing existential threats do not have the luxury of making technical decisions based on political preferences.9. Only listen to institutions, countries, and people who have a proven record of being right. A track record of correctness is the best and only signal for future correctness.