Chapel Hill, September 3, 2026 (Yes Punjab News)
India could emerge as a major artificial intelligence (AI) power, given its technical talent, energy initiatives and ability to develop advanced AI models, Palantir CEO Alex Karp said.
“I could see it doing very, very well,” Karp told IANS when asked about India’s position in AI during a media interaction on the sidelines of the G20 Innovation Ministerial.
Karp highlighted model development, energy availability and technical expertise as key factors shaping a country’s AI capabilities. He said India was undertaking innovative efforts to expand its energy capacity, while noting that energy and technical talent were among the major bottlenecks in AI development.
The Palantir chief described AI as potentially the most consequential technological development of the past century, while warning that its capabilities could be used for both constructive and harmful purposes.
“The most important technological development… it may be in the last hundred years,” Karp said, stressing the need for experts to assess the technology and its implications.
He also argued that countries would need to develop and retain control over sovereign AI systems. Governments, he said, must consider who controls AI model weights and data, where systems operate and how to ensure that their capabilities remain indigenous to their respective countries.
Karp identified the US, China and Israel as being at the forefront of AI development but emphasised that other countries should also build domestic capabilities and determine how best to deploy them.
He said organisations adopting AI would require sufficient computing capacity and an application layer, while making careful decisions about the use of closed and open models to protect sensitive information.
“You need compute, you need an application layer,” Karp said, adding that organisations must retain control over where closed and open models are deployed so that sensitive data, commercial advantages and government secrets are protected.
Karp said Palantir’s platform can run models developed by different companies. While the company prefers American AI products, he said competition in commercial markets remained important.
“We have to win this battle, and we have to have American models be the best,” he said, while arguing that users should not be compelled to adopt inferior or more expensive systems simply because they are domestically developed.
Karp also called for a measured approach to AI regulation, warning that poorly designed rules could harm the countries they are intended to protect. He said regulation should be shaped by people who understand the technology and its associated risks, while clarifying that he was not opposed to regulation.
Palantir Technologies, a US software company co-founded by Karp in 2003, develops platforms that help government agencies and businesses integrate and analyse large volumes of data. The company has worked extensively with US defence and intelligence agencies and has expanded its commercial operations into sectors including manufacturing, healthcare, energy and financial services.
FOLLOW NOW
