Alex Karp Has Money and Power. So What Does He Want?

Alex Karp never learned to drive.

“I was too poor,” he said. “And then I was too rich.”

In fact, Mr. Karp, a co-founder and the C.E.O. of Palantir Technologies, the mysterious and powerful data analytics firm, doesn’t trust himself to drive. Or ride a bike. Or ski downhill.

“I’m a dreamer,” he said. “I’ll start dreaming and then I fall over. I started doing tai chi to prevent that. It’s really, really helped with focusing on one thing at a time. If you had met me 15 years ago, two-thirds of the conversation, I’d just be dreaming.”

What would he dream about?

“Literally, it could be a walk I did five years ago,” he said. “It could be some conversation I had in grad school. Could be my family member annoyed me. Something a colleague said, like: ‘Why did they say this? What does it actually mean?’”

Mr. Karp is a lean, extremely fit billionaire with unruly salt-and-pepper curls. He is introvert-charming (something I aspire to myself). He has A.D.H.D. and can’t hide it if he is not interested in what someone is saying. After a hyper spurt of talking, he loses energy and has to recharge on the stationary bike or by reading. Even though he thinks of himself as different, he seems to like being different. He enjoys being a provocateur onstage and in interviews.

“I’m a Jewish, racially ambiguous dyslexic, so I can say anything,” he said, smiling.

Unlike many executives in Silicon Valley, Mr. Karp backed President Biden, cutting him a big check, despite skepticism about his handling of the border and his overreliance on Hollywood elites like Jeffrey Katzenberg. Now he is supporting Vice President Kamala Harris, but he still has vociferous complaints about his party.

When he donates, he said, he does it in multiples of 18 because “it’s mystical — 18 brings good luck in the tradition of kabbalah. I gave Biden $360,000.”