"Tune into an appearance from Palantir CEO Alex Karp, and it's likely you'll hear an obscure word: Ontology. The term is a favorite among Karp and his Palantir deputies. They drop it on earnings calls and in financial filings. They've said it's behind the rise of Palantir's stock, which is up over 140% year-to-date."
"Ontology was even at the center of a spat earlier this week between the CEO and famed investor Michael Burry, who bet against Palantir. "The idea that chips and ontology is what you want to short is batshit crazy," Karp said on TV, after filings revealed Burry's hedge fund had wagered against the defense tech giant. Burry hit back on X, dropping the O-bomb twice in his response. "A fundamental principle of any rigorous ontological/epistemological model - whether philosophical or in data science - is recognizing when your information set is insufficient for valid conclusions," he wrote."
"Its technical meaning is, well, lofty. Ontology is "the branch of philosophy that studies existence." Think queries like, is the phone that you're reading this on real? Do these words exist? Do I? It makes sense that Karp, Palantir's eccentric and wealthy leader, would be familiar with the concept. A student of philosophy, after earning a law degree and prior to cofounding Palantir, he pursued a Ph.D. in neoclassical social theory at Goethe University in Frankfurt, Germany."
Ontology appears repeatedly in Palantir's public and regulatory communications and serves as the name of a core technology within the Foundry enterprise platform. The term denotes both the philosophical study of existence and structured data models used to define entities and relationships across disparate datasets. Palantir's emphasis on ontology underpins the platform's ability to integrate, organize, and analyze corporate data for operational use. A public dispute involving investor Michael Burry and Palantir leadership highlighted ontology as an investment-relevant concept. Alex Karp's philosophical training informs the company's adoption of ontology as a practical engineering and business approach.
Read at Business Insider
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