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Palantir CTO: Tech Companies Lose Edge When They Choose Financial Engineering Over Real Engineering

Palantir CTO: Tech Companies Lose Edge When They Choose Financial Engineering Over Real Engineering

@a16z

"We became very good at financial engineering and forgot about engineering."

Palantir CTO Shyam Sankar on how tech companies lose their edge:

"Europe has created exactly zero companies from scratch in the last 50 years worth more than a hundred billion euro. We have created all of our trillion dollar companies from scratch in America in the last 50 years."

"The difference is founders."

"Intel, at some point, there was this fork in the road, where they could have promoted the CFO to be the CEO or Pat Gelsinger as CTO."

"They picked the CFO. The person that Wall Street would understand, not the person who could actually determine the future roadmap."

"It really looked like it was working for 10 years until it fell off a cliff."

"But that was all financial engineering, not real engineering." @PalantirTech CTO @ssankar with @KTmBoyleShow More

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01:51

!Image 4: a16z

#### a16z

@a16z · 6h ago

"I think our biggest risk as a country is suicide, not homicide."

Palantir CTO Shyam Sankar joins a16z's Katherine Boyle and Erik Torenberg to discuss Shyam's new book, Mobilize, as well as defense, AI, the SaaSpocalypse, and more.

00:00 Introduction

07:53 Rebuilding the industrial base

18:01 Modernizing the Army

24:20 The SaaSpocalypse

29:42 Agency over automation

38:24 Beating China without self-sabotage

40:42 Film as cultural willpower

49:57 The story of Admiral Rickover @ssankar @KTmBoyle @eriktorenberg @PalantirTechShow More

!Image 5: 视频缩略图

54:15

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Mar 20, 2026, 9:42 PM View on X

7 Replies

20 Retweets

109 Likes

19.2K Views  a16z @a16z

One Sentence Summary

Palantir CTO Shyam Sankar criticizes tech companies for prioritizing financial engineering over real engineering, citing Intel's choice of CFO over technical leadership as a cautionary example.

Summary

This tweet features Palantir CTO Shyam Sankar's critique of how tech companies lose their competitive edge. He contrasts Europe (zero $100B+ companies created in 50 years) with America (all trillion-dollar companies created from scratch in 50 years), attributing the difference to founders. Sankar uses Intel as a case study: at a critical juncture, Intel chose to promote a CFO to CEO over Pat Gelsinger as CTO—a decision driven by pleasing Wall Street rather than technical vision. He notes this appeared successful for a decade before 'falling off a cliff,' characterizing it as 'financial engineering, not real engineering.' The broader message warns against prioritizing financial optimization over engineering excellence. This is part of the same a16z podcast discussing his book 'Mobilize.'

AI Score

80

Influence Score 20

Published At Yesterday

Language

English

Tags

Palantir

Shyam Sankar

Tech Industry

Financial Engineering

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Palantir CTO: Tech Companies Lose Edge When They Choose F...