Palantir’s billionaire CEO says only two kinds of people will succeed in the AI era: trade workers — ‘or you’re neurodivergent’ | Fortune
Billionaire Alex Karp tells Gen Z to skip elite college degrees, as one-fifth of Fortune 500 companies recruit more neurodivergent talent by 2027.
There are basically two ways to know you have a future, the 58-year-old billionaire said on TBPN earlier this month:
“One, you have some vocational training. Or two, you’re neurodivergent.”
Karp’s first category reflects a growing consensus: skilled trades professionals—from electricians to plumbers—are difficult to automate and are increasingly in demand as Big Tech companies build out massive data centers and the U.S. faces existing labor shortages.
The second category is more personal. Karp has long spoken about living with dyslexia, the learning disability that can affect reading, writing, and information processing. More broadly, neurodivergence can include conditions such as ADHD and autism.
For Karp, that cognitive difference can be an advantage in an AI-driven world—less because of the diagnosis itself and more because of the mindset it can foster. Success, he argued, will favor people who think differently and take risks, or in his words, be “more of an artist, look at things from a different direction, be able to build something unique.”
