It has emerged that Palantir CEO Alex Karp secretly purchased roughly 37,000 acres (about 150 square kilometers, or 15,000 hectares) of forest in northern Sweden. Local residents reportedly only found out about the purchase when hunters lost the long-standing hunting lease they’d used on the land for years. On Lemmy’s Europe community, discussion exploded over the purchase price and what the land might be used for, with speculation ranging from rising Nordic land values due to climate change to the construction of a data center. Meanwhile, plenty of voices criticized large-scale foreign land ownership and the sheer scale of billionaire wealth itself.
Palantir CEO Alex Karp secretly purchased 37,000 acres of forest in Sweden. Local residents found out when hunters lost their land-use agreement (a hunting lease).
lokalhorst: 37,000 acres is 149.73 km², or 14,973.37 hectares
7Anonymous2026-10-01 08:18
snoons: Re: #2 Here's an example of how big 90km² is ([image])
https://lemmy.ca/pictrs/image/56ad4c8d-4b8e-4b0f-a728-aec04c77cbc8.png
16Anonymous2026-10-01 12:11
noob: Re: #7 Where's the banana (the classic unit for scale comparisons)?
4Anonymous2026-10-01 08:02
susieq0044: Honestly, smart investment. As climate collapse worsens (which his own company is partly responsible for), land in the north is only going to get more valuable. Plenty of Europeans are already swapping southern France for Scandinavia as a vacation spot
24Anonymous2026-10-01 21:09
Loui: Re: #4 Assuming the AMOC (Atlantic meridional overturning circulation) doesn't collapse first
5Anonymous2026-10-01 11:09
WhatAmLemmy: Treat him as a hostile foreign actor, nationalize the land, and throw him in prison
6Anonymous2026-10-01 09:07
dracc: Re: #2 According to Swedish media it's actually 150km². He (or rather his company) paid 240 million Swedish kronor (about $20 million) for it, but thanks to the elevation there's barely any real forest on it. Buying it under the guise of 'forestry use' is a pretty transparent cover story
8Anonymous2026-10-01 08:47
devfuuu: Re: #3 Probably for their favorite sport — inviting rich people out to the vast forest to hunt humans
9Anonymous2026-10-01 12:25
melsaskca: Gotta love foreign capital. Who needs to become a citizen when you can just buy the government instead. And apparently you actually can /s
10Anonymous2026-10-01 12:49
MolochHorridus: Probably a post-apocalypse bunker, and until then it'll double as a hunting lodge for hunting poor people
22Anonymous2026-10-01 15:38
manxu: Re: #10 Wait, let me get this straight — is it 'a hunting lodge where poor people stay' or 'a lodge for hunting poor people'? /s
11Anonymous2026-10-01 10:29
DdCno1: And everyone who wants him to make a comeback too (same treatment)
12Anonymous2026-10-01 17:22
Mad_Punda: Re: #20 It'd be more energy-efficient to just launch him out of the solar system
27Anonymous2026-10-01 18:28
chahn.chris: Re: #12 I like it, let's go with that plan!
34Anonymous2026-10-01 19:33
JillyB: Re: #12 Played Outer Wilds and learned that flying into the sun is actually surprisingly easy
13Anonymous2026-10-01 16:30
CalemitousVariantK: Behold the face of the man who hunts humans on that land. He probably skipped a more discreet, remote island because he wanted lower latency for commanding drones in Ukraine
14Anonymous2026-10-01 09:10
dracc: Re: #3 Calling it a 'forest' is a stretch — that land sits right at or above the treeline. Apparently Karp is a skiing enthusiast and already owns multiple properties at Norwegian ski resorts. Still, 240 million kronor doesn't seem like an amount you could realistically recoup from that. I wouldn't be surprised if there's a data center on that land within 5 years
19Anonymous2026-10-01 09:45
killingspark: Re: #14 240 million kronor is roughly $24 million. According to Wikipedia, Alex Karp's net worth was over $18 billion as of 2025. So this is only about 1/800th of his net worth, 0.125%. As long as the rest of his assets keep earning, there's no need for this land to turn a profit anytime soon (correction: I had the exchange rate wrong — 1 krona is about $0.1, not $10)
15Anonymous2026-10-01 21:54
minorkeys: He's probably moving his assets into land before the AI bubble pops
17Anonymous2026-10-01 15:06
CovertOperative: Re: #16 It's right in the center, someone's holding it up in the town square
18Anonymous2026-10-01 17:02
pmk: Does he even know about 'Allemansrätten' (Sweden's 'everyman's right' to roam)?
28Anonymous2026-10-01 19:38
lambipapp: Re: #18 I bet he's going to clear-cut all of Härjedalen for a data center. Or maybe he's found his spot for a post-apocalypse shelter
23Anonymous2026-10-01 16:14
MolochHorridus: Re: #22 It's for hunting poor people
25Anonymous2026-10-01 17:24
Malica: I read somewhere that he paid under $600 per acre
26Anonymous2026-10-01 09:30
roserose56: Re: #39 Do you really think building more data centers is the solution?
33Anonymous2026-10-01 09:51
jdr: Re: #26 Nope, I don't
37Anonymous2026-10-01 11:11
LovelyMover: Apparently Singapore built one using human brain cells. It only uses as much power as an LED bulb, barely takes up any space, and you just need to feed the cells nutrients now and then to keep them alive. The brain cells handle all the processing themselves — it's genuinely tiny
39Anonymous2026-10-01 08:24
jdr: What's so interesting about that?
29Anonymous2026-10-01 17:27
vane: Re: #2 Small country, huh
32Anonymous2026-10-01 10:04
birdwing: Re: #3 Probably a data center, I'd guess
35Anonymous2026-10-01 21:12
Little1Lost: Re: #34 Finally, the bookmark feature works 😀 This person explains why it's not actually that simple: [link]
38Anonymous2026-10-02 00:40
stoly: Re: #20 There it is again, that argument: 'Leaving nature alone is bad for nature. Only humans can help it, and only by killing animals'
Background and key points of this discussion
This purchase isn’t unrelated to the nature of Palantir as a company. Known for AI-powered defense and intelligence work, Palantir is reportedly involved in military support for Ukraine, and some in the thread speculated about a connection to drone operations. Sweden has a traditional right called “Allemansrätten” (the ‘everyman’s right’), which lets anyone access and forage on private land, so large-scale private land ownership tends to create friction with this custom. Commenters also pointed out that Karp’s net worth reportedly exceeds $18 billion, making this purchase (roughly $24 million) only a small fraction of it. That said, it’s worth noting that the land’s specific intended use (a data center, a vacation home, or something else) remained pure speculation within the thread and is not a confirmed fact.
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