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Palantir Technologies Inc. (NASDAQ:PLTR) and Lumen Technologies Inc. (NYSE:LUMN) have announced a “formative” multi-million dollar partnership to embed PLTR’s Artificial Intelligence Platform (AIP) into Lumen’s network infrastructure, a move executives say will unclog America’s “data super highways” and accelerate AI adoption for businesses.

In a FOX Business interview, Palantir CEO Alex Karp and Lumen CEO Kate Johnson described the deal as essential for modernizing U.S. infrastructure to handle the massive burden of AI.

Karp explained the partnership could transform fixed assets into modern infrastructure capable of processing data “200x faster” and “incrementally cheaper.”

Lumen CEO Kate Johnson called the combined offering “the holy grail for businesses.”

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“It’s all about real-time intelligence,” Johnson said. “You need to be able to move huge amounts of data… and that’s what Lumen does. And you need… to be able to make sense of it, and that’s the AI platform that Palantir has.”

While Karp declined to confirm the deal’s reported $200 million price tag, he called it a “very large deal” and “formative for us.”

Before offering the solution to customers, Lumen is serving as “customer zero,” using Palantir’s platform to overhaul its own operations.

Johnson said Palantir’s software is helping Lumen “set that data free” from thousands of internal applications to achieve two goals: “take a bunch of cost out of our business” and “accelerate our transformation.”

Johnson confirmed she is “on our way” to a public commitment of taking $1 billion in costs out of Lumen, with Palantir as an “instrumental part” of that effort.

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Both CEOs framed the partnership as critical for U.S. competitiveness and national security. Johnson noted a “pretty big gap between what’s needed to thrive in the AI economy and what we have today,” while Karp warned that older telco infrastructures “really can’t support the burden that AI places on the network.”

Karp, who has long warned of an AI arms race, stated the urgency is non-negotiable. “We’re in an arms race here… We’re going to have AI and determine the rules or our adversaries will have it and they determine the rules,” he said.

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PLTR shares rose 1.81% in premarket on Monday. It was up 310.56% over the year and 145.55% on a year-to-date basis, outperforming the S&P 500’s 15.73% YTD gains.

It maintained a stronger price trend over the short, medium, and long terms, with a poor value ranking, as per Benzinga’s Edge Stock Rankings. Additional performance details are available here.

Photo courtesy: Shutterstock

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This article Alex Karp Says New Lumen Deal Can Make AI Data ‘200x Faster,’ ‘Incrementally Cheaper:’ ‘The Holy Grail For Businesses’ originally appeared on Benzinga.com