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Palantir founder purchases large swath of forest in Sweden

119 points · 94 comments · davidja

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mertleee · 1790629448 · focus · HN ↗
Assuming this is for conservation, it's hard to find reasons this is a bad thing.
1. mcarper826 · 1790629527 · focus · HN ↗
  agreed
2. fnordpiglet · 1790629559 · focus · HN ↗
  This is where he will build 50 silos
  1. xhevahir · 1790629686 · focus · HN ↗
    He's probably buying it so that he can ski through miles of virgin forest with his Norwegian bodyguards. I hate this weirdo but he's probably not going to do much to the landscape.
    eckelhesten · 1790630233 · focus · HN ↗
    Weak reason given that Sweden has something called Allemansrätten.
    Hikikomori · 1790631431 · focus · HN ↗
    Let's hope people will use it and invade his land whenever he visits.
    defrost · 1790632904 · focus · HN ↗
    Lagniappe: Mass trespass of Kinder Scout <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_trespass_of_Kinder_Scout" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_trespass_of_Kinder_Scout
    yencabulator · 1790648480 · focus · HN ↗
    That's the whole point, it's not invading. In the nordics, land outside of your immediate yard is for everyone, and there aren't many exceptions to that. You get exclusive access to financial gain from it, that's it.
    gizajob · 1790632444 · focus · HN ↗
    What about fences? I see that people have the right to roam but how are fenced-off areas dealt with?
    Hikikomori · 1790636110 · focus · HN ↗
    Not to fence off people, need good reason like dangerous industry, farming animals and such, even if there's a fence you can still enter the land. Can't even put up a sign saying it's private land without permission.
  2. elias_t · 1790629809 · focus · HN ↗
    They probably already have nano technology
3. mahboi · 1790629621 · focus · HN ↗
  Why would Alex Karp randomly buy Swedish forest for conservation?
  1. unreal6 · 1790629751 · focus · HN ↗
    It is well known he loves to nordic ski
    <a href="https://fortune.com/well/2023/02/03/billionaire-palantir-ceo-alex-karp-skis-5-hours-day-runs-like-deer-same-body-fat-percentage-michael-phelps-when-training-olympics/" rel="nofollow">https://fortune.com/well/2023/02/03/billionaire-palantir-ceo...
  2. xhevahir · 1790629757 · focus · HN ↗
    Skiing. He arranges his life around Nordic skiing to an incredible degree.
    mahboi · 1790629773 · focus · HN ↗
    Ok that makes a lot more sense
    fhdkweig · 1790629905 · focus · HN ↗
    I don't really know anything about skiing, but can you do that in a virgin old-growth forest?
    rafram · 1790630257 · focus · HN ↗
    Who said it's a virgin old-growth forest?
    Ekaros · 1790631016 · focus · HN ↗
    I too doubt it is actually old-growth. Probably industrial forest. Which means that there is plenty of space around most of the trees.
    raddan · 1790630369 · focus · HN ↗
    Yes. All you really need are paths. This is a bit of an overgeneralization since forests in different places have different growth habits, but many old growth forests have less underbrush. During the winter, these forests are pretty easy to navigate on Nordic skis. If he wants to skate instead of doing the classic stride, I’m sure he can afford to groom the paths. Grooming really just requires a fancy snowmobile.
    daneel_w · 1790630383 · focus · HN ↗
    It might not get to remain a virgin old-growth forest. If the Swedish logging companies can get away with it, he probably can, too.
    germinalphrase · 1790630395 · focus · HN ↗
    Potentially. Depending on the style of skiing, you may only need a 2-3 ft wide pathway. That said, ski paths tend to be cleared of trees/large rocks and span about 10-15 feet wide.
    sorenjan · 1790632060 · focus · HN ↗
    It's not far from a skiing resort.
    <a href="https://funasdalen.se/en/winter/skiing/cross-country-skiing/" rel="nofollow">https://funasdalen.se/en/winter/skiing/cross-country-skiing/
    occz · 1790687960 · focus · HN ↗
    It's not going to be entirely virgin since you need to actually clear some amount of paths to be able to lay down tracks, but you certainly don't need to clear it entirely. I'd say that cross-country ski tracks are compatible with forest conservation goals.
    cryptolobster · 1790630162 · focus · HN ↗
    It still seems a bit strange
    fragmede · 1790632681 · focus · HN ↗
    Couldn't let the Netflix guy buy up the one in Utah and have bragging rights.
    JumpCrisscross · 1790633286 · focus · HN ↗
    Alpine versus cross country.
  3. fhdkweig · 1790629783 · focus · HN ↗
    Trying to buy himself back into heaven, like Bill Gates did. We only have the article's quotation for evidence, but it does say:
    > Karp made the purchase through his newly registered company Cladonia Skog AB. The chairman of Cladonia told the Swedish newspaper that the land provides valuable habitat for wildlife and space for recreation.
    colordrops · 1790629907 · focus · HN ↗
    He plans to create a ground for hunting humans, a la "The Most Dangerous Game".
    moralestapia · 1790630184 · focus · HN ↗
    I wouldn't be surprised.
    Karp strikes me as the type of person that would do this "for fun".
4. jacquesm · 1790630020 · focus · HN ↗
  Why would you assume that?
5. popalchemist · 1790630236 · focus · HN ↗
  why the hell would you assume altruism of the man who takes pride in killing people with automations
6. Naillik · 1790630236 · focus · HN ↗
  What are your reasons for assuming that would be the motive of the Palantir founder?
7. subscribed · 1790630341 · focus · HN ↗
  This is a quite far fetched assumption.
  I can't recall anything he said or did in the last few years that would make me assume he's done something good for the general public (or the humanity), and not for himself first and foremost.
bpodgursky · 1790629495 · focus · HN ↗
$600/acre for timber forest???
I had no idea Sweden was this cheap. Why wouldn't he drop $22mm on this...
1. mahboi · 1790629718 · focus · HN ↗
  Guessing it's more expensive if you're buying less, otherwise I kinda want to buy like 4 acres.
  1. robin_reala · 1790630511 · focus · HN ↗
    Cheapest I can find with at least 4 acres is this 70 acre plot for 400k SEK or 40.1K USD: <a href="https://www.hemnet.se/bostad/gard-harjedalens-kommun-overberg-21774566" rel="nofollow">https://www.hemnet.se/bostad/gard-harjedalens-kommun-overber...
    s1artibartfast · 1790632987 · focus · HN ↗
    not really comparable. That looks to a parcel with road and and nearby power access, within a few km of a small town that has an airport.
    Quite cheap tho!
2. khat · 1790629933 · focus · HN ↗
  [dead]
3. nazgulsenpai · 1790630033 · focus · HN ↗
  Perhaps there's a reason Sweden wants him to have all of this land.
  1. Hikikomori · 1790630768 · focus · HN ↗
    No he can fuck off please
    nazgulsenpai · 1790688852 · focus · HN ↗
    I mean that as the government's incestuous relationship with surveillance tech, not as a positive thing.
4. moralestapia · 1790630104 · focus · HN ↗
  Nothing to see here. There's no corruption in the civilized world, even less in Nordic countries which are maximally developed culturally and socially.
5. Ekaros · 1790630472 · focus · HN ↗
  It is somewhat north. So I would expect potential income to be in line. Thus price can be relatively low and there still is not much profit.
6. sorenjan · 1790631954 · focus · HN ↗
  Considering where it is it might be protected from logging, so the economic value of the land might be low. The seller is a paper manufacturer, so if they could get more value from it they would have charged more.
7. eigenspace · 1790855115 · focus · HN ↗
  Not super familiar with this part of Sweden, but at least for similarly remote parts of northern Canada, if you're buying crown land with no road access, no facilities, etc it can be similarly cheap when buying large parcels.
  Not a particularly surprising number.
theropost · 1790629824 · focus · HN ↗
Why does it quote 37,000 acres, then show a picture with a large swath of Sweden highlighted as if that is the area purchased - though Sweden is approximately 111 million acres of land, so this would be 0.003% of the land, so nowhere near the representation in this picture - seem disingenuous to me.
1. loeg · 1790633183 · focus · HN ↗
  Disingenuous sells more clicks, of course.
robin_reala · 1790629827 · focus · HN ↗
That’s a strange map in the article. It makes it looks like he’s bought all of Härjedalen, rather than two orders of magnitude less. It’s still a chunky piece of land, but it’s definitely not that big.
Jabbles · 1790629840 · focus · HN ↗
Note that the red area on the map in the article is Härjedalen, which has an area of 11,405 km^2, 1.1M hectares, 2.8M acres.
The purchased forest (15k hectares, 37k acres) is therefore ~1.3% of the region.
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H%C3%A4rjedalen" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H%C3%A4rjedalen
1. izacus · 1790634940 · focus · HN ↗
  That's ... huge.
  1. hdgvhicv · 1790919157 · focus · HN ↗
    By compare Clarkson farm is 1000 acres.
nalekberov · 1790630017 · focus · HN ↗
> Alex Karp, CEO of Palantir Technologies, purchased 15,000 hectares (37,000 acres) of forest in Härjedalen, Sweden, for 235 million kronor ($22 million).
Seems like he could buy all of Sweden's forests if he wanted to?
1. NewJazz · 1790630114 · focus · HN ↗
  [delayed]
dylanz · 1790630249 · focus · HN ↗
He's a huge cross country skier so he probably wants his own little playground
1. jareklupinski · 1790637691 · focus · HN ↗
  if only people could conduct business in a way which doesnt make them feel necessary to exclude all other humans from their vicinity for the rest of their lives
LucaFromAlpha · 1790630380 · focus · HN ↗
what's that meme about rich people just doing really rich stuff and not worrying about being some BS worldly image? yeah that.
silverFork · 1790630641 · focus · HN ↗
Ai farm to be.. I suspect.
1. david_shaw · 1790630727 · focus · HN ↗
  > Ai farm to be.. I suspect.
  I suspect the opposite: a billionaire's escape from a potentially turbulent society.
  1. silverFork · 1790631331 · focus · HN ↗
    Could be.. zillionaires usually like mountains; I hear he can't drive; driving the boonies far from civilization is not that easy in the winter. He needs to buy a big shovel for the winter.
    john_strinlai · 1790631679 · focus · HN ↗
    >I hear he can't drive; driving the boonies far from civilization is not that easy in the winter. He needs to buy a big shovel for the winter.
    that's what helicopters are for.
    -zillionaires, probably
    silverFork · 1790632204 · focus · HN ↗
    He needs a landing strip for an aircraft. Helicopters are dangerous at night. No uber eats delivery there. We will see. It will take a decade to set it up.
    cheschire · 1790633244 · focus · HN ↗
    Who needs Uber Eats when you can afford to house a personal chef on campus?
    tadasv · 1790634161 · focus · HN ↗
    Lol, if we're talking about a scenario like this, do you think these billionaires are like Noah with their arc, just collecting people to survive? I cannot see a sane person joining them or not ratting them out if things really go bad.
    ZYbCRq22HbJ2y7 · 1790634529 · focus · HN ↗
    <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silo_(series)" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silo_(series)
    silverFork · 1790634977 · focus · HN ↗
    I guess he can afford it but why then would he move to boonies. Is he not going there to chop wood and take videos of the deer in the forest? Is it going to be a compound with people bending 90 degree and saying yes sir?
    defrost · 1790635373 · focus · HN ↗
    To properly curate and conserve wild land will take a lifetime, it's not a puppy for Christmas.
    To be comfortably setup in life needs functioning set of buildings with five or six people can be done in a year with zillionaire budget.
    Existing topographic and resource maps (it's Sweden, they likely have good records) can be supplemented with draped air geophysical survey to digitally map land surface and subsurface structure (geomagnetic).
    After a discussion about location, heavy lift helicopters can bring in light one man excavation machines to cut out, build out a well drained stable level pad. While this sits, modular home components are factory assembled - the kind where three or four large semi trailer sized heavy concrete base lego blocks with fully plumbed and wired house sections are transported to site and slid together with hydraulic jacks to lock together.
    These are flown in to the pad and fitted together, while septic tanks, wood sheds, battery banks, smaller staff units, etc. are also landed.
    This is work that has to planned in advance with seasonal considerations, sure, but with people that do this work, local knowledge support, good logistics and funding it's possible to have a comfortable livable foot print to expand from.
  2. Quothling · 1790631695 · focus · HN ↗
    He probably just want a nice vacation place with favorable land ownership taxation. It's not uncommon for us here in Scandinavia to buy a swedish cabin with 4-20 hektar. I don't think it's too far fetched to think that they billionaire version of that would be 15k hektar.
    I doubt US tech billionaires would plan to come to Scandinavia if they fuck up the world. They must know they'd end up as someone's skin cloak.
  3. ZYbCRq22HbJ2y7 · 1790632012 · focus · HN ↗
    or... just plain old land speculation?
    silverFork · 1790632898 · focus · HN ↗
    Yup it could be but speculation needs a cause.. Hard assets are the rage right now anyways for AI zillionaires. He has apparently bought a monastery in Colorado for $120M; Miami beach house for $55M; 500 acre land in New Hampshire. His net worth is about $20B, $22M is like buying a toy to him and it is not a major investment.
    ZYbCRq22HbJ2y7 · 1790688582 · focus · HN ↗
    > speculation needs a cause
    it definitely doesn't, as people buy shit all the time on impulse alone. when you have zillions of dollars, that impulse buying can look different, as you kind of say as well.
  4. tadasv · 1790634047 · focus · HN ↗
    I don't understand why people have this silly take that billionaires somehow will hide in the bunker and be fine. Do you really think that if we get to that point, they will happily live in a bunker by themselves lol. These people are unable to survive by themselves, let alone in a bunker. Do you think food and shit will get delivered to some random location just like that when shtf.
    fragmede · 1790634357 · focus · HN ↗
    what? they have food and water to last decades in the bunker without needing external supplies. Why would they need to be supplied from the outside world? that's the entire point!
bigbuppo · 1790630744 · focus · HN ↗
I mean, the first thing I did when I came into money was buy a couple thousand acres of land.
blondie9x · 1790630889 · focus · HN ↗
Do we know what the goal was? Was this to protect forest land? Similar to something like this? <a href="https://www.nicfi.no/2024/12/10/norway-strengthens-support-of-indonesias-record-low-rainforest-emissions/" rel="nofollow">https://www.nicfi.no/2024/12/10/norway-strengthens-support-o...
Although I'm not sure what Norway is attempting is actually working - similar to what we see with carbon credits essentially showing no material decrease in greenhouse gas emission growth. Indonesia is going through some of the worst wildfires ever experienced in human history at the moment. <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/live/cqevw9y34y34t" rel="nofollow">https://www.bbc.com/news/live/cqevw9y34y34t
1. NewJazz · 1790631805 · focus · HN ↗
  [delayed]
  1. bigyabai · 1790633761 · focus · HN ↗
    Nah. Sweden has much better places for bunkers than the forest, many of them pre-built into the mountains or on private property.
    Given the current turmoil, building a bunker in the Swedish forest would be like building your porch underneath a tree with 50 beehives.
2. newsclues · 1790633492 · focus · HN ↗
  carbon credits?
3. throwaway5752 · 1790635488 · focus · HN ↗
  Probably to survive or profit from the imminent collapse of human friendly global climate conditions.
4. crimsoneer · 1790890773 · focus · HN ↗
  He really likes skiing and being left alone.
eichin · 1790631022 · focus · HN ↗
Maybe he wants his own version of Nathan's estate in Ex Machina (redditor calculations from in-movie clues put it at 7 million hectares, though, so this isn't even close :-)
sorenjan · 1790631762 · focus · HN ↗
I don't know exactly where the land is, but according to media it's south of Storsjö kapell [0]. There's plenty of fell there, and he can't just build whatever he wants even if he owns the land. When a billionaire says he spent $22 million to by it for recreation, I don't see a big reason to not believe him, there's not much else he can use it for.
It's not far from Funäsdalen which is a relatively popular ski resort [1], there are also hiking trails and similar [2].
The seller SCA is Europe's biggest private forest owner and owns 2.7 million hectares by the way.
[0] <a href="https://maps.app.goo.gl/hQp2Rw9tM6kWTuTdA" rel="nofollow">https://maps.app.goo.gl/hQp2Rw9tM6kWTuTdA
[1] <a href="https://funasdalen.se/en/winter/skiing/cross-country-skiing/" rel="nofollow">https://funasdalen.se/en/winter/skiing/cross-country-skiing/
[2] <a href="https://funasdalen.se/en/summer/hiking/" rel="nofollow">https://funasdalen.se/en/summer/hiking/
1. stuaxo · 1790633472 · focus · HN ↗
  It's easy to not believe because so many billionaires act with impunity and don't follow laws.
  Billionaires associated with that company especially.
2. thenayr · 1790634203 · focus · HN ↗
  [dead]
conorcleary · 1790632275 · focus · HN ↗
Probably as retaliation to SAAB.
1. amelius · 1790633535 · focus · HN ↗
  Why?
  1. conorcleary · 1790687014 · focus · HN ↗
    supplying canada with planes over f35
Noe2097 · 1790632291 · focus · HN ↗
Wow, that would make such a nice area to train (military) drones & robots, in the middle of a country concerned by "noisy neighbors" ... Wait.
spankalee · 1790633871 · focus · HN ↗
If you believe in global threats from AI, global warming, Russia and/or China, this probably isn't a bad place to build a bunker.
1. rafaelmn · 1790635048 · focus · HN ↗
  You do realize that St Petersburg dot on the map is Russia ?
  1. tmikaeld · 1790655519 · focus · HN ↗
    You realise that the country to the right of Sweden is Finland, who beat Russia against all odds before?
    rafaelmn · 1790670837 · focus · HN ↗
    Entirely different generation
    globnomulous · 1790723516 · focus · HN ↗
    I wonder whether you'd have said the same of Ukraine prior to the invasion.
    rafaelmn · 1790848081 · focus · HN ↗
    No, not nearly the same living standard.
tombert · 1790634743 · focus · HN ↗
I do not understand billionaires. I don't know why Alex Karp is buying large chunks of forests, the vast majority of which he will never see. I don't know why Larry Ellison is buying entire Hawaiian islands he'll never be able to fully use. I don't know understand the appeal of any of this shit.
Is it just that when you're worth billions, hoardings thousands of Steam games you'll never play isn't enough?
1. OJFord · 1790635079 · focus · HN ↗
  I think it can be lots of things: it's like any collector's item, it's a sort of bespoke investment, it's why not, it's if I own the whole thing I can just do as I please and not particularly worry about answering to anyone (e.g. re where I camp or when I fly there).
  Forest in particular could well be pure investment though, it's not even a weird one, just capital intensive.
slopinthebag · 1790635312 · focus · HN ↗
i doubt it's for a bunker but it's kind of interesting to think about. i think if you have a ton of money, why not build a bunker? you don't have to believe that you'll need it. if the money isn't an issue, it's better to have it and not need it than the opposite, and plenty of non-rich people do the same at a smaller scale too.
if i had that much money i'd have all sorts of contingencies for myself and my family/friends all over the world. like, why not?
1. Jamesbeam · 1790643111 · focus · HN ↗
  Having your own doomsday bunker (not talking tornado alley people) just tells everyone you are a loser, neither smart nor important enough to simply get picked up by your government and be put into the good full-service government bunker at taxpayers’ expense.
  There will also be no help coming if you’re not in that bunker, so what do you need doomsday preparations for if the people who will be rebuilding consider your life worthless and kill you on sight if you tried wasting some of their resources even if your Temu bunker survived.
  1. slopinthebag · 1790644780 · focus · HN ↗
    there are many scenarios where governments are dysfunctional
    also the point of the bunker is to be located far away from other people, nobody puts a doomsday bunker in manhattan
tusslewake · 1790640745 · focus · HN ↗
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Most_Dangerous_Game" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Most_Dangerous_Game

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