Palantir Cofounder on US Intel Stake: 'the Whole Thing Is Very Weird'

"It's very weird, of course, for the government to be taking a stake in something," Lonsdale said on CNBC's Squawk Box. "It's also a little bit weird for the government to be giving $9 billion to a company, too."

"It's cronyism in some form," he added. Cronyism, the milder cousin of nepotism, is the practice of giving jobs and benefits to friends.