Alex Karp Buys Snowmass Monastery for $120 Million

Alex Karp has set a record with a nine-figure home purchase outside Aspen.

The Palantir CEO spent $120 million for a ranch in Snowmass that once housed a monastery, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing a source with knowledge of the deal. That price makes it the most expensive residential sale to date in Colorado’s Pitkin County. The property, at 1012 Monastery Road, was on the market for $150 million last year.

The St. Benedict’s Monastery campus spans approximately 3,700 acres and had been owned for about seven decades by an order of Trappist monks. A handful of monks still live there, listing agent Ken Mirr of Mirr Ranch Group told the Journal. Mirr declined to comment on the buyer’s identity, though he said that the new owner plans to use the property as a home.

The Aspen-area location would make sense for Karp, known to be an avid skier, according to the Journal. The purchase is the latest in a string of unrelated nine-figure purchases in the Aspen region that first started last year. That record was set when former casino mogul Steve Wynn and financier Thomas Peterffy joined forces to buy an estate at the base of Red Mountain for $108 million.

The deal for St. Benedict’s Monastery is unique in that it isn’t a “typical sale of a property in Aspen with a 20,000-square-foot home on it,” Mirr said. “It’s extraordinary to find 3,700 acres in that area that has been relatively untouched.”

The main monastery building dates back to the 1950s and spans approximately 24,000 square feet. Three decades ago, the monks added a roughly 6,000-square-foot retreat center to the property. A handful of houses on the property were built around 1900 and there are several small cabins on site, but much of the land is undeveloped. The goal, Mirr said, was to find a buyer who would preserve its pristine condition rather than a developer looking to build. “We were looking for someone who prized it for what it is,” he said.

Karp, who co-founded Palantir in 2003, has an estimated net worth of about $18.2 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

— Chris Malone Méndez