Peter Thiel

Peter Thiel
Thiel in 2022
Peter Thiel
Born	Peter Andreas Thiel 11 10, 1967
Birthplace	Frankfurt, West Germany
Nationality	German, American, New Zealand
Occupation	Entrepreneur, venture capitalist, political activist
Known for	Co-founding PayPal, Palantir Technologies, Founders Fund; first outside investor in Facebook
Education	Stanford University (BA, JD)

Peter Andreas Thiel (born 11 October 1967) is a German-American entrepreneur, venture capitalist, and political activist who has played a central role in shaping the modern technology industry in Silicon Valley and beyond. As a co-founder of PayPal in 1998, Palantir Technologies in 2003, and Founders Fund in 2005, and as the first outside investor in Facebook in 2004, Thiel has been involved in building or financing some of the most consequential technology companies of the early twenty-first century. His career spans work as a securities lawyer, derivatives trader, hedge fund manager, and venture capitalist. Beyond business, Thiel has attracted attention for his political activities, his philosophical writings on competition and monopoly, and his financial support for Republican candidates and causes. Through the Thiel Foundation, he has funded a fellowship programme encouraging young people to pursue entrepreneurship instead of attending college, as well as Breakout Labs, a grant-making body supporting early-stage scientific research. His role in secretly funding the Bollea v. Gawker lawsuit, his status as one of the few openly gay conservatives in the technology industry, and his connections to the political landscape of the United States have made him a polarising figure in public life. Thiel holds citizenship in Germany, the United States, and New Zealand.

Early Life

Peter Andreas Thiel was born on 11 October 1967 in Frankfurt, West Germany. His parents brought him to the United States when he was one year old. In 1971, the Thiel family relocated to South Africa and subsequently to South West Africa (present-day Namibia), where his father worked in the mining industry. The family moved back to the United States in 1977, settling in Foster City, California. Thiel reportedly attended several schools during his childhood as a consequence of his family's frequent relocations; by his own account, he attended seven different schools before the age of thirteen.

Growing up in the San Francisco Bay Area during the late 1970s and 1980s, Thiel developed interests in mathematics, science fiction, and chess. He became a nationally ranked chess player as a youth. These early intellectual interests would later inform his approach to business strategy and competition. Thiel has spoken publicly about the influence his peripatetic childhood had on his worldview, describing the experience of being repeatedly uprooted as formative.

Education

Thiel attended Stanford University, where he earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in philosophy in 1989. He remained at Stanford to study law, receiving a Juris Doctor degree from Stanford Law School in 1992. During his time at Stanford, Thiel co-founded The Stanford Review, a conservative and libertarian student newspaper, in 1987. The publication was intended as a counterpoint to what Thiel and his co-founders perceived as prevailing liberal orthodoxies at the university. His time at Stanford was formative both intellectually and socially; he developed a network of like-minded individuals, several of whom would go on to collaborate with him in business ventures in the years that followed.

Thiel has been a vocal critic of the American higher education system, despite his own elite educational background. In an essay published by Cato Unbound in 2009, titled "The Education of a Libertarian," he argued against what he described as the conformist tendencies of modern universities. This scepticism toward higher education later informed the creation of the Thiel Fellowship, which provides grants to young people who leave or forgo college to pursue entrepreneurship. Former Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein publicly disagreed with Thiel's stance in February 2026, arguing that college attendance makes a person "a complete person" and remains a worthwhile investment.

Career

Early Career and Thiel Capital Management

After graduating from Stanford Law School, Thiel worked as a judicial clerk for Judge J. L. Edmondson of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit. He subsequently practised as a securities lawyer and worked as a speechwriter. He then moved into finance, working as a derivatives trader at Credit Suisse. In 1996, Thiel founded Thiel Capital Management, a small investment firm, drawing on his experience in finance and law to begin managing capital.

PayPal

In December 1998, Thiel co-founded Confinity with Max Levchin and Luke Nosek. The company initially focused on developing software for handheld devices before pivoting to an online payment system that would become known as PayPal. Thiel served as the company's chief executive officer. Confinity merged with X.com, an online banking company founded by Elon Musk, in 2000. The combined company adopted the PayPal name. Thiel continued as CEO through a period of rapid growth and intense competition in the online payments industry.

PayPal conducted its initial public offering in February 2002. In October of that year, eBay acquired PayPal for approximately $1.5 billion. Thiel, as one of the company's co-founders and its CEO, received a significant share of the proceeds. The cohort of early PayPal employees and co-founders, who went on to establish or invest in numerous subsequent technology companies, became collectively known as the "PayPal Mafia," a term that reflected their outsized influence on Silicon Valley's development.

Clarium Capital

Following the sale of PayPal, Thiel founded Clarium Capital, a global macro hedge fund based in San Francisco. Clarium Capital made macroeconomic bets on currencies, commodities, and interest rates. The fund's performance was volatile; it experienced significant gains in some years but also sustained substantial losses, particularly during and after the financial crisis of 2007–2008. Assets under management declined considerably from their peak.

Palantir Technologies

In 2003, Thiel co-founded Palantir Technologies, a software company specialising in big data analysis. The company was named after the palantíri, seeing stones from J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. Thiel served as chairman of the board from its inception. Palantir developed platforms for integrating, managing, and analysing large datasets, with initial customers in the United States intelligence community and Department of Defense.

Palantir subsequently expanded its client base to include civilian government agencies, law enforcement organisations, and commercial enterprises. The company became one of the most prominent government technology contractors in the United States. Palantir went public through a direct listing on the New York Stock Exchange in September 2020. Thiel has remained chairman of Palantir throughout its growth.

In February 2026, Palantir filed a lawsuit against the Swiss magazine Republik, which had published reporting revealing that Switzerland had rejected the company's approaches. Palantir alleged that the publication did not provide a sufficient right to reply.

Facebook Investment

In August 2004, Thiel became Facebook's first outside investor, acquiring a 10.2 percent stake in the company for $500,000. The investment, made when Facebook was a college-focused social networking site founded by Mark Zuckerberg, proved to be one of the most profitable venture investments in the history of Silicon Valley. As Facebook grew into a company with billions of users worldwide, Thiel's early stake became worth hundreds of millions of dollars. He served on Facebook's board of directors for many years. In August 2012, Thiel sold the majority of his remaining Facebook shares.

In February 2026, reporting by Fortune noted that Thiel was among several technology billionaires who publicly shield their children from the products and platforms that contributed to their wealth, imposing strict screen time limits.

Founders Fund and Venture Capital

In 2005, Thiel launched Founders Fund, a venture capital firm, with PayPal co-founders Ken Howery and Luke Nosek. Founders Fund invests in technology companies across a range of sectors, including aerospace, artificial intelligence, biotechnology, and consumer internet. The firm has backed notable companies including SpaceX, Spotify, Airbnb, and Lyft, among others. The firm's investment philosophy, influenced by Thiel's views on competition and innovation, generally favours companies that seek to create new markets rather than compete in existing ones.

Thiel co-founded Valar Ventures in 2010, a venture capital firm that invests primarily in technology companies outside the United States. In 2010, Valar Ventures made an investment in New Zealand-based accounting software company Xero. He founded Thiel Capital in 2011 and co-founded Mithril Capital in 2012.

Thiel was a part-time partner at Y Combinator, the influential startup accelerator, from 2015 to 2017.

In February 2026, it was reported that Thiel had fully exited his stake in ETHZilla (NASDAQ: ETZH), an Ethereum-focused treasury firm, representing a complete divestiture from the cryptocurrency-linked company.

Jeffrey Epstein Connections

In early 2026, the House Oversight Committee released millions of emails related to the activities of convicted child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. The emails revealed that Valar Ventures, the venture capital firm co-founded by Thiel, had accepted $40 million in investments from Epstein. The documents further showed that Thiel had corresponded with Epstein for five years before Epstein's death in August 2019. The correspondence included discussions on the topic of Brexit, with Epstein reportedly celebrating the United Kingdom's departure from the European Union as a "return to tribalism."

Political Activities

Thiel has been an active participant in American politics, primarily as a donor and supporter of Republican and libertarian candidates and causes. He has described his political views in various forums, including his 2009 essay for Cato Unbound in which he stated: "I stand against confiscatory taxes, totalitarian collectives, and the ideology of the inevitability of the death of every individual."

Thiel has been a significant donor to conservative political organisations. In 2012, he was reported as the top donor to the Club for Growth super PAC, contributing $1 million. He has also donated to campaigns related to social issues, including contributions documented in connection with the Minnesota marriage amendment fight in 2012.

In February 2026, Thiel was reported to be financially backing the congressional bid of Jace Yarbrough, a Republican primary candidate for Texas's 32nd Congressional District. Yarbrough had attracted controversy for having described himself in past statements as "Nazi-ish." The candidate received an endorsement from former President Donald Trump.

Thiel's political orientation has been variously characterised. He has been described as a conservative libertarian and, by critics, as a democracy-sceptic authoritarian. In his 2009 Cato Unbound essay, he expressed scepticism about the compatibility of freedom and democracy, writing that the extension of the franchise to women and the growth of the welfare state had made the two less compatible.

Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont named Thiel alongside Elon Musk and Bill Ackman in February 2026 as part of a broader critique of billionaire taxation, demanding that the wealthiest Americans pay what Sanders described as their "fair share" of taxes.

Bollea v. Gawker

In 2016, it was revealed that Thiel had secretly funded the legal case Bollea v. Gawker Media, in which professional wrestler Hulk Hogan (Terry Bollea) sued the media company Gawker Media over the publication of a sex tape. The lawsuit resulted in a jury awarding Bollea $140 million in damages, a verdict that ultimately led to Gawker's bankruptcy. Thiel confirmed his role in financing the litigation. His motivation was reported to be at least partly personal: Gawker had previously published an article outing Thiel as gay, which Thiel described as an invasion of privacy. The case generated extensive debate about the use of wealth to pursue litigation against media organisations and the implications for press freedom. The Committee to Protect Journalists, to which Thiel had previously been listed as a supporter, was among the press-freedom groups that expressed concern.

Philanthropy and the Thiel Foundation

Thiel established the Thiel Foundation to support a range of causes aligned with his interests in technology, science, and individual empowerment.

Thiel Fellowship

In 2010, the Thiel Foundation launched the Thiel Fellowship (originally known as "20 Under 20"), which provides grants of $100,000 to young people under the age of 20 who agree to forgo or leave college for two years to pursue entrepreneurial projects. The programme reflects Thiel's publicly stated belief that higher education is overvalued and that talented young people may benefit more from practical entrepreneurial experience. The fellowship has attracted both praise for supporting unconventional paths to innovation and criticism from those who view it as undermining the value of education.

Breakout Labs

Breakout Labs is a grant-making programme within the Thiel Foundation that provides funding to early-stage companies pursuing scientific and technological innovations. The programme announced its first round of grantees in 2012, targeting companies working on projects in areas such as biotechnology, materials science, and energy.

Other Philanthropic Interests

Thiel has supported research into life extension and anti-ageing science, including donations to the Methuselah Foundation and its Methuselah Mouse Prize (Mprize), which awards grants for research that extends the lifespan of mice as a proxy for human longevity research. He has also been a supporter of the Seasteading Institute, which explores the creation of permanent, autonomous ocean communities.

Personal Life

Thiel is openly gay, a fact that became widely known after Gawker Media published an article outing him in 2007. Thiel has spoken about his sexual orientation in various contexts, noting the apparent tension between his identity and his alignment with the conservative wing of American politics. He is one of the few openly gay individuals to have held prominent positions within the Republican political ecosystem.

Thiel was granted New Zealand citizenship in 2011, a decision that later became a source of controversy in New Zealand after it emerged that his citizenship had been granted under expedited procedures despite his having spent very little time in the country. Thiel holds citizenship in Germany, the United States, and New Zealand.

Thiel has been noted among a group of technology billionaires who impose strict limits on their children's use of screens and social media, despite having built or invested in the platforms that dominate digital life.

Intellectual Work

Thiel has articulated his ideas on entrepreneurship, competition, and the future of technology in a number of public forums. His views on the subject of monopoly versus competition — specifically, his argument that successful companies seek to become monopolies rather than compete in crowded markets — have been influential in Silicon Valley business culture. He has been described as "perhaps America's leading public intellectual today" and as an "intellectual architect of Silicon Valley's contemporary ethos," though others have debated the consistency or morality of his views.

In his 2009 essay for Cato Unbound, Thiel laid out his libertarian philosophy, expressing opposition to government overreach and collectivism while also articulating a more idiosyncratic set of concerns about the stagnation of technological progress and the complacency of Western democracies.

References

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