Peter Thiel
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Peter Andreas Thiel, born October 11, 1967, is a German-American entrepreneur, venture capitalist, and political activist. A co-founder of PayPal, Palantir Technologies, and Founders Fund, he was the first outside investor in Facebook. As of May 2025, Thiel's estimated net worth stood at an impressive US$20.8 billion, making him the 103rd-richest individual globally. He's been described as the "intellectual architect of Silicon Valley's contemporary ethos."
Born in Germany, Thiel came to the US with his parents at just one year old. His family's journey took them to South Africa, then South West Africa, before returning to the US in 1977. After graduating from Stanford, he explored various careers: a clerk, a securities lawyer, a speechwriter, and a derivatives trader at Credit Suisse. In 1996, he founded Thiel Capital Management, and in 1998, co-founded PayPal with Max Levchin and Luke Nosek. He led PayPal as CEO until its acquisition by eBay in 2002 for $1.5 billion.
Following PayPal, Thiel established Clarium Capital, a global macro hedge fund. In 2003, he launched Palantir Technologies, a big data analysis company, where he continues as chairman. In 2005, he co-founded Founders Fund with PayPal partners Ken Howery and Luke Nosek. Thiel's significant early bet on Facebook, a 10.2% stake for $500,000 in August 2004, marked him as its first outside investor. He also co-founded Valar Ventures in 2010 and Mithril Capital in 2012, and was a part-time partner at Y Combinator from 2015 to 2017. In 2011, he gained New Zealand citizenship, a move that later sparked controversy there.
Described variously as a conservative libertarian and a democracy-skeptic authoritarian, Thiel has made substantial donations to right-wing figures and causes. Through the Thiel Foundation, he oversees grant-making bodies like Breakout Labs and the Thiel Fellowship. In 2016, he confirmed his funding of Hulk Hogan's lawsuit against Gawker, which had previously outed Thiel as gay.
Peter Andreas Thiel was born in Frankfurt am Main, West Germany, on October 11, 1967. His parents, Klaus Friedrich Thiel and Susanne Thiel, emigrated to the United States when he was one year old, settling in Cleveland, Ohio. His father worked as a chemical engineer for various mining companies, leading to an itinerant childhood for Peter and his younger brother, Patrick Michael Thiel. Peter and his mother later became US citizens, while his father did not.
Before their move to Foster City, California, in 1977, the Thiel family lived in South Africa and South West Africa during the apartheid era. Peter attended seven different elementary schools. A German-language school in Swakopmund, where students wore uniforms and corporal punishment was common, instilled in him a lasting distaste for uniformity and regimentation, influencing his later support for individualism and libertarianism. The German community there was known for its continued glorification of Nazism. Thiel was noted as a bright but solitary boy, often withdrawn from his peers due to his transient lifestyle.
His childhood interests included Dungeons & Dragons and a passion for science fiction, with authors like Isaac Asimov and Robert A. Heinlein among his favorites. He's also a fan of J. R. R. Tolkien, having read "The Lord of the Rings" numerous times. Six of his firms—Palantir Technologies, Valar Ventures, Mithril Capital, Lembas LLC, Rivendell LLC, and Arda Capital—bear names derived from Tolkien's works.
Thiel excelled in mathematics, achieving first place in a California-wide competition while attending Bowditch Middle School. At San Mateo High School, he discovered Ayn Rand and admired the optimism and anti-communism of President Ronald Reagan. He graduated as valedictorian in 1985.
He pursued philosophy at Stanford University. When Stanford replaced its "Western Culture" program with a "Culture, Ideas and Values" course focusing on diversity and multiculturalism, Thiel co-founded The Stanford Review, a conservative and libertarian newspaper, in 1987, receiving funding from Irving Kristol. Thiel served as its first editor-in-chief until his graduation in 1989. He has maintained a connection with the paper, offering guidance, donations, and internship opportunities to its staff. He also co-authored "The Diversity Myth" in 1998, a book critical of liberalism and multiculturalism, and joined "TheVanguard.org," a right-wing neoconservative internet group.
After Stanford, Thiel attended Stanford Law School, graduating in 1992 with a Juris Doctor degree. There, he met René Girard, whose mimetic theory significantly influenced him.
Following law school, Thiel clerked for Judge James Larry Edmondson of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit from 1992 to 1993. He then worked as a securities lawyer for Sullivan & Cromwell in New York, leaving within a year. In 1993, he became a derivatives trader in currency options at Credit Suisse, while also serving as a speechwriter for former Secretary of Education William Bennett. He returned to California in 1996.
Back in the Bay Area, Thiel capitalized on the dot-com boom. With financial backing from friends and family, he raised $1 million to establish Thiel Capital Management, launching his venture capital career. An early setback came with a $100,000 investment in a friend's unsuccessful web-based calendar project. Shortly after, Max Levchin, a friend of the project's owner, shared his cryptography-related company idea with Thiel, leading to their first venture, Fieldlink, later renamed Confinity, in 1998.
With Confinity, Thiel recognized the potential for software to revolutionize online payments. While credit cards and ATM networks offered consumers more options, many merchants lacked the hardware to accept them, necessitating exact cash or checks. Thiel envisioned a secure, encrypted digital wallet for consumer convenience. In 1999, Confinity launched PayPal.
PayPal promised to transform how money was handled. Thiel saw its mission as liberating people from currency devaluation due to inflation. In 1999, he stated: "The need PayPal answers is monumental... In the twenty-first century, people need a form of money that's more convenient and secure, something that can be accessed from anywhere with a PDA or an Internet connection. Of course, what we're calling 'convenient' for American users will be revolutionary for the developing world... In the future, when we make our service available outside the U.S. and as Internet penetration continues to expand to all economic tiers of people, PayPal will give citizens worldwide more direct control over their currencies than they ever had before. It will be nearly impossible for corrupt governments to steal wealth from their people through their old means because if they try the people will switch to dollars or Pounds or Yen, in effect dumping the worthless local currency for something more secure."
At PayPal's 1999 launch, representatives from Nokia and Deutsche Bank demonstrated the service by sending $3 million in venture funding via PayPal on their PalmPilots. PayPal's growth accelerated through mergers in 2000 with Elon Musk's X.com and Pixo, a mobile commerce specialist. These mergers expanded PayPal into the wireless market, making it a safer and more user-friendly tool for transferring money via online registration and email, bypassing the need to exchange bank account details. PayPal went public on February 15, 2002, and was acquired by eBay in October of that year for $1.5 billion. Thiel served as CEO until the sale, with his 3.7% stake valued at $55 million. He's colloquially known in Silicon Valley as the "Don of the PayPal Mafia."
Thiel invested $10 million of his PayPal proceeds into Clarium Capital Management, a global macro hedge fund specializing in currencies, interest rates, commodities, and equities. Thiel's core macroeconomic thesis at Clarium was the "peak-oil theory," predicting a global oil shortage with no easy alternatives.
In 2003, Thiel successfully bet on a weakening U.S. dollar. By 2004, he warned of the dot-com bubble migrating into the financial sector, citing General Electric and Walmart as vulnerable. In 2005, Clarium achieved a 57.1% return, aligning with Thiel's prediction of a dollar rally.
However, Clarium experienced a 7.8% loss in 2006. The firm then shifted to long-term profits based on its petrodollar analysis, anticipating a decline in oil supplies. Clarium's assets grew after a 40.3% return in 2007, exceeding $7 billion by early 2008. However, assets declined later that year and again in 2009 following the financial market collapse. By 2011, after missing the economic rebound, key investors withdrew, reducing Clarium's assets to $350 million, two-thirds of which was Thiel's capital.
In May 2003, Thiel incorporated Palantir Technologies, a big data analysis company named after a Tolkien artifact. He remains its chairman. The company's genesis, according to Thiel, stemmed from adapting PayPal's fraud-fighting methods to other contexts, like combating terrorism. Following the September 11 attacks, he observed the public debate about security versus privacy and envisioned Palantir as a provider of non-intrusive and traceable data mining services to government intelligence agencies. Geoff Shullenberger and Moira Weigel note that Peter Thiel and Alex Karp built Palantir on their understanding of Leo Strauss and the Frankfurt School.
In August 2004, Thiel made a $500,000 angel investment in Facebook for a 10.2% stake, joining its board. This was Facebook's first outside investment, valuing the company at $4.9 million. As a board member, Thiel was not actively involved in day-to-day operations but assisted with timing funding rounds. Zuckerberg credited Thiel with helping time Facebook's 2007 Series D funding, which closed before the 2008 financial crisis.
David Kirkpatrick's book "The Facebook Effect" details how Thiel became an investor. Sean Parker, a Napster co-founder and then "President" of Facebook, sought investors. Parker approached Reid Hoffman, who then referred him to Thiel, whom Hoffman knew from their PayPal days. Thiel met Parker and Mark Zuckerberg. Thiel and Zuckerberg developed a good rapport, leading Thiel to lead Facebook's seed round with $500,000 for 10.2% of the company. The investment was initially a convertible note, to become equity if Facebook reached 1.5 million users by the end of 2004. Although Facebook narrowly missed this target, Thiel allowed the loan to convert to equity. Thiel stated, "I was comfortable with them pursuing their original vision. And it was a very reasonable valuation. I thought it was going to be a pretty safe investment."
In September 2010, Thiel expressed skepticism about growth in the consumer internet sector but argued that Facebook, then valued at $30 billion on the secondary market, was comparatively undervalued. Facebook's IPO in May 2012, with a market cap near $100 billion, saw Thiel sell 16.8 million shares for $638 million. In August 2012, immediately after the early investor lock-up period ended, Thiel sold nearly all his remaining stake for $395.8 million, totaling over $1 billion. In 2016, he sold just under 1 million shares for around $100 million. By November 2017, he had sold another 160,805 shares for $29 million, leaving him with 59,913 Class A shares. As of April 2020, his Facebook holdings were less than 10,000 shares.
On February 7, 2022, Thiel announced he would not seek re-election to the board of Meta, Facebook's owner, at the 2022 annual stockholders' meeting, intending to support pro-Donald Trump candidates in the 2022 elections.
In 2005, Thiel founded Founders Fund, a San Francisco-based venture capital firm. Partners include Sean Parker, Ken Howery, and Luke Nosek. The fund focuses on defense-related startups and technology. After Facebook, despite its financial success, Thiel directed Founders Fund towards "hard tech," believing companies like Twitter, while valuable, wouldn't "take civilization to the next level." The Economist notes the fund's and Thiel's history of incubating startups involved in highly sensitive national security work. Founders Fund considers Palantir, Anduril, and the nuclear startup General Matter as a trilogy of ventures, with plans to expand. Business Insider reports that within Thiel's inner circle, the fund is nicknamed "the Precious," a nod to Sauron's One Ring from Tolkien's works.
Beyond Facebook, Founders Fund made early-stage investments in numerous startups, including Airbnb, Slide.com, LinkedIn, Friendster, RapLeaf, Geni.com, Yammer, Spotify, Practice Fusion, MetaMed, Vator, SpaceX, IronPort, Votizen, Asana, Big Think, CapLinked, Quora, Nanotronics Imaging, Powerset (Thiel sits on the boards of Nanotronics and Powerset), Stripe, Bullish Global, AltSchool, Trade Republic, PsiQuantum, and Rigetti Computing. Thiel also backed DeepMind, which was acquired by Google in 2014. Founders Fund is a significant backer of ResearchGate.
In 2017, Founders Fund invested $15–20 million in bitcoin. By January 2018, these holdings were worth hundreds of millions of dollars due to the cryptocurrency's surge. Also in 2017, Thiel was an early investor in Clearview AI, a facial recognition startup that raised concerns about potential weaponization. In 2024, Founders Fund led an $85 million seed round for UAE's decentralized AI platform SentientAGI, aiming to challenge established models and address AI proliferation. In 2024, it also invested in Impulse Space, Ramp, and Crusoe. In 2025, Founders Fund invested in Erebor, EnduroSat, Varda, and Hadrian.
General Matter emerged in April 2025, focusing on High-Assay, Low-Enriched Uranium. Scott Nolan, formerly of SpaceX, left Founders Fund to become its CEO. Thiel also serves on its board. The plant in Paducah, built by General Matter, will be the first privately developed US uranium enrichment facility.
Valar Ventures, co-founded by Thiel in 2010 with Andrew McCormack and James Fitzgerald, is an internationally focused venture firm. Its portfolio includes TransferWise (now Wise), Treecard, Atoa, Novo, Fortú, Qonto, Hero, Regate, Bitpanda, Kuda Bank, Bukuwarung, Maplerad, Albo, N26, Mondu, Moss, Taxfix, and Ivy. Valar also invested in New Zealand companies like Xero, Pacific Fibre, and Booktrack. Recent investments include Panacea Financial, SILQ, Neo, and Gaia.
Thiel Capital, founded in 2011 and based in Los Angeles, serves as Thiel's family office. It provides strategic and operational support for his initiatives, incubating and launching Founders Fund, Mithril, Valar, the Thiel Fellowship, and Breakout Labs, and sponsoring Crescendo Equity Partners. Its investments include Alloy Therapeutics, EnClear Therapies, ATAI Life Sciences, Compass Pathways, Pilgrim, Hugoboom, Rhea, Bullish Global, FTX, QA Wolf, Rollup, Neros, Regent Craft, and Mynaric. Notable former employees include Sebastian Kurz, Blake Masters, Kevin Harrington, and Michael Kratsios.
Thiel Capital's investment in drone startup Quantum Systems and his backing of Stark, an attack drone startup, have drawn controversy due to Thiel's politics. In May 2025, Quantum Systems became Europe's first dual-use unicorn. Thiel's mentee, Moritz Döpfner, brokered the Quantum Systems deal and sits on its board. His venture fund, Doepfner Capital, also invests in Stark.
Mithril Capital Management, launched in June 2012 with Jim O'Neill and Ajay Royan, targets companies ready for scaling. It holds shares in space intelligence company BlackSky and invests in Helion Energy.
The 1517 Fund, founded in 2015 by Danielle Strachman and Michael Gibson, provides grants and investments to "dropouts, renegade students, and deep tech scientists." Peter Thiel backs the fund, whose portfolio includes Luminar Technologies, Loom, Inc., Atom Computing, and Durin Mining Technologies.
Thiel co-founded America's Frontier Fund with Eric Schmidt, dedicated to bringing manufacturing, particularly semiconductors, back to the US. The fund has a bipartisan character and raised $315 million for its first fund. It backs Venus Aerospace and Foundation Alloy. The fund is characterized as "China-sceptic."
Around the early 2020s, Thiel became involved with Rivada Space Networks, a venture aiming to develop satellite technology. The company has attracted significant investment and expanded globally. Thiel reportedly assists with its development and legal battles.
Thiel is an investor and strategic partner of Oslo-based SNÖ Ventures, joining in 2021. In 2024, the fund made its first defense tech investment in Nordic Air Defence.
In 2020, Thiel became a strategic partner and anchor investor of Elevat3, which invests in startups in German-speaking countries, focusing on life sciences, deep tech, fintech, property, and insurance. It partners with Founders Fund.
Crescendo Equity Partners, based in Seoul, focuses on mid-cap manufacturing and technology companies in Asia. Founded in 2012 with Peter Thiel's sponsorship, it invests in companies like Line Next and HPSP.
Thiel is the anchor backer of Pronomos Capital, a firm seeking to establish experimental, semi-autonomous cities. Projects include Próspera in Honduras, which attracted companies like Oklo Inc. and biotech startups but faced legal challenges.
Praxis, a company seeking to establish a new city-state, explored Greenland as a location. Concerns were raised about the Praxis project's threat to Greenland and Thiel's politics, as well as Palantir's association with intelligence services.
According to a 2020 Bloomberg article, Thiel was an investor in funds managed by 8VC and in the bank Disruptive Technology Advisers. He also sponsored Sam Altman's Hydrazine Capital and J.D. Vance's Narya, and backs Doepfner Capital. Founders Fund backed Intudo and Mensch Capital. Thiel also backs Syfe Group through Valar. Founders Fund invested in Privateer Holdings, becoming the first institutional investor in the cannabis industry. His first hedge fund investment was in Grandmaster Capital Management. He also backed Joshua Kushner's Thrive Capital. In 2019, Thiel, Mark Cuban, and Marc Andreessen backed crypto fund 1Confirmation. Thiel supports Vivek Ramaswamy's Strive Asset Management. In 2021, Thiel backed A-Star Partners and Wischoff Ventures. He is also a major backer of venture debt firm Tacora.
He served on AbCellera's board from 2020 to 2024. Thiel Bio, a venture capital firm founded in 2023 by Jason Camm, recently invested in Ataraxis AI and EnClear Therapies with Founders Fund.
In March 2015, Thiel joined Y Combinator as a part-time partner but severed ties in November 2017.
In 2024, Thiel became an investor in the Enhanced Games, a proposed multi-sport event allowing performance-enhancing substances.
In May 2016, Thiel confirmed he had funded several lawsuits, including Terry Bollea's against Gawker Media, which resulted in Gawker's closure. Thiel called this one of the "greater philanthropic things that I've done." He was motivated by Gawker's 2007 article outing him and stated his actions aimed at specific deterrence, not revenge. He argued that fighting Gawker did not endanger journalism, citing his donations to the Committee to Protect Journalists. Gawker's Nick Denton later acknowledged Thiel had done him a favor by forcing the sale of Gawker Media.
Thiel is described as a libertarian, with various labels like Ayn Rand libertarian, plutocratic reactionary, militarist techno-libertarian, and libertarian authoritarian applied to him. His stance on democracy is described as democracy-skeptic, partly antidemocratic, or post-democratic. Yann Algan links Thiel and Elon Musk to "liquid democracy." Biographer Max Chafkin notes a mix of libertarianism and authoritarianism in Thiel's thinking, calling his true beliefs a mystery. Journalist Murad Ahmed calls him the "philosopher king at the very top of Silicon Valley." German philosopher Peter Sloterdijk describes him as a "philosopher king" who acts "very coolly and strategically." Ross Douthat calls him the "most influential right-wing intellectual of the last 20 years." Luke Munn notes Thiel's influence on politics is financial, technical, and ideological. Ijoma Mangold describes Thiel's theories as obscure but often insightful. René Martens criticizes admiration for Thiel, calling him a disciple of Carl Schmitt. The Guardian described Thiel as a neoconservative, highlighting his involvement in "TheVanguard.org" and his belief that enlightenment thinkers moved humanity away from nature. Vadym Kovalenko sees Thiel as a humanitarian Über-artist, emphasizing "truth, the ideal, ontology" over superficiality. Paul Leslie discusses Thiel's weaving of Schmitt's political theology and Strauss's esoteric wisdom. James Rushing Daniel describes Thiel as advocating for an "overtly exclusionary and rapacious form of capitalism" and a "cultural revolution" to replace progressive neoliberalism. Daniel states Thiel financially supports the "reactionary, traditionalist turn of conservative politics." Thiel believes America is in stagnation and decline, advocating for deregulation and capitalist principles to drive progress. Nick Land attributes Thiel's essay "The Education of a Libertarian" as a watershed moment for the Dark Enlightenment movement. Patrick Zarrelli suggests Thiel fears mass democracy will dismantle freedoms, but underestimates technocracy's limits. Zarelli notes Thiel has built "parallel governance inside the state itself," with critics calling him a "shadow oligarch." George A. Dunn believes Thiel connects Girard and Strauss to debates on modernity.
Thiel identifies as a conservative libertarian, and has espoused support for national conservatism, criticizing free trade and big tech. He advocates for companies to avoid competition and create monopolies. In 1995, he co-authored "The Diversity Myth," criticizing political correctness and multiculturalism. He argued against affirmative action, claiming it harmed the "disadvantaged." His 2004 essay "The Straussian Moment" is considered pivotal in his political thinking, suggesting a re-examination of modern politics after 9/11. He noted that "capitalist democracy" had become an oxymoron due to increased welfare beneficiaries and women's suffrage, but stressed no group should be disenfranchised. In 2021, he wrote for Die Welt, criticizing Germany's fear of extremism and advocating for new, potentially dangerous ideas. In a 2015 conversation, he claimed innovation was primarily in computing, not the physical world, due to unregulated bits versus regulated atoms.
Thiel's ventures, like Founders Fund, back the Hill & Valley Forum, an anti-China alliance. China Daily identifies him, Palmer Luckey, and Jacob Helberg as tech hawks shaping US policy towards China. Xinhua News Agency calls Palantir and its leaders representatives of "the new military industrial complex." 36Kr praises his role in breaking down traditional barriers in the US military-industrial complex. In 2019, Thiel called Google "seemingly treasonous," urging an investigation into its work with China. In 2025, he called for a reset in economic relations with China, viewing them geopolitically. He opined that the US should avoid extreme views on China. In 2024, Palantir became a strategic partner of Israel in military technology. In a 2024 interview, Thiel advocated cooperation with Israel to deter Iran's nuclear ambitions. Regarding the Russia-Ukraine war, he suggested NATO expansion might not have been ideal, but the US couldn't retreat from Ukraine. In 2025, Artyom Lukin described Thiel as the "éminence grise of Trump’s own deep state" and the "most anti-China figure in the US top elite," pushing US geostrategy towards focusing on China. Lukin noted Thiel viewed Russia as a lesser threat. According to The Intercept, Thiel is the source of Silicon Valley's "warrior culture" focused on an arms race with China. Alex Karp notes Palantir's warrior culture values excellence over money.
Thiel is a member of the Steering Committee of the Bilderberg Group and co-founder of Dialog, a tech-focused group compared to Bilderberg. He has not attended the World Economic Forum since 2013, considering it a place without individuals. The Thiel Foundation supports the Committee to Protect Journalists and the Human Rights Foundation. Thiel backs the Alliance of Democracies Foundation. He has supported conservative gay rights causes, inviting Ann Coulter to Homocon 2010. He helped fund James O'Keefe's "Taxpayers Clearing House" video and donated to the Club for Growth. He is a major backer of the Rockbridge Network. In 2023, Business Insider reported Thiel became an FBI informant in 2021. He visited Argentine President Javier Milei three times in 2024. Matt Stoller describes Thiel as a "really smart nihilist" focused on power. Biographer Max Chafkin suggests this explains Thiel's activities.
Thiel is a member of the Republican Party, contributing to both Libertarian and Republican candidates. He endorsed Ron Paul in 2008, and later Mitt Romney in 2012. He supported Donald Trump in 2016, speaking at the Republican National Convention and donating $1.25 million to his campaign. After Trump's victory, he was named to the President-elect's transition team. He donated $250,000 to the Trump Victory Committee in 2018. By February 2022, he was a major donor to Republican candidates. In 2023, The Atlantic reported Thiel had "lost interest in democracy" and wouldn't fund politicians in the next presidential campaign. He later indicated Trump and populists were a disruptive factor preparing for rebuilding. He has his own PAC, Free Forever, supporting candidates with stricter border control and anti-interventionist foreign policy. Brendan Glavin noted Thiel's political donations have "an ideological agenda that’s not strictly motivated by financial or business concerns."
Thiel directs most of his philanthropy through the Thiel Foundation. He provided matching funds for the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence and has spoken at Singularity Summits. He is a financial backer of OpenAI. He announced a $3.5 million donation to foster anti-aging research through the Methuselah Mouse Prize foundation, aiming for "radically longer and healthier lives." He is registered for cryonic preservation with the Alcor Life Extension Foundation. He has expressed interest in parabiosis and young blood transfusions. He pledged $500,000 to the Seasteading Institute, seeking "permanent, autonomous ocean communities."
The Thiel Fellowship, created in 2010, offers $100,000 (raised to $200,000 since 2025) over two years to 20 individuals under 23, encouraging them to drop out of college and start ventures. Thiel believes college is often a default path for those unsure of their future.
Breakout Labs, launched in 2011, provides grants of up to $350,000 to science-focused startups outside traditional institutions, focusing on biotech and hardware.
In 2011, Thiel donated NZ$1 million to an appeal fund for Christchurch earthquake casualties. He established the Imitatio project to support research on René Girard's mimetic theory.
Thiel resided in San Francisco until 2018, when he moved to Los Angeles, citing its intolerance of conservatives and high costs. Thiel Capital and the Thiel Foundation followed him, while Founders Fund remains in San Francisco. Mithril moved its headquarters to Austin.
Thiel married his long-time partner, Matt Danzeisen, in Vienna in October 2017. Danzeisen, a former investment banker, has held positions at BlackRock and chairs Bridgetown 1 and Bridgetown 2, sponsored by Thiel Capital. He also participates in other Thiel enterprises. Thiel and Danzeisen have two young daughters born through surrogacy. Adrian Wooldridge reported in August 2025 that Thiel had four children. Thiel noted Danzeisen had tried to dissuade him from donating to Republicans. Thiel was previously in a long-term relationship with Jeff Thomas, who died in March 2023. Thomas had wanted Thiel to cease political activities and reportedly worked with Democratic researchers to push Thiel out of politics.
Thiel describes himself as Christian and a promoter of René Girard's Christian anthropology. He grew up evangelical but describes his beliefs as "somewhat heterodox." He believes Christianity is true but doesn't feel a need to convince others. He sees Christianity as "the anti-identity," where identity is in Christ. He has discussed religion, politics, and technology with theologian N. T. Wright. Girard's theories on sacrifice and the scapegoat mechanism appealed to Thiel as a basis for his faith. Thiel views "wokeism" as a secular religion, "anti-Christian" and "hyper-Christian," filling a void left by a weakened Church. He claims it has concepts of original sin and demands confession but offers no transcendental values or redemption through sacrifice. He sees it as a continuation of communism and the social gospel. Mikhail Minakov writes that Thiel's conception of will integrates Christian eschatology, Girardian mimetic theory, and Straussian elitism to critique liberal democracy. Elke Schwarz notes Thiel and Marc Andreessen are proponents of techno-eschatology, sacralizing AI and using spiritualism to bolster venture capitalism. Thiel is interested in the Antichrist, Armageddon, and Apocalypse, seeing a one-world government as close to the Antichrist and civilization's collapse as Armageddon. He sees salvation in the figure of the Katechon.
Thiel began playing chess at age six and was a top junior player, holding the title of Life Master. He made the ceremonial first move in the 2016 World Chess Championship tiebreak match.
Thiel occasionally comments on CNBC and has been interviewed by Charlie Rose. He has contributed articles to The Wall Street Journal, First Things, Forbes, and Policy Review. In "The Social Network," he was portrayed by Wallace Langham, a depiction he disliked. He was the inspiration for the Peter Gregory character on HBO's "Silicon Valley." Jonas Lüscher based the character Tobias Erkner in his novel "Kraft" on Thiel. After hiring former Austrian chancellor Sebastian Kurz for Thiel Capital, Jan Böhmermann created a satirical song portraying Thiel as a James Bond villain.
A German citizen by birth and naturalized American citizen, Thiel received New Zealand citizenship in 2011 under exceptional circumstances. His citizenship status was not public until 2017. His application cited economic contributions and a $1 million donation to the Christchurch earthquake appeal. Critics cited his case as an example of "bought passports," which the government denied. At the time of the revelation, reports linked Palantir to New Zealand intelligence agencies. In 2015, Thiel purchased a large estate near Wānaka, which he could do as a citizen.
In 2021, ProPublica revealed Thiel purchased 1.7 million PayPal founder's shares in a Roth IRA in 1999 for $1,700. This investment grew to over $5 billion by 2019, with much of the growth from reinvesting proceeds into Palantir and Facebook. This allowed for potential tax-free withdrawal of the gains.
In 2006, Thiel won the Herman Lay Award for Entrepreneurship. He was honored as a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum in 2007. He received an honorary degree from Universidad Francisco Marroquin in 2009. Students For Liberty awarded him its "Alumnus of the Year" in 2012. He received a TechCrunch Crunchie Award for Venture Capitalist of the Year in 2013. In 2018, the German-American Heritage Foundation and Museum honored him as Distinguished German-American of the Year. In 2021, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung awarded him the Frank Schirrmacher prize for his analysis of technological progress.
In 1995, Thiel co-authored "The Diversity Myth: Multiculturalism and the Politics of Intolerance at Stanford," criticizing political correctness and multiculturalism in higher education. He later apologized for insensitive statements in the book regarding rape.
In spring 2012, Thiel taught "CS 183: Startup" at Stanford. Notes from the course, taken by Blake Masters, led to the book "Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future," released in September 2014. Derek Thompson called it "lucid and profound."
Thiel also contributed advice to Tim Ferriss's book "Tools of Titans."
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Peter Andreas Thiel ( ; born 11 October 1967) is a German-American entrepreneur, venture capitalist, and political activist. A co-founder of PayPal, Palantir Technologies, and Founders Fund, he was the first outside investor in Facebook. According to Forbes, as of May 2025, Thiel's estimated net worth stood at US$20.8 billion, making him the 103rd-richest individual in the world. Thiel has been described as "intellectual architect of Silicon Valley's contemporary ethos".
Born in Germany, Thiel was brought to the US by his parents when he was one year old. In 1971, his family moved to South Africa then South West Africa, before moving back to the US in 1977. After graduating from Stanford, he worked as a clerk, a securities lawyer, a speechwriter, and subsequently a derivatives trader at Credit Suisse. He founded Thiel Capital Management in 1996 and co-founded PayPal with Max Levchin and Luke Nosek in 1998. He was the chief executive officer of PayPal until its sale to eBay in 2002 for $1.5 billion.
Following PayPal, Thiel founded Clarium Capital, a global macro hedge fund based in San Francisco. In 2003, he launched Palantir Technologies, a big data analysis company, and has been its chairman since its inception. In 2005, Thiel launched Founders Fund with PayPal partners Ken Howery and Luke Nosek. Thiel became Facebook's first outside investor when he acquired a 10.2% stake in the company for $500,000 in August 2004. He co-founded Valar Ventures in 2010, co-founded Mithril Capital, was investment committee chair, in 2012, and was a part-time partner at Y Combinator from 2015 to 2017. He was granted New Zealand citizenship in 2011, which later became controversial in New Zealand.
Variously described as a conservative libertarian and democracy-skeptic authoritarian, Thiel has made substantial donations to American right-wing figures and causes. Through the Thiel Foundation, Thiel governs the grant-making bodies Breakout Labs and Thiel Fellowship. In 2016, when the Bollea v. Gawker lawsuit ended up with Gawker losing the case, Thiel confirmed that he had funded Hulk Hogan. Gawker had previously outed Thiel as gay.
== Early life and education ==
Peter Andreas Thiel was born in Frankfurt am Main, Hesse, then part of West Germany, on 11 October 1967, to Klaus Friedrich Thiel and his wife Susanne Thiel. The family emigrated to the United States when Peter was one year old and lived in Cleveland, Ohio, where his father worked as a chemical engineer. Klaus worked for various mining companies, which created an itinerant upbringing for Thiel and his younger brother, Patrick Michael Thiel. Thiel and his mother later naturalized as U.S. citizens, whereas his father did not.
Before settling in Foster City, California, in 1977, the Thiel family lived in South Africa and South West Africa (modern-day Namibia) in the time of apartheid. Peter changed elementary schools seven times. He attended for two years a German-language school in Swakopmund that required students to wear uniforms and utilized corporal punishment, such as striking students' hands with a ruler. He said this experience instilled a distaste for uniformity and regimentation later reflected in his support for individualism and libertarianism. The German community in Swakopmund was known at the time for its continued glorification of Nazism. Thiel was noted as a smart, but lonely, withdrawn boy, whom others would not mingle with because they knew he would not stay long in the town.
Thiel played Dungeons & Dragons and was an avid reader of science fiction, with Isaac Asimov and Robert A. Heinlein among his favorite authors. He is a fan of J. R. R. Tolkien's works, stating as an adult that he had read The Lord of the Rings over ten times. Thiel has founded six firms (Palantir Technologies, Valar Ventures, Mithril Capital, Lembas LLC, Rivendell LLC and Arda Capital) with names originating from Tolkien.
Thiel excelled in mathematics and scored first in a California-wide mathematics competition while attending Bowditch Middle School in Foster City. At San Mateo High School, he read Ayn Rand and admired the optimism and anti-communism of then-President Ronald Reagan. He was valedictorian of his graduating class in 1985.
Thiel studied philosophy at Stanford University. The replacement of a "Western Culture" program at Stanford with a "Culture, Ideas and Values" course that addressed diversity and multiculturalism prompted Thiel to co-found The Stanford Review, a conservative and libertarian newspaper, in 1987. The paper received funding from Irving Kristol. Thiel was The Stanford Review's first editor-in-chief until he graduated in 1989. Thiel has maintained his relationship with the paper, consulting with staff, donating to the newspaper, and placing graduating students in internships or jobs within his network. He also co-wrote the 1998 book "The Diversity Myth" which attacked liberalism and multiculturalism, and became a member of "TheVanguard.org", a right-wing neoconservative internet group set up to pressure the liberal MoveOn.org.
After graduation, Thiel attended Stanford Law School, graduating in 1992 with a Juris Doctor degree. While at Stanford, Thiel met René Girard, whose mimetic theory influenced him.
== Career ==
=== Early career ===
After graduating from Stanford Law School, Thiel was a law clerk to Judge James Larry Edmondson of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit from 1992 to 1993. Thiel then worked as a securities lawyer for Sullivan & Cromwell in New York. He left the law firm in under a year. He then took a job as a derivatives trader in currency options at Credit Suisse in 1993 while also working as a speechwriter for former United States Secretary of Education William Bennett. Thiel returned to California in 1996.
Upon returning to the Bay Area, Thiel capitalized on the dot-com boom. With financial support from friends and family, he raised $1 million toward the establishment of Thiel Capital Management and embarked on his venture capital career. Early on, he experienced a setback after investing $100,000 in his friend Luke Nosek's unsuccessful web-based calendar project. Soon thereafter, Nosek's friend Max Levchin described to Thiel his cryptography-related company idea, which became their first venture called Fieldlink (later renamed Confinity) in 1998.
=== PayPal ===
With Confinity, Thiel realized they could develop software to bridge a gap in making online payments. Although the use of credit cards and expanding automated teller machine networks provided consumers with more payment options, not all merchants had the necessary hardware to accept credit cards. Thus, consumers had to pay with exact cash or check. Thiel wanted to create a type of digital wallet for consumer convenience and security by encrypting data on digital devices, and in 1999 Confinity launched PayPal.
PayPal promised to open up new possibilities for handling money. Thiel viewed PayPal's mission as liberating people from the erosion of the value of their currencies due to inflation. Thiel spoke in 1999:
The need PayPal answers is monumental.[...] In the twenty-first century, people need a form of money that's more convenient and secure, something that can be accessed from anywhere with a PDA or an Internet connection. Of course, what we're calling 'convenient' for American users will be revolutionary for the developing world.[....] In the future, when we make our service available outside the U.S. and as Internet penetration continues to expand to all economic tiers of people, PayPal will give citizens worldwide more direct control over their currencies than they ever had before. It will be nearly impossible for corrupt governments to steal wealth from their people through their old means because if they try the people will switch to dollars or Pounds or Yen, in effect dumping the worthless local currency for something more secure.
When PayPal launched at a press conference in 1999, representatives from Nokia and Deutsche Bank sent $3 million in venture funding to Thiel using PayPal on their PalmPilots. PayPal then continued to grow through mergers in 2000 with Elon Musk's online financial services company X.com, and with Pixo, a company specializing in mobile commerce. These mergers allowed PayPal to expand into the wireless phone market and transformed it into a safer and more user-friendly tool by enabling users to transfer money via a free online registration and email rather than by exchanging bank account information. PayPal went public on 15 February 2002 and was bought by eBay for $1.5 billion in October of that year. Thiel remained CEO of the company until the sale. His 3.7% stake in the company was worth $55 million at the time of acquisition. In Silicon Valley circles, Thiel is colloquially referred to as the "Don of the PayPal Mafia".
=== Clarium Capital ===
Thiel used $10 million of his proceeds to create Clarium Capital Management, a global macro hedge fund focusing on directional and liquid instruments in currencies, interest rates, commodities, and equities. Thiel stated that "the big, macroeconomic idea that we had at Clarium—the idée fixe—was the peak-oil theory, which was basically that the world was running out of oil, and that there were no easy alternatives."
In 2003, Thiel successfully bet that the United States dollar would weaken. In 2004, Thiel spoke of the dot-com bubble having migrated, in effect, into a growing bubble in the financial sector, and specified General Electric and Walmart as vulnerable. In 2005, Clarium saw a 57.1% return as Thiel predicted that the dollar would rally.
However, Clarium faltered in 2006 with a 7.8% loss. Thereafter, the firm sought to profit in the long-term from its petrodollar analysis, which foresaw the impending decline in oil supplies. Clarium's assets under management grew after achieving a 40.3% return in 2007 to more than $7 billion by the first quarter of 2008, but fell later in the year and again in 2009 after financial markets collapsed. By 2011, after missing out on the economic rebound, many key investors pulled out, reducing the value of Clarium's assets to $350 million, two thirds of which was Thiel's money.
=== Palantir ===
In May 2003, Thiel incorporated Palantir Technologies, a big data analysis company named after the Tolkien artifact. He continues as its chairman, as of 2022. Thiel stated that the idea for the company was based on the realization that "the approaches that PayPal had used to fight fraud could be extended into other contexts, like fighting terrorism". He also stated that, after the September 11 attacks, the debate in the United States was "will we have more security with less privacy or less security with more privacy?". He envisioned Palantir as providing data mining services to government intelligence agencies that were maximally unintrusive and traceable.
According to Geoff Shullenberger (managing director of Compact) and Moira Weigel (Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature, Harvard), Peter Thiel and Alex Karp built Palantir on the basis of their understanding of Leo Strauss and the Frankfurt School.
=== Facebook ===
In August 2004, Thiel made a $500,000 angel investment in Facebook for a 10.2% stake in the company and joined Facebook's board. This was the first outside investment in Facebook and valued the company at $4.9 million. As a board member, Thiel was not actively involved in Facebook's operations. He provided help with timing the various rounds of funding and Zuckerberg credited Thiel with helping him time Facebook's 2007 Series D, which closed before the 2008 financial crisis.
In his book The Facebook Effect, David Kirkpatrick outlines how Thiel came to make this investment: Napster co-founder Sean Parker, who at the time had assumed the title of "President" of Facebook, was seeking investors. Parker approached Reid Hoffman, who directed Parker to Thiel, whom Hoffman knew from their PayPal days. Thiel met Parker and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. Thiel and Zuckerberg got along well, and Thiel agreed to lead Facebook's seed round with $500,000 for 10.2% of the company. The investment was originally in the form of a convertible note, to be converted to equity if Facebook reached 1.5 million users by the end of 2004. Although Facebook narrowly missed the target, Thiel allowed the loan to be converted to equity anyway. Thiel said of his investment: "I was comfortable with them pursuing their original vision. And it was a very reasonable valuation. I thought it was going to be a pretty safe investment."
In September 2010, Thiel, while expressing skepticism about the potential for growth in the consumer Internet sector, argued that relative to other Internet companies, Facebook (which then had a secondary market valuation of $30 billion) was comparatively undervalued. Facebook's initial public offering was in May 2012, with a market cap of nearly $100 billion ($38 a share), at which time Thiel sold 16.8 million shares for $638 million. In August 2012, immediately upon the conclusion of the early investor lock-up period, Thiel sold almost all of his remaining stake for between $19.27 and $20.69 per share, or $395.8 million, for a total of more than $1 billion. In 2016, he sold a little under 1 million of his shares for around $100 million. In November 2017, he sold another 160,805 shares for $29 million, putting his holdings in Facebook at 59,913 Class A shares. As of April 2020, he owned less than 10,000 shares in Facebook.
On 7 February 2022, Thiel announced he would not stand for re-election to the board of Facebook owner Meta at the 2022 annual stockholders' meeting and would leave after 17 years in order to support pro–Donald Trump candidates in the 2022 United States elections.
=== Founders Fund ===
In 2005, Thiel created Founders Fund, a San Francisco-based venture capital fund. Other partners in the fund include Sean Parker, Ken Howery, and Luke Nosek.
The fund focuses on defense-related startups and technology. After Facebook, even though it was a big financial success, Thiel made the Founders Fund pivot to hard tech, with the reasoning that while companies like Twitter might have a high value, they would not take "civilization to the next level." The Economist notes that the fund and Thiel, personally, have a history of incubating startups that do hypersensitive work related to national security. The fund casts Palantir, Anduril and the newly minted nuclear startup General Matter as the three parts of a trilogy, to which it hopes to add others, among which a plan for onshoring ultraviolet light lithography.
Business Insider reports that, among Thiel's inner circle (who know well the billionaire's fondness for Tolkien's works), the fund is nicknamed "the Precious", in reference to the One Ring of Sauron.
In addition to Facebook, the Founders Fund made early-stage investments in numerous startups, including Airbnb, Slide.com, LinkedIn, Friendster, RapLeaf, Geni.com, Yammer, Spotify, Practice Fusion, MetaMed, Vator, SpaceX, IronPort, Votizen, Asana, Big Think, CapLinked, Quora, Nanotronics Imaging, Powerset (Thiel is on the board of Nanotronics and Powerset), Stripe, Bullish Global (the parent company Block.one had also received investment from Thiel ), AltSchool, Trade Republic, PsiQuantum (photonic quantum computing), and Rigetti Computing (superconducting quantum computing). Thiel also backed DeepMind, a UK start-up that was acquired by Google in early 2014 for £400 million. Founders Fund is an important backer of the Berlin-based platform ResearchGate.
In 2017, Founders Fund bought about $15–20 million worth of bitcoin. In January 2018, the firm told investors that due to the cryptocurrency's surge the holdings were worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
Also in 2017, Thiel was one of the first outside investors in Clearview AI, a facial recognition technology startup that has raised concerns in the tech world and media for its risks of weaponization.
In 2024, the Founders Fund led a massive US$85 million seed round for the UAE's decentralized, open-source AI platform SentientAGI (Sentient Foundation), which seeks to challenge Perplexity and OpenAI's closed models as well as handle the problem of AI proliferation, which concentrates power in the hands of large players like Google and Amazon. In 2024 it also invested in Impulse Space (in-space transportation services), Ramp, Crusoe (AI infrastructure using clean energy).
In 2025, the Founders Fund invests in Erebor (a new digital bank which is founded by Palmer Luckey and has quickly reached a US$2 billion valuation), EnduroSat (Bulgarian startup that produces Gen3 satellites at scale), Varda (space medicine and hypersonic testbed startup, founded by the Thiel Fellow Delian Asparouhov, Trae Stephens and Will Bruey, and incubated at the Founders Fund), Hadrian (defense manufacturing startup).
==== General Matter ====
General Matter emerged from stealth in April 2025, focusing on "production and handling of High-Assay, Low-Enriched Uranium (HALEU)." Scott Nolan, who formerly worked for SpaceX, left the Founders Fund to focus on the company and become the CEO, Thiel is also on the company's board of directors, which is noted by the Economist to be a rare occurrence these days. The plant in Paducah, built by General Matter, will be the "first privately developed US uranium enrichment facility".
=== Valar Ventures ===
Valar Ventures is an internationally focused venture firm Thiel cofounded with Andrew McCormack and James Fitzgerald in 2010. Valar's portfolio includes TransferWise (now Wise), reforestation-funding finance platform Treecard, fintech startup Atoa (Wise, Treecard and Atoa are based in London), Miami-headquartered Novo and Fortú (digital bank which focuses on underbanked Latino and Hispanic communities), fintech unicorn Qonto, fintech startup Hero, accounting automation software startup Regate (all three are Paris-based), Vienna-based crypto unicorn Bitpanda, Lagos- and London-based banking startup Kuda Bank, Indonesian fintech startup Bukuwarung, Nigerian banking platform Maplerad, Mexican banking startup Albo, banking unicorn N26, B2B paytech Mondu, spend management platform Moss, tax filling unicorn Taxfix, instant payment API startup Ivy (N26, Mondu, Moss, Taxfix and Ivy are all Berlin-based; Ivy is founded by the Thiel Fellow Ferdinand Dabitz), Dubai-based fintech startup Baraka. Valar also invested in New-Zealand based companies including in the software firm Xero, undersea communication company Pacific Fibre and e-reader platform Booktrack.
Recent investments include Arkansas-based Panacea Financial (digital fintech for medical practitioners), Riyadh-based SILQ ("largest B2B commerce platform across the Gulf and South Asia", resulted from the recent merger between Bangladesh-based Shop-Up and Saudi-based Sary), Canadian startup Neo (fintech), London-based fertility care startup Gaia.
=== Thiel Capital ===
Thiel Capital is a venture capital fund founded by Thiel in 2011 and based in Los Angeles, also referred to as Thiel's family office. It provides "strategic and operational support" for many of Peter Thiel's initiatives and ventures. It incubated and launched Founders Fund, Mithril, Valar, the Thiel Fellowship and Breakout Labs, and also sponsors Crescendo Equity Partners.
The firm's investments include Alloy Therapeutics (with Founders Fund and 8VC), EnClear Therapies (Jason Camm became a board member in 2020), the German unicorn ATAI Life Sciences (found by Thiel's friend, the biotech billionaire Christian Angermayer; Jason Camm also became a director in 2020), Compass Pathways (also partly owned by ATAI), Pilgrim (dual-use biotech startup founded by Thiel Fellow Jake Adler), Hugoboom, Rhea, Bullish Global (Founders Fund and Angermeyer are also investors), FTX (also received investment from Rivendell LLC), QA Wolf, Rollup (software platform to develop complex hardware), Neros (military drone startup found by Thiel Fellow Soren Monroe-Anderson), Regent Craft (electric seaglider, invested together with Founders Fund). Thiel Capital is also an investor (including post-IPO financial investment as major backer) of the dual-use German laser communications startup Mynaric. Angermayer also backs Mynaric.
Some of the firm's notable (past) employees include former Austrian chancellor Sebastian Kurz, American politician and entrepreneur Blake Masters, Kevin Harrington (Senior Director for Strategic Planning at the United States National Security Council) and Michael Kratsios.
==== Quantum Systems and Stark ====
Thiel Capital's investment in the Gilching-based drone startup Quantum Systems as well as Thiel's subsequent backing of the Berlin-based attack drone startup Stark are sometimes considered controversial, due to Thiel's politics. In May 2025, Quantum Systems became Europe's first dual-use unicorn and third defense unicorn, after fellow Bavarian startup Helsing and the Portuguese Tekever (Thiel has a role in the success of Helsing too and the startup is considered a part of the "Thiel ecosystem", although he does not directly invest in it). Thiel's mentee Moritz Döpfner brokered the deal with Quantum Systems on Thiel's behalf and sits on its board. His venture fund Doepfner Capital also invests in Stark.
=== Mithril Capital ===
In June 2012, he launched Mithril Capital Management, named after the fictitious metal in The Lord of the Rings, with Jim O'Neill and Ajay Royan. Unlike Clarium Capital, Mithril Capital, a fund with $402 million at the time of launch, targets companies that are beyond the startup stage and ready to scale up.
Thiel holds shares in the space-based intelligence company BlackSky through Mithril. It also invests in Helion Energy.
=== 1517 Fund ===
The 1517 Fund was founded in 2015 by Danielle Strachman and Michael Gibson, who were both in the founding team of the Thiel Fellowship. The fund provides cash grants and investments, aiming at extending the support already granted by the Thiel Fellowship. It targets "dropouts, renegade students, and deep tech scientists". Peter Thiel backs the fund.
Its portfolio companies include Luminar Technologies, Loom, Inc., Atom Computing and Durin Mining Technologies among others.
=== America's Frontier Fund ===
Thiel is the co-founder of America's Frontier Fund, together with Eric Schmidt. The New York Times writes that, America's Frontier Fund is an organization committed to bring manufacturing back to the US, especially that of semiconductors, and the leaders are determined to carry out this mission whether the state helps them or not. InfluenceWatch notes the fund's bipartisan character, with the participation of Ashton B. Carter and H.R. McMaster and the fact that the two founders are left and right-of-center respectively. The chief executive is Gilman Louie.
In December 2024, it got approval to get funding from the Small Business Investment Company Critical Technology Initiative (SBICCT), which is "a joint effort by the U.S. Small Business Administration and the Department of Defense." In July 2025, it reportedly raised US$315 million for its first fund.
It backs Venus Aerospace, a company develops hypersonic flight using rotating detonation rocket engine (since November 2024) and Foundation Alloy.
The fund is characterized by Intelligence Online as "China-sceptic".
=== Rivada Space Networks ===
Around the early 2020s, the Bavarian startup Kleo-Connect successfully developed a highly advanced satellite technology, which is considered much more suitable for governmental and military use than that of Starlink, which was originally conceived for civilian use only. It was feared the technology would fall into the hand of the PLA through its Chinese investors (who invested in the startup since 2018) though. Thus, the German government banned the sale of the company to China, but 144 lawsuits worldwide deterred investors from helping the company to expand the constellation. The founders decided to bring in the US's "highest conservative circles" (which led to the formation of Rivada Space Networks, which drew its personnel mainly from Kleo-Connect, in 2022), among which Karl Rove participated as an investor and lobbyist, and former US secretary of state Mike Pompeo joined the board of the mother company in the US, alongside others like Richard Myers, Jeb Bush, James Loy, Lord Guthrie and the Democrat Martin O’Malley. Rivada Networks's chairman Declan Ganley notes in particular the power of Thiel's name (whose investment in the firm remains undisclosed) in negotiation with investors. The United States Department of Defense is also an investor. Newt Gingrich is noted to have lobbied for the firm too. By 2025, the "politically connected company" has already expanded to 33 countries and collected 16 billion dollars in investments, despite having not launched its satellites (deployment is set to begin in 2027 with initial tests set for 2026). Thiel reportedly works to help the company's development, especially regarding its legal battles.
=== SNÖ Ventures ===
Thiel is an investor and strategic partner of the Oslo-based SNÖ Ventures, having joined the firm in 2021, accompanied by a group of international strategic advisors. In 2024, the fund made its first investment in the defense tech sector, an early funding for the Swedish startup Nordic Air Defence, which developed counter-drone missile technology and is staffed with former employees from Palantir and Quantum Systems. Arctic Today sees this as an evidence of Sweden's strong transatlantic bond which is "seeping into defence", which is also shown in Daniel Ek's Prima Materia's investment in Helsing (which is a strategic partner of Palantir), which happened three months before Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
=== Elevat3 ===
In 2020, Thiel became a strategic partner and anchor investor of Elevat3, which is set up by Christian Angermayer's Apeiron Investment Group to invest in startups in German-speaking countries. The fund focuses on "life sciences, deep tech, fintech (financial technology), property and insurance". The fund has a partnership with the Founder Fund. In 2020, Thiel invested into the Neunkirchen-based startup Neodigital through the fund. The fund also backs other European startups such as the London-based aggregator startup Olsam. In 2022, through Elevat3 and in partnership with the Founders Fund, the Apeiron Group bought shares from the Chinese Fosun International and others to become a shareholder in the Hamburg-based NAGA Group. Thiel also holds shares in Heidelberger Beteiligungsholding (which will be renamed as SQD.AI Strategies AG), the first dedicated German crypto holding treasury, through the firm.
=== Crescendo Equity Partners ===
Seoul-based Crescendo Equity is a private equity firm which focuses on mid-cap manufacturing and technology companies in Asia.
According to the official website, "Crescendo was established in 2012 with the sponsorship of Peter Thiel". The fund is co-founded by Peter Thiel, Matt Danzeisen (who serves as a member of its investment committee and representative to selected portfolio companies), Andy Lee (company chairman), Matt Price (CEO) and Slava Zhakov (CTO). The president is Anand Chandrasekaran. General Catalyst is also heavily involved in its financing and organization. The fund invests in Line Next (a unit of the Line Corporation), a joint venture between Softbank and Naver. The Business Korea credits Crescendo Equity Partners with transforming Korea's HPSP, which it invested in since 2017, into a global player in the semiconductor equipment sector. In 2025, Crescendo initiated the sale of its 40.9% controlling equity stake in the semiconductor firm, often dubbed Korea's ASML. The three major global PEF firms, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts (KKR), Carlyle, and Blackstone, which are dubbed the "big three buyout funds", have submitted their bids. The firm also plays an important role in the Korean semiconductor industry through investments and support of other companies like Hanmi Semiconductor, Samyang NCchem. and Movensys (originally known as Soft Servo Group or Soft Motions & Robotics; the name was changed to Movensys in 2021 after Crescendo's investment). The firm also invests in companies that make metal equipment, including Seojin System and Model Solution.
=== Pronomos Capital ===
Thiel began to explore investing in charter cities on land after his interest in seasteading faded. Thiel is the anchor backer of Pronomos Capital, a firm "set up like a venture capital fund" that seeks to establish experimental, semi-autonomous cities in vacant lands, with acceptance from the countries involved. The founder of the firm is Patri Friedman. Projects backed by the firm include Próspera in Honduras. The Próspera project attracted companies like Oklo Inc. (nuclear startup backed by Thiel's Mithril and Sam Altman) and biotech startups, but led to legal struggles when the new Honduran government changed the laws in 2022.
==== Praxis and controversies in Denmark ====
Praxis is a company that seeks to establish a new city-state and has explored Greenland as a possible location. In 2025, when the Danish government was integrating Palantir into the country's military, police and intelligence services, a major argument put forth by opponents was that the Praxis project (backed by Thiel through Pronomos) was a threat to Greenland. Other arguments were concerned with Thiel's politics in the US and Palantir's association with American and other European intelligence services, as well as the security risk that might arise from handing citizens' data to Palantir. The Danish National Police answered with a reference to a 2021 response to the Folketing, but otherwise, the Police, the Danish Security and Intelligence Service and Minister of Justice Peter Hummelgaard refused to comment on the matter.
=== Other business enterprises ===
According to a 2020 article from Bloomberg, Thiel was at the time an investor in funds managed by 8VC and in the bank Disruptive Technology Advisers. A 2017 Globe and mail article names Thiel as a limited partner at Social Capital. He also sponsored Sam Altman's first venture fund, Hydrazine Capital as well as J.D.Vance's Narya. He also backs Doepfner Capital, the venture fund of Moritz Döpfner, the son of Mathias Döpfner. The Founders Fund was also a backer of the second fund of the Indonesia-focused Intudo. The involvement helped Intudo to validate its mission. Founders Fund is also among the backers of the Israel-based Mensch Capital. Thiel also backs the Singaporean venture investment firm Syfe Group through Valar. The Founders Fund also invested in the Seattle-based private equity fund Privateer Holdings in 2015, thereby becoming the first institutional investor in the cannabis industry.
His first investment in a hedge fund managed by an outside manager was made in 2011: the firm was Grandmaster Capital Management, founded by Patrick Wolff, former Clarium and Thiel Macro executive. Also in 2011, he backed the second fund of Joshua Kushner's Thrive Capital.
In 2019, Thiel, together with Mark Cuban and Marc Andreessen, backed the San Francisco-based crypto investment fund 1Confirmation.
Thiel gives backing to Vivek Ramaswamy's financial firm Strive Asset Management, also described as an activist fund. The firm aims to free "corporate America" of what they deem to be "stakeholder capitalism" ESG mandates created by the three companies BlackRock, Vanguard and State Street and accuse them of causing the energy crisis. The firm does not deny climate science.
In 2021, Thiel backed the first fund of A-Star Partners, founded by Kevin Hartz, former partner at Founders Fund. In 2022, he backed B2B-focused Wischoff Ventures founded by solo GP Nichole Wischoff.
Thiel is also a major backer of the venture debt firm Tacora, found by Keri Findley, his longtime associate. Its inaugural fund in 2022 raised US$350 million in total, including US$250 million from Thiel, which was considered an "unusually large investment". Findley declined to answer whether Thiel invested in its 2025 fund or reveal the names of the 28 investors.
==== AbCellera ====
He served on AbCellera's board from 2020 to 2024, when he resigned for personal reasons. Both sides stated that there was no disagreement, with Thiel saying that he was proud to have helped the company and AbCellara's founder Carl Hansen thanking him for his mentorship. He also retains his stake in the company, as of November 2024.
==== Thiel Bio ====
There is a new venture capital firm named Thiel Bio, found in 2023 by Jason Camm (Chief Medical Officer of Thiel Capital). The regulatory filing does not disclose the name of the single investor who provides US$100 million or Thiel's involvement beyond the use of his name. Recently, the fund has invested in Ataraxis AI and EnClear Therapies together with the Founders Fund.
==== Y Combinator ====
In March 2015, Thiel joined Y Combinator as one of 10 part-time partners. In November 2017, it was reported that Y Combinator had severed its ties with Thiel.
==== Enhanced Games ====
In 2024, Thiel became one of the investors in the Enhanced Games, a proposed multi-sport event that will allow athletes to use performance-enhancing substances without being subject to drug tests.
== Gawker lawsuit ==
In May 2016, Thiel confirmed in an interview with The New York Times that he had paid $10 million in legal expenses to finance several lawsuits brought by others, including a lawsuit by Terry Bollea (Hulk Hogan) against Gawker Media for invasion of privacy, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and infringement of personality rights after Gawker made sections of a sex tape involving Bollea public. The jury awarded Bollea $140 million, and Gawker announced it was permanently closing due to the lawsuit in August 2016. Thiel referred to his financial support of Bollea's case as one of the "greater philanthropic things that I've done."
Thiel said he was motivated to sue Gawker after they published a 2007 article publicly outing him, headlined "Peter Thiel is totally gay, people." Thiel stated that Gawker articles about others, including his friends, had "ruined people's lives for no reason," and said, "It's less about revenge and more about specific deterrence." In response to criticism that his funding of lawsuits against Gawker could restrict the freedom of the press, Thiel cited his donations to the Committee to Protect Journalists and stated, "I refuse to believe that journalism means massive privacy violations. I think much more highly of journalists than that. It's precisely because I respect journalists that I do not believe they are endangered by fighting back against Gawker." Owen Thomas, the author of the Gawker article, stated that he did not think it was an outing in the conventional sense, as Thiel had been open about his homosexuality, but the "strangely conservative" Silicon Valley had refused to talk about it. Thiel said that the problem was less about the outing itself, but the troubles it caused with regard to his business in Saudi Arabia and his parents.
On 15 August 2016, Thiel published an opinion piece in The New York Times in which he argued that his defense of online privacy went beyond Gawker. He highlighted his support for the Intimate Privacy Protection Act and said that athletes and business executives have the right to stay in the closet as long as they want to.
In an open letter to Thiel after losing the case, Gawker's Nick Denton accused Thiel of making them "stripped naked", together with the warning "in the next phase, you too will be subject to a dose of transparency. However philanthropic your intention, and careful the planning, the details of your involvement will be gruesome." Later though, in 2025, Denton said that Thiel was right and did him a favor in forcing the sale of Gawker Media.
== Views and political activities ==
=== Philosophical views ===
Thiel is described by different authors and media sources in different ways. He identifies as a libertarian. He has been called an Ayn Rand libertarian, plutocratic reactionary, militarist techno-libertarian, and libertarian authoritarian. His attitude towards democracy has been described as democracy-skeptic, partly antidemocratic, or post-democratic. French economist Yann Algan links Peter Thiel and Elon Musk to the concept of "liquid democracy" and the rise of libertarian AI governance, which Algan defines as "a radically decentralized, algorithm-driven democracy", which "prioritizes efficiency and individual freedom over democratic safeguards".
Thiel's biographer Max Chafkin notes that his thinking is a mix of libertarianism and authoritarianism, but describes what Thiel truly believes and wants as a mystery.
Journalist Murad Ahmed from Financial Times calls Thiel "philosopher king at the very top of Silicon Valley" (with France 24 using a similar description). German philosopher Peter Sloterdijk also remarks: "Peter Thiel can be seen as more of a philosopher king. He acts very coolly and strategically — a dazzling figure, far outside our left-liberal perception patterns", while Ross Douthat from New York Times describes him as "most influential right-wing intellectual of the last 20 years". Commenting on Douthat's description, Luke Munn of the University of Queensland notes that, "Thiel’s influence on politics is at once financial, technical and ideological [...] his potent cocktail of networks, money, strategy and support exerts a rightward force on the political landscape."
In 2025, the author Ijoma Mangold wrote an article for Die Zeit, describing Thiel's theories as obscure and incoherent at first glance, but often displaying an accurate intuition, while noting that both the man and his ideas "simultaneously fascinates, repels, and outrages." Later the author René Martens wrote on Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk, criticizing Mangold and Die Zeit for masking their admiration with pseudo-criticism and called Thiel a disciple of Carl Schmitt.
In 2009, The Guardian described Thiel as a neoconservative and highlighted his involvement in the online group "TheVanguard.org" that described itself as Reaganite/Thatcherite and supported "conservative values, the free market and limited government" and teaching "MoveOn, Hillary and the leftwing media some lessons they never imagined". It described his philosopical mentor as René Girard, and Thiel as broadly believing that enlightenment thinkers have brought humans away from nature-bound life and towards a new world where man had conquered nature where it was no longer, as quoteted by Thomas Hobbes, "nasty, brutish and short". It also stated that: "What you don't hear about in Thiel's philosophy, by the way, are old-fashioned real-world concepts such as art, beauty, love, pleasure and truth."
The Guardian described Thiel's investment in initiatives such as the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence as part of his views in life-extension technologies to escape humanity's "nasty, brutish and short" life. The Guardian criticized him, stating that "Thiel is trying to destroy the real world, which he also calls "nature", and install a virtual world in its place."
Vadym Kovalenko notes that during the 90s and 2000s, Silicon Valley followed the spirit of Steve Jobs, who saw technology as art. But later this has translated into Thielism, which emphasizes "truth, the ideal, ontology" and matters like flying to Mars, curing aging and creating a new world over the superficiality. Kovalenko sees Thiel as a humanitarian Über-artist.
On the question of exotericism versus esoteticism, Paul Leslie writes that in "The Straussian moment", Thiel tries to " weave together Schmitt’s political theology—with its emphasis on the friend/enemy distinction—and Strauss’s advocacy for esoteric wisdom and hidden hierarchies." In the article "Exotericism and the Untroubled Race for the Future", Thiel discerns between ancient esotericism, in which "thrice-great Hermes revealed his magical recipes only to a few" and "modern esotericism of grantwriting", which eludes scrutiny because the 'public interest' enshrines the authority of only a few specialists", and notes that "eclipse of exotericism has desensitized us to the ever-present political distortion of science". He remarks, though, that exotericism takes time, and Goethe was "perhaps [...] the last human being to command the sum total of human knowledge."
Writing for the Quarterly Journal of Speech in 2024, James Rushing Daniel described Thiel as seeking to replace "progressive neoliberalism" by advocating for an "overtly exclusionary and rapacious form of capitalism" by adopting "messianic rhetoric to return capitalism to its essential principles". Daniel described him as:
(...) "a rhetor ambitiously capitalizing on the material crises and political disillusionment of the day, defending a "cultural revolution" to put an end not just to the progressivism of the long 1990s but the values of collectivism and social justice and the remnants of social democracy and the Keynesian welfare state, replacing them with Randian individualism and the absolute dominance of the capitalist project."
According to Daniel, Thiel has financially supported the intellectual wing of "the reactionary, traditionalist turn of conservative politics" termed by some as "the New Right". Thiel has stated that he believes America is in stagnation and decline, that "culture war" issues are a distraction, and that relaxed regulation and the embrace of capitalist principles will unleash progress, described by The Nation as "advocating for a dramatic, right-wing political turn to address technological stagnation".
Nick Land attributed Thiel's 2009 essay "The Education of a Libertarian" and statement that "I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible" as a watershed moment in the development of the Dark Enlightenment movement. Patrick Zarrelli opines that the sentence is often misunderstood as anti-democratic, and that what Thiel instead fears is "that mass democracy, driven by emotion, resentment, and short-termism, will deliberately or accidentally dismantle the freedoms that underpin innovation and growth", but notes that Thiel underestimates and glosses over limits of technocracy, like resistance from the society and especially, lack of democratic accountability. Zarelli remarks that Thiel has partially realized his philosophy: "By aligning technology with national priorities like defense modernization, pandemic response, and intelligence fusion. He has built parallel governance inside the state itself.", and notes that critics call Thiel a "shadow oligarch". Zarelli opines that a solution might be a hybrid form between technocracy and democracy.
George A. Dunn believes that Thiel is the pathbreaker in connecting the thoughts of Girard and Strauss to debates on the origins of modernity.
=== Political views ===
Thiel is a self-described conservative libertarian. Since the late 2010s, he has espoused support for national conservatism, and criticized economically liberal attitudes towards free trade and big tech.
Thiel advocates that companies should avoid competition and attention, and try to develop into monopolies by creating something new, dominate a niche market before expanding into slightly broader markets. He notes that years or even decades of profits can come from such specific markets.
In 1995, Thiel and David O. Sacks published The Diversity Myth, a book that criticized political correctness and multiculturalism in higher education. The following year, writing for Stanford Magazine, they argued against affirmative action in the United States, saying that it had hurt, not helped, the "disadvantaged" and had led to increased segregation at Stanford University in the name of "diversity".
"The Straussian Moment", an essay written by Thiel in 2004, is sometimes considered to be a fundamental text in his political thinking and was the subject of a 2019 interview at the Hoover Institution. The essay draws on several thinkers and political theorists and argues that the September 11 attacks upset "the entire political and military framework of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries", and therefore "a reexamination of the foundations of modern politics" was needed.
In the same essay, Thiel also noted that, "Since 1920, the vast increase in welfare beneficiaries and the extension of the franchise to women — two constituencies that are notoriously tough for libertarians — have rendered the notion of 'capitalist democracy' into an oxymoron." But he remarked that no class of people should be disenfranchised in the modern day, and taking away women's votes would not solve any problem. Adam Rogers contends that this essay has prefigured the Department of Government Efficiency project.
In 2021, Thiel wrote an article for Die Welt, claiming that the extreme political experiments of fascism and communism in the 20th century had led Germany to fear extremism in both politics and technology. However, as "the decisive arena for the future of the West", being the land of poets and thinkers would not be enough for Germany in the new era. He criticized "green quietism" and opined that new ideas could be dangerous but would be the source of growth.
In a 2015 conversation with Tyler Cowen, Thiel claimed that innovative breakthroughs were happening in computing/IT and not the physical world. He lamented the lack of progress in space travel, high-speed transit, and medical devices. As a cause for the discrepancy, he said: "I would say that we lived in a world in which bits were unregulated and atoms were regulated."
==== On international relations ====
The Founders Fund and Khosla Ventures are backers of the Hill & Valley Forum, a group that is described by the Wall Street Journal as an anti-China alliance between Silicon Valley and Capitol Hill. In an article named Silicon soldiers of fortune, the China Daily, the channel of the Central Propaganda Department of the Chinese Communist Party, identifies Thiel, Palmer Luckey and Jacob Helberg as tech hawks who are increasingly shaping the US policy towards China. The Xinhua News Agency, China's official state news agency, states that Palantir and its leaders like Thiel and Vice President Wendy R. Anderson as well as other companies like Anduril and Saronic Technologies, as representatives of "the new military industrial complex", are an unpredictable danger to the US and the international community. The tech-focused outlet 36Kr though praises his long-term vision and methods in breaking down the traditional barriers in the US military-industrial complex and government sector, and his contribution to leading startups like Palantir, Anduril and SpaceX.
In 2019, Thiel called Google "seemingly treasonous" and urged a government investigation, citing Google's work with China and asking whether DeepMind or Google's senior management had been "infiltrated" by foreign intelligence agencies.
In 2025, Thiel called for a drastic reset in economic relations with China, stressing that economic relations should be viewed from a geopolitical standpoint as well. In an discussion with Peter Robinson, he opined that the US should not let itself be stuck between two extreme views about China (that China itself encourages to promote an attitude of political inaction towards them): "It's China is super weak, and China is super strong. And I've been in meetings in China where in some sense you got both messages within 20 minutes of one another, and it's like logically inconsistent but psychologically it doubles up."
In 2024, Palantir became a strategic partner of Israel in military technology in an occasion both Thiel and Karp visited the country. In a 2024 interview with Bari Weiss, Thiel advocated cooperation with Israel to deter Iran from getting nuclear weapons:
One of the lessons I take of the mid-20th century was every time a country got a nuclear weapon, we got a regional war. The Soviet Union gets the bomb in 1949. The Korean War starts in 1950 because when the Soviet Union backs North Korea, we can't bomb Russia. Then they can back North Korea with impunity, and we get a massive, massive regional war. That's, in a way, the price for being asleep at the switch and letting the Soviets get the bomb. 1964, Communist China gets the bomb. Vietnam War explodes in 1965. And again, China can back North Vietnam with impunity. We can't reciprocate. And the way I understand why would an Iranian nuclear bomb be a catastrophe? Because the degree to which Iran can support this plethora of bad actors, the Houthis, the Hamas people, and Hezbollah, and on and on throughout the Middle East, you could not retaliate against Iran [...] And so we don't have to go to the crazy theocracy that said they'd use the bomb and would use it.
Regarding the Russia-Ukraine war, he opined that "that the relentless NATO expansion might not have been a good idea", but the US could not simply retreat from Ukraine, because it would become a route.
In 2025, writing for the Singapore-based think tank ThinkChina, Artyom Lukin, a leading Russian expert on Asia-Pacific geopolitical issues, wrote that Thiel, whom Lukin described as "the éminence grise of Trump’s own deep state" and "the most anti-China figure in the US top elite", together with his allies, were pushing the American geostrategy towards focusing on China (a country Thiel saw as "a half fascist, half communist gerontocracy" with "a socialism of a nationalistic sort, and [...] extremely racist.") as the paramount threat. Lukin noted that Thiel had little sympathy for Russia, but viewed it as a lesser threat and did not want to push Moscow towards Beijing's arms.
According to The Intercept, Thiel is the source of the warrior culture in Silicon Valley, one focused on an arms race with China, although the anti-China sentiment is found on both sides of the political spectrum. Alex Karp notes that Palantir has a warrior culture, which values excellence over money.
=== Political activism ===
Thiel is a member of the Steering Committee of the Bilderberg Group, a private, annual gathering of intellectual figures, political leaders, and business executives, also characterized as highly focused on defense and espionage, as well as Atlanticist and Europhile. Thiel's outsized influence at the gathering has been noted. Thiel, together with Auren Hoffman, is also the founder of Dialog, which is often compared to Bilderberg, but focuses more on tech. It does not share the lists of participants but is known to have invited American tech and political leaders, as well as intellectual heavyweights, on both sides of the political spectrum, as well as representatives from Europe and Middle East. Past topics included "AI's energy demands, the future of health care, and political realignments" and "caring for aging parents, love, mental health and the afterlife." Palantir is partner of the World Economic Forum, but Thiel has not gone to the meeting since 2013, because he considers it a place without individuals – there are only representatives of companies, governments and NGOs. He opines that some types of global governance might work, but it is necessary to have dissenting views.
The Thiel Foundation is a supporter of the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), which promotes the right of journalists to report the news freely without fear of reprisal. Beginning in 2008, Thiel has donated over $1 million to the CPJ. He is also a supporter of the Human Rights Foundation, which organizes the Oslo Freedom Forum. In 2011 he was a featured speaker at the Oslo Freedom Forum, and the Thiel Foundation was one of the event's main sponsors. He also backs the Alliance of Democracies Foundation founded by Anders Fogh Rasmussen.
Thiel, who is gay, has supported mostly conservative gay rights causes such as the American Foundation for Equal Rights and GOProud. He invited conservative columnist and friend Ann Coulter to Homocon 2010 as a guest speaker. Coulter later dedicated her 2011 book, Demonic: How the Liberal Mob Is Endangering America, to Thiel. Thiel is mentioned in the acknowledgments of Coulter's ¡Adios, America!: The Left's Plan to Turn Our Country Into a Third World Hellhole. In 2012, Thiel donated $10,000 to Minnesotans United for All Families, in order to fight Minnesota Amendment 1 that proposed to ban marriage between same-sex couples there.
In 2009, it was reported that Thiel helped fund college student James O'Keefe's "Taxpayers Clearing House" video—a satirical look at the Wall Street bailout. O'Keefe went on to produce the ACORN undercover sting videos; however, through a spokesperson, Thiel denied involvement in the ACORN sting.
In July 2012, Thiel made a $1 million donation to the Club for Growth, a fiscally conservative 501(c)(4) organization, becoming the group's largest contributor. Club for Growth is a conservative organization with an agenda focused on cutting taxes and other economic issues.
He is a major backer of the conservative Rockbridge Network, which is now an international network with Asian branches.
In 2023, Business Insider reported that Thiel became an FBI informant in 2021. Business Insider also noted the fact that politicians sponsored by Thiel, including Vance and Masters, had repeatedly attacked the FBI and its leadership in public. According to former FBI agent Johnathan Buma, Peter Thiel, Elon Musk and David Sacks have been targets of Russian intelligence. Buma notes that Thiel cooperated with the FBI to identify the foreign espionage network.
He visited president of Argentina and fellow libertarian Javier Milei three times in 2024. The Noticias de América Latina y el Caribe (NODAL) remarks that the cooperation between Thiel and Milei marks the political alignment between Argentina and Washington and Silicon Valley, also through organizations like Endeavor. According to NODAL, the introduction of Argentina into Thiel's network is erasing traditional politics while promoting a tech-based order which increases efficiency but also puts sovereignty at stake.
Matt Stoller, research director of American Economic Liberties Project, remarks that Thiel is a "really smart nihilist", and notes that his focus is entirely on power. Thiel's biographer Max Chafkin writes that this is a likely explanation for Thiel's activities.
=== Support for political candidates ===
Thiel is a member of the Republican Party. He contributes to both Libertarian and Republican candidates and causes. In December 2007, Thiel endorsed Ron Paul for President in the 2008 United States presidential election. After Paul failed to secure the Republican nomination, Thiel contributed to the John McCain campaign.
In 2010, Thiel supported Republican Meg Whitman in her unsuccessful bid for the governorship of California. He contributed the maximum allowable $25,900 to the Whitman campaign.
In 2012, Thiel, along with Nosek and Scott Banister, put their support behind the Endorse Liberty Super PAC. Collectively they gave $3.9 million to Endorse Liberty, whose purpose was to promote Ron Paul. As of 31 January 2012, Endorse Liberty reported spending about $3.3 million promoting Paul by setting up two YouTube channels, buying ads from Google, Facebook and StumbleUpon, and building a presence on the Web. After Paul again failed to secure the nomination in the 2012 United States presidential election, Thiel contributed to the Mitt Romney/Paul Ryan presidential ticket of 2012.
Thiel initially supported Carly Fiorina's campaign during the 2016 GOP presidential primary elections. After Fiorina dropped out, Thiel supported Donald Trump and became one of the California delegates for Trump's nomination. He was a headline speaker during the 2016 Republican National Convention, during which he announced that he was "proud to be gay," for which the assembled Republicans cheered. On 15 October 2016, Thiel announced a $1.25 million donation in support of Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign.
In 2017, Gavin Newsom (then lieutenant governor of California), whose campaign and marijuana legalization effort Thiel had supported, noted that Thiel cared deeply about criminal justice reform and had done a lot of behind-the-scene good work on marriage equality, which he was also passionate about. Newsom remarked, though, that "None of us are jumping up and down that he’s aligned himself with President Donald Trump."
Thiel stated to The New York Times: "I didn't give him any money for a long time because I didn't think it mattered, and then the campaign asked me to." After Trump's victory, Thiel was named to the executive committee of the President-elect's transition team. In July 2018, he donated $250,000 to the Trump Victory Committee in support of the Republican National Committee during the 2018 midterm elections and Trump's 2020 re-election campaign.
By February 2022, Thiel was one of the largest donors to Republican candidates in the 2022 election campaign. By November 2022 he had spent 32 million. He supported 16 senatorial and congressional candidates. Two of said senatorial candidates (Blake Masters (who lost his race) and later U.S. Vice President JD Vance) were also tech investors who had previously worked for Thiel.
In 2023, Barton Gellman of The Atlantic wrote in an article interviewing Thiel that Thiel "has lost interest in democracy" and that "he wouldn’t be giving money to any politician, including Donald Trump, in the next presidential campaign". According to Reuters this occurred after he disagreed with the Republican party's focus on cultural issues. In the same Atlantic interview, he stated that the first Trump administration failed even his initial low expectations. In 2024, he described Trump as a clown whom Reid Hoffman's lawsuit turned into a martyr. In 2025, when interviewed by Ross Douthat, Thiel indicated that Trump and the populists were a disruptive factor that would prepare the stage for the process of true rebuilding (in 2023, he also opined that Trump's election would "slash regulations, crush the administrative state — before the country could rebuild"). He stressed that the support of large parts of the Silicon Valley for Trump was not pro-Trump in nature. He stated that disruption did not equal progress, and even his thought of trying to having a conversation with Trump about it (in Trump's first term) later proved "a preposterous fantasy". But he was satisfied about the fact that in the second term, deregulation was happening, for example regarding nuclear energy.
Thiel has his own political-action committee, Free Forever, which is committed to supporting political candidates who support stricter border control, restrictive immigration policy, funds for veterans, and anti-interventionist foreign policy, among other things. According to OpenSecrets, the PAC was active only during the 2020 election cycle and then only in support of Kansas attorney general Kris Kobach's failed U.S. Senate bid. The campaign by Kobach, who lost in the Republican primary, had received almost all of its contributions from Thiel himself.
In 2025, Brendan Glavin, director of insights for OpenSecrets, remarked that Thiel's political donations have "an ideological agenda that’s not strictly motivated by financial or business concerns [...] His views are libertarian generally, and he wants to elect people who are like minded."
== Philanthropy ==
Thiel carries out most of his philanthropic activities through the Thiel Foundation.
=== Research ===
==== Artificial intelligence ====
In 2006, Thiel provided $100,000 of matching funds to back the Singularity Challenge donation drive of the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence (now known as the Machine Intelligence Research Institute), a nonprofit organization that promotes the development of friendly artificial intelligence. He provided half of the $400,000 matching funds for the 2007 donation drive, and as of 2013 the Thiel Foundation had donated over $1 million to the institute. Additionally, he has spoken at multiple Singularity Summits. At the 2009 Singularity Summit, he said his greatest concern is the technological singularity not arriving soon enough.
In December 2015, OpenAI, a nonprofit company aimed at the safe development of artificial general intelligence, announced that Thiel was one of its financial backers.
==== Life extension ====
In September 2006, Thiel announced that he would donate $3.5 million to foster anti-aging research through the non-profit Methuselah Mouse Prize foundation. He gave the following reasons for his pledge: "Rapid advances in biological science foretell of a treasure trove of discoveries this century, including dramatically improved health and longevity for all. I'm backing Dr. [Aubrey] de Grey, because I believe that his revolutionary approach to aging research will accelerate this process, allowing many people alive today to enjoy radically longer and healthier lives for themselves and their loved ones." As of February 2017, he had donated over $7 million to the foundation.
When asked "What is the biggest achievement that you haven't achieved yet?" by the moderator of a discussion panel at the Venture Alpha West 2014 conference, Thiel said he wants to make progress in anti-aging research. Thiel also said that he is registered to be cryonically preserved, meaning that he would be subject to low-temperature preservation in case of his legal death in hopes that he might be successfully revived by future medical technology, and is signed up with the Alcor Life Extension Foundation.
Thiel has expressed interest in the science of parabiosis, including young blood transfusion for potential health benefits. He said in a 2016 Inc. interview that the technology had been found to work on mice before being strangely dropped after the 1950s. The same Inc. article reported that the Thiel Capital medical director Jason Camm had contacted the transfusion startup Ambrosia, but its founder Jesse Karmazin told TechCrunch in a 2017 article that they had never been contacted by Thiel or Thiel Capital. In a 2022 Jacobin article, Ben Burgis characterizes the blood transfusion story as part of a deliberate attempt by Thiel to portray himself as an "evil genius".
==== Seasteading ====
On 15 April 2008, Thiel pledged $500,000 to the newly created non-profit Seasteading Institute, directed by Patri Friedman, whose mission is "to establish permanent, autonomous ocean communities to enable experimentation and innovation with diverse social, political, and legal systems." At one of the institute's conferences, he described seasteading as "one of the few technological frontiers that has the promise to create a new space for human freedom." In 2011, Thiel gave $1.25 million to the Seasteading Institute, but resigned from its board the same year. In a 2017 interview with The New York Times, Thiel said seasteads are "not quite feasible from an engineering perspective" and "still very far in the future".
=== Thiel Fellowship ===
On 29 September 2010, Thiel created the Thiel Fellowship, which annually offers them a total of $100,000 (raised to $200,000 since 2025) over two years to 20 people under the age of 23 in order to spur them to drop out of college and create their own ventures. According to Thiel, for many young people, college is the path to take when they have no idea what to do with their lives:
I feel I was personally very guilty of this; you don't know what to do with your life, so you get a college degree; you don't know what you're going to do with your college degree, so you get a graduate degree. In my case, it was law school, which is the classic thing one does when one has no idea what else to do. I don't have any big regrets, but if I had to do it over I would try to think more about the future than I did at the time... You cannot get out of student debt even if you personally go bankrupt, it's a form of almost like indentured servitude, it's attached to your physical person for the rest of your life.
=== Breakout Ventures ===
In November 2011, the Thiel Foundation announced the creation of Breakout Labs, a grant-making program intended "to fill the funding gap that exists for innovative research outside the confines of an academic institution, large corporation, or government." It offers grants of up to $350,000 to science-focused start-ups, "with no strings attached". In April 2012, Breakout Labs announced its first set of grantees. In total, 12 startups received funding, for a total of $4.5 million in grants. One of the first ventures to receive funding from Breakout Labs was 3Scan, a tissue imaging platform. The organization is now rebranded as Breakout Ventures.
The program focuses on biotech with a mix of hardware. Its partners include Founders Fund, Formation 8, OATV, Lux Capital, Khosla Ventures among others. Some of its recent investments include Noetik (cancer treatment), Cytovale (medical diagnostics), Passkey Therapeutics (synergistic multifunctional therapeutics), Corpernic Catalysts (catalysts for ammonia production), EnPlusOne Biosciences (RNA therapeutics), Phantom Neuro (neurotechnology).
=== Other causes ===
In 2011, Thiel made a NZ$1 million donation to an appeal fund for the casualties of the Christchurch earthquake.
In Girard's honour, he has established the Imitatio project (part of the philanthropic Thiel Foundation), which aims to "supports research, education, and publications building on Rene Girard’s mimetic theory."
== Personal life ==
Thiel resided in San Francisco, California, until 2018, when he moved to Los Angeles. He had criticized San Francisco for being "intolerant of conservatives, insular and overpriced". Both Thiel Capital and Thiel Foundation followed him to Los Angeles, but the Founders Fund remains in San Francisco. Mithril's headquarters moved to Austin.
Thiel married his long-time partner, Matt Danzeisen, in Vienna, Austria, on Thiel's 50th birthday (October 2017), when he was reported to have proposed to Danzeisen. Danzeisen started his career as an investment banker at Bank of America Securities. By 2007, when the couple were dating, Danzeisen was vice president of BlackRock. By 2021, he was chairman of Bridgetown 1 and Bridgetown 2, sponsored by Thiel Capital and Richard Li's Pacific Century Group. Sam Altman also sat on the board. Danzeisen also participates in other Thiel enterprises related to the family of Li Ka-shing (father of Richard Li), such as the Malta-based EUM. In 2017 Danzeisen was working as head of private investments at Thiel Capital, with a primary focus on North America and Asia. Thiel and Danzeisen have two young daughters, aged five and three as of June 2024, born through a surrogate. Adrian Wooldridge from Bloomberg reported in August 2025 that Thiel had four children. In 2023, in an interview with the Atlantic, Thiel noted that Danzeisen had tried to dissuade him from donating money to Republicans.
Thiel was previously in a long-term relationship with Jeff Thomas, a social media influencer, from the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic until Thomas's sudden death in March 2023. Before his death, Thomas had wanted Thiel to stop his political activities, and protested Thiel's links to Donald Trump. Thomas had also worked with Democratic researchers (led by David Brock and Jack Bury) to push Thiel out of politics, but he reportedly became emotionally conflicted about the collaboration and distraught about the possibility of having his name appear in the news. At the time, Thomas' friends as well as some of his Republican family members had advised him not to talk, while Thiel encouraged him to move to Miami to escape the media scrutiny after hearing him speak about it. Theodore Schleifer of Puck wrote that the anti-Thiel campaign exposed an undercurrent in modern politics in which there is an increasing tendency towards using people's private problems to achieve political goals.
=== Religious views ===
Thiel is a self-described Christian and a promoter of René Girard's Christian anthropology. He grew up in an evangelical household but, as of 2011, described his religious beliefs as "somewhat heterodox", stating: "I believe Christianity is true but I don't sort of feel a compelling need to convince other people of that." According to Thiel, "Christianity for me is the anti-identity. Your identity is in Christ […] and it’s in that context we can figure out things about the world and truth […] [Truth] is not a social construct." Thiel has participated in Veritas Forum events with the noted theologian N. T. Wright discussing religion, politics, and technology.
During his time at Stanford University, Thiel attended a lecture given by René Girard. Girard, a Catholic, explained the role of sacrifice and the scapegoat mechanism in resolving social conflict, which appealed to Thiel as it offered a basis for his Christian faith without the fundamentalism of his parents.
Thiel opines that wokeism or "the woke religion" is a type of secular religion, which is "in some ways [...] anti-Christian and some ways [...] hyper-Christian" and fills the void of a weakened Church because people are attached to post-Christian values rather than a "rationalist, atheist" worldview. He notes that wokeism has a concept of the original sin as well as demands confession and repentance, while offering no transcendental values, no forgiveness or chance of redemption through sacrifice. He claims that this strand of thinking, which attacks Christians for not doing enough for victims or the poor, is a continuation communism and the social gospel, which also inherit some Christian characteristics while being anti-Christian at the same time. Mikhail Minakov writes that "Thiel’s conception of will integrates Christian eschatology, Girardian mimetic theory, and Straussian elitism to critique the impotence of liberal democracy while proposing the efficiency of a techno-feudal alternative." Elke Schwarz, a professor of political theory, notes that Peter Thiel and Marc Andreessen are the foremost proponents of techno-eschatology, which demonstrates the sacralizing of AI and uses spiritualism to bolster the logic of venture capitalism.
A topic Thiel is interested in is the Antichrist, Armageddon and Apocalypse, about which he has given talks in multiple events, including a September 2025 series of off-the-record private lectures organized by David Wood's Acts 17 Collective in San Francisco, which drew a group of protesters. Thiel opines that different people are worried about different apocalyptic threats like environment degradation, nuclear wars or bioweapons. He recognizes these as credible threats, but sees a total one-world government as closer to the Antichrist. He sees humanity as facing the double threats of the Antichrist and the Armageddon, which is the collapse of civilization through global warfare. He sees salvation in the figure of the Katechon, a mysterious force that restrains the Antichrist. He has referred to individuals, organizations, communism or even anti-tech regulations as precursors of the Antichrist. Different commentators see his Antichrist theory as a narrative to highlight the role of a hero, or a framework to attack political opponents or an attempt to brand himself as tech's free thinker (who has also touched on topics such as the Kennedy assassination, Epstein's crimes or aliens).
=== Chess ===
Thiel began playing chess at the age of six and was at one time one of the top junior players in the United States. He holds the title of Life Master, but he has not competed since 2003. On 30 November 2016, Thiel made the ceremonial first move in the first tiebreak game of the World Chess Championship 2016 between Sergey Karjakin and Magnus Carlsen.
=== Media appearances ===
Thiel is an occasional commentator on CNBC, having appeared on both Closing Bell with Kelly Evans, and Squawk Box with Becky Quick. He has been interviewed twice by Charlie Rose on PBS. He has also contributed articles to The Wall Street Journal, First Things, Forbes, and Policy Review, a journal formerly published by the Hoover Institution, on whose board he sits.
In The Social Network, Thiel was portrayed by Wallace Langham. He described the film as "wrong on many levels". His distaste for the portrayal led to the establishment of the Thiel Fellowship on a whim.
Thiel was the inspiration for the Peter Gregory character on HBO's Silicon Valley. Thiel said of Gregory, "I liked him [...] I think eccentric is always better than evil".
Jonas Lüscher stated in an interview with Basellandschaftliche Zeitung that he based the character Tobias Erkner in his novel Kraft ("Force") on Thiel.
After he hired former Austrian chancellor Sebastian Kurz (following scandals that led to Kurz's resignation) for Thiel Capital in 2022, Jan Böhmermann of the ZDF wrote and performed the satirical song Right time to Thiel that portrayed Thiel as a James Bond villain.
=== New Zealand citizenship ===
Thiel was a German citizen by birth and became an American citizen by naturalization. He received New Zealand citizenship in a private ceremony at the New Zealand consulate in Santa Monica, California, in August 2011; his citizenship status was not made public until 2017. Thiel had visited the country on four occasions prior to his application for citizenship, staying a total of 12 days; the typical residency requirement is 1,350 days in five years. When he applied, Thiel stated he had no intention of living in New Zealand, which is a criterion for citizenship. Then-Minister of Internal Affairs Nathan Guy waived those normal requirements, under an "exceptional circumstances" clause of the Citizenship Act.
Thiel's application cited his contribution to the economy—he had founded a venture capital fund in Auckland before applying, and had invested $7 million in two local companies—as well as a $1 million donation to the 2011 Christchurch earthquake appeal fund. Rod Drury, founder of Xero, also provided a formal reference for Thiel's application. Thiel's case was cited by critics as an example of how New Zealand passports can be bought, something the New Zealand government denied. At the time that his citizenship was revealed, The New Zealand Herald came out with the report that the New Zealand Defence Force, the Security Intelligence Service, and the Government Communications and Security Bureau have long-standing links with Thiel's Palantir.
In 2015, Thiel purchased a 193-hectare (477-acre) estate near Wānaka, which fit the classification of "sensitive land" and required foreign buyers to obtain permission from New Zealand's Overseas Investment Office. Thiel did not require permission, as he was a citizen.
=== Roth IRA ===
In 2021, it was revealed by ProPublica that Thiel had purchased 1.7 million founder's shares in the entity that would become PayPal using $1,700 in a Roth IRA in 1999. Due to the rapid growth in the value of the shares as PayPal grew and was later acquired by eBay, Thiel's $1,700 investment grew to over $5 billion as of 2019. Most of this increase in the value of the Roth was due to him re-investing his PayPal proceeds into companies like Palantir and Facebook which grew quickly after his investment. Unlike a traditional IRA, in a Roth IRA, contributions are taxed initially, allowing for later tax-free withdrawal. As such, Thiel paid taxes on his initial $1,700 deposit, allowing him to potentially withdraw the $5 billion balance tax-free after age 59½.
=== Awards and honors ===
In 2006, Thiel won the Herman Lay Award for Entrepreneurship.
In 2007, he was honored as a Young Global leader by the World Economic Forum as one of the 250 most distinguished leaders age 40 and under.
On 7 November 2009, Thiel was awarded an honorary degree from Guatemalan Universidad Francisco Marroquin.
In 2012, Students For Liberty, an organization dedicated to spreading libertarian ideals on college campuses, awarded Thiel its "Alumnus of the Year" award.
In February 2013, Thiel received a TechCrunch Crunchie Award for Venture Capitalist of the Year.
In 2018, German-American Heritage Foundation and Museum (GAHMUSA) honoured Thiel as Distinguished German-American of the Year.
In 2021, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) gave him the Frank Schirrmacher prize, which typically honors intellectuals and artists for "outstanding achievements in understanding our current events." The awarding caused some controversies. The Frank Schirrmacher Foundation stated that, "By awarding Thiel the prize, his comprehensive work in analyzing the opportunities and risks of technological progress will be honored [...] disregarding prohibitions on thinking, he provides intellectual impulses and thus enriches the current socio-political discussions in a wide variety of fields."
== Books ==
=== The Diversity Myth ===
In 1995, the Independent Institute published The Diversity Myth: Multiculturalism and the Politics of Intolerance at Stanford, which Thiel co-authored along with fellow tech entrepreneur David O. Sacks, and with a foreword by the late Emory University historian Elizabeth Fox-Genovese. The book is critical of political correctness and multiculturalism in higher education and alleges that it has diluted academic rigor. Thiel and Sacks' writings drew criticism from then-Stanford Provost Condoleezza Rice and then-Stanford President Gerhard Casper in describing Thiel and Sacks' view of Stanford as "a cartoon, not a description of our freshman curriculum", and their commentary as "demagoguery, pure and simple".
In 2016, Thiel apologized for two statements he made in the book: 1) "The purpose of the rape crisis movement seems as much about vilifying men as about raising 'awareness'" and 2) "But since a multicultural rape charge may indicate nothing more than belated regret, a woman might 'realize' that she had been 'raped' the next day or even many days later." He stated: "More than two decades ago, I co-wrote a book with several insensitive, crudely argued statements. As I've said before, I wish I'd never written those things. I'm sorry for it. Rape in all forms is a crime. I regret writing passages that have been taken to suggest otherwise."
=== Zero to One ===
In spring 2012, Thiel taught the class CS 183: Startup at Stanford University. Notes for the course, taken by student Blake Masters, led to a book titled Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future by Thiel and Masters, which was released in September 2014. Thiel later endorsed Masters' campaign in the 2022 United States Senate election in Arizona, donating more than $10 million.
Derek Thompson, writing for The Atlantic, stated Zero to One "might be the best business book I've read". He described it as a "self-help book for entrepreneurs, bursting with bromides" but also as a "lucid and profound articulation of capitalism and success in the 21st century economy."
=== Tools of Titans ===
Thiel also has a chapter giving advice in Tim Ferriss' self-help book Tools of Titans: The Tactics, Routines, and Habits of Billionaires, Icons, and World-Class Performers.
== References ==
=== Bibliography ===
Packer, George (2013), The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, ISBN 978-0374102418
== Further reading ==
Thiel, Peter (October 3, 2011). "The End of the Future", National Review.
Chafkin, Max (2021). The Contrarian: Peter Thiel and Silicon Valley's Pursuit of Power. New York: Penguin. ISBN 978-1984878533
Nippert, Matt (2017). "Citizen Thiel". New Zealand Herald. ISSN 1170-0777.
== External links ==
Appearances on C-SPAN
Peter Thiel on Twitter
Peter Thiel on LittleSis, a website that publishes data on who-knows-who between government, donors and business
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