Search Results - Thiel, Peter

Peter Thiel

Peter Andreas Thiel (; born 11 October 1967) is an 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.

After graduating from Stanford, Thiel began his career as a clerk for Judge James Larry Edmondson, worked as a securities lawyer at Sullivan & Cromwell, a speechwriter for former U.S. secretary of education William Bennett, and 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 sold the majority of his shares in Facebook for over $1 billion in 2012, and stepped down from the board of directors in 2022. 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.

A conservative libertarian, Thiel has made substantial donations to American right-wing figures and causes. He was controversially granted New Zealand citizenship in 2011 after the Fifth National Government intervened on his behalf. Thiel had spent 12 non-consecutive days in the country, a fraction of the normal residency requirement of 1,350 days for citizenship.

Through the Thiel Foundation, Thiel governs the grant-making bodies Breakout Labs and Thiel Fellowship, which fund non-profit research into artificial intelligence, life extension, and seasteading. In 2016, Thiel confirmed that he had funded Hulk Hogan in the ''Bollea v. Gawker'' lawsuit because ''Gawker'' had previously outed Thiel as gay. The lawsuit eventually bankrupted ''Gawker'', and led to founder Nick Denton's bankruptcy. Provided by Wikipedia