Peter Andreas Thiel ( ; born 11 October 1967) is a German and American entrepreneur, venture capitalist, and conservative political activist. A co-founder of PayPal (1998), Palantir Technologies (2003), and Founders Fund (2005), he was also the first outside investor in Facebook (2004). According to The New York Times, as of December 2025, Thiel's estimated net worth stood at US$27.5 billion, placing him among the 100 richest individuals in the world.
Born in Germany, Thiel was taken 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, Thiel worked as a clerk, a securities lawyer, a speechwriter, 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 PayPal's chief executive officer until its sale to eBay in 2002 for $1.5 billion.
Thiel then 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 August 2004, Thiel became Facebook's first outside investor by acquiring a 10.2% stake in the company for $500,000. In 2005, he launched Founders Fund with PayPal partners Ken Howery and Luke Nosek. He co-founded Valar Ventures in 2010, founded Thiel Capital in 2011, co-founded Mithril Capital in 2012, 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 became controversial when made public in 2017.
Thiel has been described as "perhaps America's leading public intellectual today" or an "intellectual architect of Silicon Valley's contemporary ethos". Others debate the consistency or morality of his views. 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 Gawker lost in Bollea v. Gawker, Thiel confirmed that he had funded Bollea (Hulk Hogan). Gawker had previously outed Thiel as gay.
Emails related to the activities of convicted child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein released by the House Oversight Committee in 2026 revealed that Valar Ventures accepted $40 million from Epstein and that Thiel corresponded with Epstein for five years before Epstein's death, including on the topic of Brexit.
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