What is Thiel’s background?

Thiel is one of the most dominant voices in Silicon Valley and has parlayed his personal network, financial investments and zeal for debate into a business philosophy emulated by start-up founders, who idolize Thiel as “the cult leader of the cult of disruption,” wrote Max Chafkin, author of the 2021 Thiel biography “The Contrarian.” Thiel’s family immigrated to the United States from Germany when he was an infant and settled in California. He was a childhood chess champion who attended Stanford as an undergraduate and then the university’s law school. While there, he launched the conservative publication the Stanford Review, which railed against what Thiel and his fellow writers derided as the encroaching force of political correctness on college campuses. Later, Thiel co-wrote “The Diversity Myth,” with tech investor David Sacks, which covered the same topics. After college, he raised $1 million from friends and family to launch Thiel Capital Management to invest in the dot-com boom, before co-founding a payments company with Max Levchin that would become PayPal, which was later acquired by eBay. Thiel used his profits from the sale to invest in other tech companies and famously became one of the first major investors in Facebook. Other early PayPal employees and investors would go on to become prominent leaders in Silicon Valley and together referred to themselves as the “PayPal mafia,” going so far as to pose as mob dons in a spread for Fortune magazine in 2007. As a member of the group, Thiel’s influence in the tech world grew with each new deal he participated in. In the mid-2000s, Thiel launched the venture capital firm Founders Fund, which has backed companies such as SpaceX, founded by PayPal veteran Elon Musk, LinkedIn and Lyft.

What policies does he support, and what are his apparent political goals?

Thiel has described himself as libertarian and donated primarily to Republican candidates and right-leaning or anti-tax political action committees over the years. In a 2009 essay about his personal political evolution, Thiel described being disillusioned with politics and its ability to accomplish libertarian goals, writing, “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible.” He went on to argue that extending voting rights to women and increasing the number of welfare beneficiaries has made it more difficult to elect libertarian politicians, though he later clarified that he didn’t support taking away the right to vote from women. More recently, Thiel has espoused nationalist views, arguing that big U.S. tech companies like Google shouldn’t work with China because it is one of America’s geopolitical competitors. Biographer Chafkin has argued that Thiel’s most consistent philosophy is contrarianism, positioning himself in opposition to conventional or mainstream thinking. Thiel first aligned himself with Trump in the run-up to his election in 2016, donating at least $1.25 million to his campaign, according to the New York Times . The donation came just weeks after a video surfaced of Trump making lewd comments about women. Thiel went on to give a speech at the Republican National Convention and join Trump’s transition team, where he acted as a liaison between Trump and Silicon Valley, helping to install some of his acolytes in positions of power within the administration.

What are his investments, and where does he stand to gain financially?

Thiel’s day job is still as a prolific venture capital investor. He helped create several firms, including Founders Fund, Mithril Capital Management and Valar Ventures, which together manage nearly $20 billion in investments, according to research firm PitchBook. He’s also invested in dozens of firms directly with his own money over the years, including art-buying platform Art.sy , mobile game developer Zynga and health insurance firm Oscar, which was founded by Josh Kushner, the brother of Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner. Some of his most prominent investments stand to benefit directly from government contracts. Palantir, which Thiel helped found in 2003, counts government agencies like the Department of Defense among its biggest clients. More than half of Palantir’s revenue comes from government clients, according to its latest earnings report . Anduril, which builds automated surveillance towers and drones to police borders, was awarded a five-year contract by the Trump administration in 2020. Thiel, whose net worth according to Bloomberg News is about $8 billion, also has a serious interest in shaping tax policy. Last year, ProPublica documented how Thiel has shielded billions of his own money from taxation by running his investments out of a Roth individual retirement account. Last year, Democrats in Congress proposed a bill that would force Thiel and other wealthy people using Roth accounts to pay huge tax bills if they ever withdraw their money. Thiel has also given money directly to anti-tax advocacy organizations, such as the Club for Growth .

So what does this all mean for Facebook?

Thiel has been an influence on Facebook’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, over the years, pushing him to take a more laissez-faire approach to moderating content and ads on the company’s apps, according to a 2019 Wall Street Journal report . Liberal employees had bristled at his presence on the company’s board, which Facebook critics also pointed to in their arguments for how the firm enabled the rise of right-wing populist politicians in the United States and elsewhere. Now that he’s gone, it’s possible that criticism may become less intense, especially from inside the company, though it’s unlikely it will go away completely. In terms of directing Facebook’s path, Thiel’s role was already mostly an advisory one. Unlike most corporate boards, Zuckerberg has ultimate control over Facebook because he has maintained the majority of voting shares over the years. Thiel’s investments in other companies were also beginning to potentially clash with his duties as a Facebook board member. He has funded Rumble, a video platform that says it has a less hands-on approach to content moderation than that of social media giants like Facebook and YouTube. The New York Times reported in January that Boldend, another of the companies supported by Thiel’s Founders Fund, had claimed it developed the ability to hack WhatsApp, one of Facebook’s products.

Who is Peter Thiel, the tech billionaire trying to push the U.S. to the right?

He founded PayPal and helped fund Facebook. Now he’s focusing on electing right-wing politicians.

By Gerrit De Vynck

and

Nitasha Tiku

Updated February 9, 2022 at 1:00 p.m. EST|Published February 9, 2022 at 6:00 a.m. EST

Billionaire tech investor Peter Thiel at the 2016 Republican National Convention in Cleveland. (Carolyn Kaster/AP)

This week, Facebook announced billionaire investor Peter Thiel was stepping down from its board after more than 15 years.

The 54-year-old, whose contrarian and right-wing political views have made him one of the most controversial figures to emerge from Silicon Valley, will focus his time on helping pro-Trump candidates win in November’s midterm elections, according to a person familiar with his thinking who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.

Thiel has been participating in national politics for most of his life, helping create a conservative journal at Stanford University in the 1980s before diving into tech investing and helping found PayPal. He used the money from PayPal’s sale to invest in other tech companies, becoming the first major outside investor in Facebook and seeing his wealth and influence rocket upward as Big Tech’s dominance grew over the past 20 years.

In 2016, Thiel supported Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and later served on his transition team. Now he’s playing an even more direct role in politics, funding the Senate campaigns of two of his close associates, J.D. Vance in Ohio and Blake Masters in Arizona. At the same time, he’s still a force in tech investing and plays a major role in companies including data-harvesting firm Palantir, where he serves as chairman.

PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel said that he was proud to be gay and a Republican during the fourth day of the Republican National Convention. (Video: The Washington Post)

Straddling the worlds of Silicon Valley and conservative politics has made Thiel a uniquely influential and polarizing individual, though he’s not as widely known as other well-documented political funders such as the Koch brothers. That’s likely to change as he dives deeper into U.S. politics.

A spokesperson for Thiel did not reply to a request for comment.

Peter Thiel to exit Facebook’s board to focus on 2022 midterms