Peter Thiel: Co-founder of PayPal and Palantir
Business Owner · Financial Services
Peter Thiel co-founded PayPal, launched Palantir and Founders Fund, and became Facebook's first outside investor in 2004 with a $500,000 stake for 10.2 percent.
About Peter Thiel: Co-founder of PayPal and Palantir
Peter Andreas Thiel (born October 11, 1967, in Frankfurt am Main) is a German-American entrepreneur, venture capitalist and conservative political activist. A co-founder of PayPal, Palantir Technologies and Founders Fund, he was also the first outside investor in Facebook. As of August 2026 Forbes estimated his net worth at US$32 billion. Thiel's family migrated to the United States when he was one year old and lived in Cleveland, Ohio, where his father worked as a chemical engineer. In 1971 they moved to South African-occupied Namibia before returning to the US in 1977. After graduating from Stanford University he 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, serving as its CEO until its sale to eBay in 2002 for $1.5 billion. He then founded the San Francisco hedge fund Clarium Capital, launched the big-data company Palantir in 2003 and has chaired it since. In August 2004 he became Facebook's first outside investor, acquiring a 10.2% stake for $500,000. In 2005 he launched Founders Fund with PayPal partners Ken Howery and Luke Nosek, and he later co-founded Valar Ventures (2010) and Mithril Capital (2012), founded Thiel Capital (2011), and was a part-time partner at Y Combinator from 2015 to 2017. His 2011 grant of New Zealand citizenship became controversial when made public in 2017. Through the Thiel Foundation he governs the Thiel Fellowship and Breakout Labs. Commentators describe Thiel variously as a conservative libertarian and a democracy-skeptic authoritarian; he has made substantial donations to American right-wing figures and causes, and has been called the "intellectual architect of Silicon Valley's contemporary ethos". Sources: English Wikipedia (Peter Thiel, accessed September 2026).
Basic Information
Co-founder, PayPal, Palantir Technologies and Founders Fund
Company Details
Palantir / Founders Fund / PayPal
Venture Capital, Data Analytics, Fintech
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