From career breakthroughs to professional milestones, explore how Peter Thiel made an impact.
Peter Thiel is a German-American entrepreneur, venture capitalist, and political activist, best known for co-founding PayPal, Palantir Technologies, and Founders Fund. He was also an early investor in Facebook. As of late 2025, his net worth was estimated at $27.5 billion, placing him among the world's wealthiest individuals.
In 1987, Peter Thiel co-founded The Stanford Review, a conservative and libertarian newspaper, at Stanford University.
In 1989, Peter Thiel graduated from Stanford University, after being the first editor-in-chief of The Stanford Review.
From 1992 to 1993, Peter Thiel was a law clerk to Judge James Larry Edmondson of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit.
In 1993, Peter Thiel worked as a derivatives trader in currency options at Credit Suisse and as a speechwriter for William Bennett.
In 1996, Peter Thiel founded Thiel Capital Management.
In 1998, Peter Thiel co-founded Fieldlink (later renamed Confinity) with Max Levchin after raising $1 million toward the establishment of Thiel Capital Management.
In 1998, Peter Thiel co-founded PayPal with Max Levchin and Luke Nosek.
In 1998, Peter Thiel provided the initial $100,000 for Fieldlink.
In February 1999, Peter Thiel and his partners raised $500,000 for Fieldlink, largely from friends and family, including $35,000 from Thiel's parents.
In 1999, Confinity launched PayPal as a type of digital wallet aimed at consumer convenience and security.
In 1999, PayPal launched at a press conference, receiving $3 million in venture funding from Nokia and Deutsche Bank via their PalmPilots.
In 2000, PayPal continued to grow through mergers with Elon Musk's X.com and Pixo, expanding into the wireless phone market and enabling money transfers via free online registration and email.
On February 15, 2002, PayPal went public.
In 2002, PayPal was sold to eBay for $1.5 billion.
In May 2003, Peter Thiel incorporated Palantir Technologies.
In 2003, Peter Thiel founded Palantir Technologies.
In 2003, Peter Thiel successfully bet that the United States dollar would weaken.
In August 2004, Peter Thiel became Facebook's first outside investor by acquiring a 10.2% stake in the company for $500,000.
In August 2004, after the first meeting with Mark Zuckerberg, Peter Thiel made a $500,000 angel investment in Facebook for a 10.2% stake in the company and joined Facebook's board.
In 2004, Peter Thiel became the first outside investor in Facebook.
In 2004, Peter Thiel spoke of the dot-com bubble having migrated into a growing bubble in the financial sector, specifying General Electric and Walmart as vulnerable.
In 2004, Peter Thiel wrote the essay "The Straussian Moment", which is considered a fundamental text in his political thinking, arguing for a reexamination of modern politics after the September 11 attacks.
In 2005, Clarium Capital saw a 57.1% return as Peter Thiel predicted that the dollar would rally.
In 2005, Peter Thiel established Founders Fund, a venture capital fund located in San Francisco, with partners including Sean Parker, Ken Howery, and Luke Nosek.
In September 2006, Peter Thiel announced that he would donate $3.5 million to foster anti-aging research through the non-profit Methuselah Mouse Prize foundation. Thiel stated his belief that advances in biological science will lead to dramatically improved health and longevity.
In 2006, Clarium faltered with a 7.8% loss.
In 2006, Peter Thiel provided $100,000 of matching funds to back the Singularity Challenge donation drive of the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence.
In 2007, Clarium Capital achieved a 40.3% return, growing assets under management.
In 2007, Peter Thiel provided half of the $400,000 matching funds for the donation drive of the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence.
Peter Thiel is credited with helping Mark Zuckerberg time Facebook's 2007 Series D before the 2008 financial crisis.
On April 15, 2008, Peter Thiel pledged $500,000 to the newly created non-profit Seasteading Institute, whose mission is to establish permanent, autonomous ocean communities to enable experimentation and innovation with diverse social, political, and legal systems.
Beginning in 2008, Thiel started donating to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ).
In 2008, Clarium Capital's assets fell due to the collapse of financial markets.
Peter Thiel is credited with helping Mark Zuckerberg time Facebook's 2007 Series D before the 2008 financial crisis.
At the 2009 Singularity Summit, Peter Thiel expressed his greatest concern being the technological singularity not arriving soon enough.
In 2009, Clarium Capital's assets fell again after financial markets collapsed.
On September 29, 2010, Peter Thiel created the controversial Thiel Fellowship, which annually offers $100,000 over two years to young people under the age of 23 to encourage them to drop out of college and create their own ventures.
In 2010, Peter Thiel co-founded Valar Ventures.
In 2010, Peter Thiel supported Republican Meg Whitman in her unsuccessful bid for the governorship of California, contributing the maximum allowable amount of $25,900 to the Whitman campaign.
In November 2011, the Thiel Foundation announced the creation of Breakout Labs, a grant-making program to fund innovative research outside academic institutions, corporations, or government. It offers grants of up to $350,000 to science-focused start-ups, "with no strings attached".
Also in 2011, Peter Thiel backed the second fund of Joshua Kushner's Thrive Capital.
By 2011, many key investors pulled out of Clarium Capital, reducing the value of its assets to $350 million.
In 2011, Peter Thiel founded Thiel Capital and was granted New Zealand citizenship, which later became controversial.
In 2011, Peter Thiel founded Thiel Capital, a venture capital fund and family office based in Los Angeles, providing strategic support for his ventures.
In 2011, Peter Thiel gave $1.25 million to the Seasteading Institute, but resigned from its board the same year.
In 2011, Peter Thiel made a NZ$1 million donation to an appeal fund for the casualties of the Christchurch earthquake.
In 2011, Peter Thiel's application for New Zealand citizenship cited his contribution to the economy via founding a venture capital fund in Auckland, investing $7 million in local companies, and donating $1 million to the 2011 Christchurch earthquake appeal fund.
In 2011, Thiel made his first investment in a hedge fund managed by an outside manager, Grandmaster Capital Management, founded by Patrick Wolff.
In April 2012, Breakout Labs announced its first set of grantees, with 12 startups receiving a total of $4.5 million in grants. One of the first ventures to receive funding was 3Scan, a tissue imaging platform.
In May 2012, Facebook had its initial public offering, and Peter Thiel sold 16.8 million shares for $638 million.
In June 2012, Peter Thiel launched Mithril Capital Management with Jim O'Neill and Ajay Royan, targeting companies beyond the startup stage.
In July 2012, Thiel donated $1 million to the Club for Growth, a fiscally conservative organization, becoming their largest contributor.
In August 2012, immediately after the lock-up period, Peter Thiel sold almost all of his remaining stake in Facebook for $395.8 million.
In 2012, Crescendo Equity, a Seoul-based private equity firm focusing on mid-cap manufacturing and technology companies in Asia, was established with the sponsorship of Peter Thiel.
In 2012, Peter Thiel co-founded Mithril Capital and was investment committee chair.
In 2012, Peter Thiel, along with Nosek and Scott Banister, supported the Endorse Liberty Super PAC with a collective donation of $3.9 million to promote Ron Paul. After Paul failed to secure the nomination, Thiel contributed to the Mitt Romney/Paul Ryan presidential ticket in 2012.
In 2012, Thiel donated $10,000 to Minnesotans United for All Families, in order to fight Minnesota Amendment 1, which proposed banning marriage between same-sex couples.
In spring 2012, Peter Thiel taught the class CS 183: Startup at Stanford University.
Since 2012, Founders Fund had been quietly buying bitcoin, with the investment totaling around $20 million.
As of 2013, the Thiel Foundation had donated over $1 million to the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence. Thiel has also spoken at multiple Singularity Summits.
In September 2014, "Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future" by Peter Thiel and Blake Masters was released. The book is based on notes from Thiel's CS 183: Startup class at Stanford University in 2012.
At the Venture Alpha West 2014 conference, Peter Thiel stated his desire to make progress in anti-aging research. Thiel also mentioned that he is registered to be cryonically preserved with the Alcor Life Extension Foundation, hoping to be revived by future medical technology.
In early 2014, Founders Fund backed DeepMind, a UK start-up, which was subsequently acquired by Google for £400 million.
In March 2015, Peter Thiel joined Y Combinator as one of 10 part-time partners.
In December 2015, Peter Thiel was announced as one of the financial backers of OpenAI, a nonprofit company focused on the safe development of artificial general intelligence.
From 2015 to 2017, Peter Thiel was a part-time partner at Y Combinator.
In 2015 and 2016, Jeffrey Epstein invested a total of $40 million in Valar.
In 2015, the 1517 Fund was founded by Danielle Strachman and Michael Gibson, aiming to extend support granted by the Thiel Fellowship, with backing from Peter Thiel.
In 2015, the Founders Fund became the first institutional investor in the cannabis industry by investing in the Seattle-based private equity fund Privateer Holdings.
On August 15, 2016, Peter Thiel published an opinion piece in The New York Times in which he defended online privacy and highlighted his support for the Intimate Privacy Protection Act.
In October 2016, Peter Thiel announced a $1.25 million donation in support of Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign. He had previously supported Carly Fiorina's campaign but switched to Trump after Fiorina dropped out. He was a headline speaker at the 2016 Republican National Convention where he proudly declared he was gay, Republican, and American.
In 2016, Breakout Ventures, a venture capital firm, was founded out of Breakout Labs to invest in science. It invests in early-stage companies focused on human health and sustainability.
In 2016, Jeffrey Epstein pitched Reporty (later Carbyne) to Valar, but the proposal was rejected.
In 2016, Peter Thiel sold a little under 1 million of his Facebook shares for around $100 million.
In a 2016 Inc. interview, Peter Thiel expressed interest in the science of parabiosis, including young blood transfusion for potential health benefits, noting that the technology had been found to work on mice before being strangely dropped after the 1950s.
As of February 2017, Peter Thiel had donated over $7 million to the Methuselah Mouse Prize foundation to foster anti-aging research.
In November 2017, Peter Thiel sold another 160,805 shares of Facebook for $29 million.
In November 2017, it was reported that Y Combinator had severed its ties with Peter Thiel.
From 2015 to 2017, Peter Thiel was a part-time partner at Y Combinator.
In 2017, Anduril was founded by Palmer Luckey, Joe Chen, Trae Stephens, Matt Grimm and Brian Schimpf, with backing from Founders Fund since its inception.
In 2017, Crescendo Equity Partners invested in Korea's HPSP, transforming it into a global player in the semiconductor equipment sector.
In 2017, Gavin Newsom, then lieutenant governor of California, acknowledged that Peter Thiel cared about criminal justice reform and marriage equality. However, Newsom noted that there was unease about Thiel's alignment with President Donald Trump.
In 2017, Peter Thiel was among the first outside investors in Clearview AI, a facial recognition technology startup, raising ethical concerns within the tech world and media.
In 2017, a Globe and Mail article named Peter Thiel as a limited partner at Social Capital.
In 2017, it was reported that Thiel Capital's medical director Jason Camm had contacted the transfusion startup Ambrosia, however Ambrosia's founder Jesse Karmazin told TechCrunch that they had never been contacted by Peter Thiel or Thiel Capital.
In a 2017 interview with The New York Times, Peter Thiel said seasteads are "not quite feasible from an engineering perspective" and "still very far in the future".
In 2018, the Founders Fund invested in the Israeli company Carbyne, which provides emergency services.
In 2018, the Founders Fund joined Carbyne's $15 million Series B funding round.
By 2019, ProPublica reported that Thiel's $1,700 PayPal investment and later investments in Palantir and Facebook through a Roth IRA had grown tax-free to over $5 billion.
In 2019, Peter Thiel's 2004 essay "The Straussian Moment" was the subject of an interview at the Hoover Institution.
In 2019, Thiel, along with Mark Cuban and Marc Andreessen, backed the San Francisco-based crypto investment fund 1Confirmation.
As of April 2020, Peter Thiel owned less than 10,000 shares in Facebook.
According to a 2020 Bloomberg article, Peter Thiel was an investor in funds managed by 8VC and in the bank Disruptive Technology Advisers.
From 2020, Peter Thiel served on AbCellera's board.
In 2020, Peter Thiel became a strategic partner and anchor investor of Elevat3, set up by Christian Angermayer's Apeiron Investment Group.
In 2020, Peter Thiel's political-action committee, Free Forever, was active during the election cycle, supporting political candidates who support stricter border control, restrictive immigration policy, funds for veterans, and anti-interventionist foreign policy. The PAC primarily supported Kris Kobach's failed U.S. Senate bid, with Thiel himself contributing almost all of the funds.
In 2020, Thiel Capital invested in Alloy Therapeutics and EnClear Therapies and the German unicorn ATAI Life Sciences, where Jason Camm became a board member, and Compass Pathways.
By 2021, Matt Danzeisen 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.
In 2021, Peter Thiel backed the first fund of A-Star Partners, founded by Kevin Hartz.
In 2021, Peter Thiel joined SNÖ Ventures as an investor and strategic partner.
In 2021, Soft Servo Group or Soft Motions & Robotics changed its name to Movensys after Crescendo's investment.
By February 2022, Peter Thiel was a prominent donor to Republican candidates in the 2022 election campaign, having spent $32 million by November 2022. He supported 16 senatorial and congressional candidates, including Blake Masters and JD Vance, both tech investors who had previously worked for Thiel.
In February 2022, Peter Thiel announced his departure from Meta's board after 17 years to support pro-Donald Trump candidates in the 2022 United States elections.
In March 2022, Founders Fund sold the majority of its crypto holdings for $1.8 billion, with bitcoin making up two-thirds of its holdings, just before a market crash.
By November 2022 Peter Thiel had spent $32 million supporting 16 senatorial and congressional candidates. Two of the senatorial candidates Thiel supported, Blake Masters and J.D. Vance, were tech investors that previously worked for Thiel.
As of 2022, Peter Thiel continues as the chairman of Palantir Technologies.
In 2022, Apeiron Group, through Elevat3 and in partnership with Founders Fund, acquired shares from Fosun International and others to become a shareholder in the NAGA Group.
In 2022, Peter Thiel backed B2B-focused Wischoff Ventures founded by Nichole Wischoff.
In 2022, Peter Thiel became a major backer of the venture debt firm Tacora, founded by Keri Findley, investing US$250 million in its inaugural fund.
In 2022, Reuters noted that Peter Thiel was instrumental in the creation of 1789 Capital, co-founded by Omeed Malik and Chris Buskirk.
In 2023, Jason Camm, the Chief Medical Officer of Thiel Capital, founded a fund with a US$100 million investment from a single investor, with Thiel's name associated with the fund.
In 2023, The Atlantic reported that Peter Thiel had lost interest in democracy and would not donate to any politician, including Donald Trump, in the next presidential campaign. Thiel stated that the first Trump administration failed to meet his expectations and that he disagreed with the Republican party's focus on cultural issues.
Since November 2024, the 1517 Fund backs Venus Aerospace, a company developing hypersonic flight technology.
In December 2024, Palantir and Anduril reportedly formed a consortium of new generation defense companies, including SpaceX, OpenAI, and Scale AI, to challenge traditional defense companies.
In December 2024, the 1517 Fund received approval to get funding from the Small Business Investment Company Critical Technology Initiative (SBICCT).
In 2024, Founders Fund led a US$85 million seed round for SentientAGI, a decentralized, open-source AI platform based in the UAE, and also invested in Impulse Space, Ramp, and Crusoe.
In 2024, Founders Fund, along with General Catalyst and Red Cell Partners, incubated the defense incubator Valinor Enterprises, co-founded by Julie Bush, Trae Stephens, Paul Kwan and Grant Verstandig.
In 2024, Peter Thiel became the lead funder of the Enhanced Games, a proposed multi-sport event allowing athletes to use performance-enhancing substances.
In 2024, Peter Thiel described Donald Trump as a clown, whose image was turned into that of a martyr because of Reid Hoffman's lawsuit.
In 2024, SNÖ Ventures made its first investment in the defense tech sector, funding Nordic Air Defence.
In April 2025, General Matter, focusing on "production and handling of High-Assay, Low-Enriched Uranium (HALEU)", emerged from stealth with Scott Nolan as CEO and Thiel on the board.
In May 2025, Quantum-Systems, in which Thiel Capital has an investment, became Europe's first dual-use unicorn.
In June 2025, Founders Fund invested $1 billion in Anduril as part of a $2.5 billion Series G funding round, marking the largest investment in the fund's history.
In July 2025, 1517 Fund reportedly raised US$315 million for its first fund.
Reports in October 2025 confirmed Thiel's fund's investments in Peptilogics, an infection therapeutics company, and HistoSonics, a cancer treatment startup.
In December 2025, Thiel donated $3 million to the California Business Roundtable to oppose a proposed 5% wealth tax on billionaires in California.
In 2025, Brendan Glavin, director of insights for OpenSecrets, remarked that Peter Thiel's political donations have "an ideological agenda that's not strictly motivated by financial or business concerns" and that his views are generally libertarian, leading him to elect like-minded individuals.
In 2025, Crescendo initiated the sale of its 40.9% controlling equity stake in a semiconductor firm, often dubbed Korea's ASML, attracting bids from major global PEF firms.
In 2025, Founders Fund invested in Erebor, EnduroSat, Varda and Hadrian Automation.
In 2025, Peter Thiel indicated that Donald Trump and populists were a disruptive factor that would prepare the stage for the process of true rebuilding. He stated that disruption did not equal progress and that attempting to have a conversation with Trump about it proved "a preposterous fantasy." However, he was satisfied that deregulation, such as regarding nuclear energy, was happening in the second Trump term.
In 2025, the Thiel Fellowship increased the award amount to $200,000 for 20 people under the age of 23 to drop out of college and create their own ventures.
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