Peter Andreas Thiel ( ; born 11 October 1967) is a German-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). As of August 2026, Forbes estimated Thiel's net worth at US$32 billion. Born in West Germany, Thiel moved to the US with his parents when he was an infant. In 1971, his family moved to South African-occupied Namibia, before moving back to the US in 1977. After graduating from Stanford University, 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. He launched Palantir in 2003, a big data analysis company, and has been its chairman since then. 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. Through the Thiel Foundation, he governs the grant-making bodies Breakout Labs and Thiel Fellowship. Thiel has been variously portrayed as a conservative libertarian and democracy-skeptic authoritarian, and he has made substantial donations to American right-wing figures and causes. Commentators and scholars frequently examine his views, particularly his political and ideological positions. He has been described as "a political theologian operating at the heart of the Silicon Valley" and the "intellectual architect of Silicon Valley's contemporary ethos".
Early life and education Peter Andreas Thiel was born in Frankfurt am Main, Hesse on 11 October 1967, to Klaus Friedrich Thiel and Susanne Thiel. The family migrated to the United States when Peter was one year old and lived in Cleveland, Ohio, where his father worked as a chemical engineer. Klaus worked for various mining companies, which created an itinerant upbringing for Thiel and his younger brother, Patrick Michael Thiel. Thiel and his mother later naturalized as U.S. citizens, whereas his father did not. Before settling in Foster City, California, in 1977, the Thiel family lived in South Africa and South West Africa (modern-day Namibia) in the time of apartheid. Peter changed elementary schools seven times. He attended a German-language school in Swakopmund for two years that required students to wear uniforms and employed corporal punishment, such as striking students' hands with a ruler. He said this experience instilled a distaste for uniformity and regimentation later reflected in his support for individualism and libertarianism. The German community in Swakopmund was known at the time for its continued glorification of Nazism. Thiel was noted as a smart, but lonely, withdrawn boy, with whom others would not mingle because they knew he would not stay long in the town. Thiel played Dungeons & Dragons and was an avid reader of science fiction, with Isaac Asimov and Robert A. Heinlein among his favorite authors. He is a fan of J. R. R. Tolkien's works, stating as an adult that he had read The Lord of the Rings more than 10 times. Thiel excelled in mathematics and scored first in a California-wide mathematics competition while attending Bowditch Middle School in Foster City. At San Mateo High School, he read Ayn Rand and, influenced by his parents, admired Nixon and Reagan. He was valedictorian of his graduating class in 1985. When at school, he reportedly charged $500 each to take the SAT for underclassmen, knowing this would cost him his spot at Stanford if discovered. Thiel studied philosophy at Stanford University. The replacement of a "Western Culture" program at Stanford with a "Culture, Ideas and Values" course that addressed diversity and multiculturalism prompted Thiel to co-found The Stanford Review, a conservative and libertarian newspaper, in 1987. The paper received funding from Irving Kristol. Thiel was The Stanford Review's first editor-in-chief until he graduated in 1989. Thiel has maintained his relationship with the paper, consulting with staff and donating to the newspaper. According to Marc Andreessen, Thiel's time at the Review marked the beginning of a career-long strategy: using provocative verbal cues – later delivered through talks, books and mottos – as a way to attract capable individuals to his projects, preferring this method over actively seeking out talent. The Review has spawned a large network of industry leaders, among whom Andrew Granato and the Fortune respectively identify around 300 people who have worked for or received investment from Peter Thiel or Joe Lonsdale, another prominent editor-in-chief and Thiel's mentee. A number of Review alumni have also become public officials, beginning with Jay Bhattacharya and Paula M. Stannard who were editors during Thiel's time as editor-in-chief. After graduation, Thiel attended Stanford Law School, graduating in 1992 with a Juris Doctor degree. While at Stanford, Thiel met René Girard, whose mimetic theory influenced him.
Career
Early career After graduating from Stanford Law School, Thiel was a law clerk to Judge James Larry Edmondson of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit from 1992 to 1993. Thiel then worked as a securities lawyer for Sullivan & Cromwell in New York. He left the law firm in under a year. He then took a job as a derivatives trader in currency options at Credit Suisse in 1993 while also working as a speechwriter for former United States secretary of education William Bennett. Thiel returned to California in 1996. Upon returning to the Bay Area, Thiel capitalized on the dot-com boom. With financial support from friends and family, he raised $1 million toward the establishment of Thiel Capital Management and embarked on his venture capital career. Early on, he experienced a setback after investing $100,000 in his friend Luke Nosek's unsuccessful web-based calendar project. Soon thereafter, Nosek's friend Max Levchin described to Thiel his cryptography-related company idea, which became their first venture called Fieldlink (later renamed Confinity) in 1998.
PayPal
Thiel provided the initial $100,000 for Fieldlink in 1998. In February 1999, they raised $500,000 largely from friends and family ($35,000 was from Thiel's parents). By middle 1999, they raised $4.5 million, with Nokia Ventures contributing $3 million. With Confinity, Thiel realized they could develop software to bridge a gap in making online payments. Although the use of credit cards and expanding automated teller machine networks provided consumers with more payment options, not all merchants had the necessary hardware to accept credit cards. Thus, consumers had to pay with exact cash or check. Thiel wanted to create a type of digital wallet for consumer convenience and security by encrypting data on digital devices, and in 1999 Confinity launched PayPal. PayPal promised to open up new possibilities for handling money. Thiel viewed PayPal's mission as liberating people from the erosion of the value of their currencies due to inflation. When PayPal launched at a press conference in 1999, representatives from Nokia and Deutsche Bank sent $3 million in venture funding to Thiel using PayPal on their PalmPilots. PayPal then continued to grow through mergers in 2000 with Elon Musk's online financial services company X.com, and with Pixo, a company specializing in mobile commerce. These mergers allowed PayPal to expand into the wireless phone market and transformed it into a safer and more user-friendly tool by enabling users to transfer money via a free online registration and email rather than by exchanging bank account information. PayPal went public on 15 February 2002 and was bought by eBay for $1.5 billion in October of that year. Thiel remained CEO of the company until the sale. His 3.7% stake in the company was worth $55 million at the time of acquisition. In Silicon Valley circles, Thiel is colloquially referred to as the "Don of the PayPal Mafia".
Clarium Capital
Thiel used $10 million of his proceeds to create Clarium Capital Management, a global macro hedge fund focusing on directional and liquid instruments in currencies, interest rates, commodities, and equities. Thiel stated that "the big, macroeconomic idea that we had at Clarium—the idée fixe—was the peak-oil theory, which was basically that the world was running out of oil, and that there were no easy alternatives." In 2003, Thiel successfully bet that the United States dollar would weaken. In 2004, Thiel spoke of the dot-com bubble having migrated, in effect, into a growing bubble in the financial sector, and specified General Electric and Walmart as vulnerable. In 2005, Clarium saw a 57.1% return as Thiel predicted that the dollar would rally. However, Clarium faltered in 2006 with a 7.8% loss. Thereafter, the firm sought to profit in the long-term from its petrodollar analysis, which foresaw the impending decline in oil supplies. Clarium's assets under management grew after achieving a 40.3% return in 2007 to more than $7 billion by the first quarter of 2008, but fell later in the year and again in 2009 after financial markets collapsed. By 2011, after missing out on the economic rebound, many key investors pulled out, reducing the value of Clarium's assets to $350 million, two thirds of which was Thiel's money.
Palantir
Palantir Technologies, a big data analysis company named after the Tolkien artifact, was formed as a reaction to the September 11 attacks, largely building on PayPal's anti-fraud technology. Thiel stated that the attacks opened the way for all sorts of draconian policies, so the best method would be providing cutting-edge technology with built-in policing systems to ensure the state use its power legally. Analyst Christopher Soghoian later commented that Palantir does provide these policing systems, but the state can turn them off. In May 2003, Thiel incorporated Palantir. He serves as chairman of the company. According to The Wall Street Journal, when Palantir launched in 2004, there were three investors other than Thiel and Karp but little interest from venture capital firms, so Thiel and his venture fund largely bankrolled the initial $30 million cost. CIA-affiliated venture capital firm In-Q-Tel invested about $2 million. According to Techcrunch, Oakhouse Partners led Palantir's $7.5 million Series A (June 2006) and REV led its $10.5 million Series B (November 2006). In its early years, Palantir maintained founder control by declining to offer board seats to investors, including In-Q-Tel. This practice continued through subsequent funding rounds. Some commentators have said that many conspiracy theories about Palantir have arisen, partly due to the CIA's early involvement and Palantir's initial focus on intelligence contracts with organizations including FBI, CIA, NSA, but also partly because the founders, including Thiel and Karp, deliberately crafted an image that exaggerated Palantir's relationship with the CIA or its capacity during its early phase. Although the software only analyzes data collected by the customers, some criticize it for enabling surveillance. Professor Vasilis Galis notes that the software is not a mere tool, but shapes policing culture with new policing norms. Today, the company specializes in defense but has an expending commercial sector.
According to Geoff Shullenberger (managing director of Compact) and Moira Weigel (Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature, Harvard), Peter Thiel and Alex Karp built Palantir on the basis of their understanding of Leo Strauss and the Frankfurt School.
After the first meeting with Zuckerberg in August 2004, Thiel made a $500,000 angel investment in the startup (then "a three-person dormroom") for a 10.2% stake in the company and joined Facebook's board. This was the first outside investment in Facebook and valued the company at $4.9 million. He also bought Zuckerberg a car. The investment was originally in the form of a convertible note, to be converted to equity if Facebook reached 1.5 million users by the end of 2004. Although Facebook narrowly missed the target, Thiel allowed the loan to be converted to equity anyway. Thiel said of his investment: "I was comfortable with them pursuing their original vision. And it was a very reasonable valuation. I thought it was going to be a pretty safe investment." Facebook employees reported that Thiel's influence was unusual for a board member who was not also the CEO. Some criticized Thiel for pushing his mentee Zuckerberg and the company to the right. Zuckerberg credited Thiel with helping him time Facebook's 2007 Series D, which closed before the 2008 financial crisis. Facebook's initial public offering was in May 2012, with a market cap of nearly $100 billion ($38 a share), at which time Thiel sold 16.8 million shares for $638 million. In August 2012, immediately upon the conclusion of the early investor lock-up period, Thiel sold almost all of his remaining stake for between $19.27 and $20.69 per share, or $395.8 million, for a total of more than $1 billion. As of April 2020, he owned less than 10,000 shares in Facebook. On 7 February 2022, Thiel announced he would not stand for re-election to the board of Facebook owner Meta at the 2022 annual stockholders' meeting and would leave after 17 years in order to support pro–Donald Trump candidates in the 2022 United States elections.
Founders Fund
In 2005, Thiel created Founders Fund, a San Francisco-based venture capital fund. Other partners in the fund include Sean Parker, Ken Howery, and Luke Nosek. The fund focuses on defense-related startups and technology. After Facebook, even though it was a big financial success, Thiel made the Founders Fund pivot to hard tech, with the reasoning that while companies like Twitter might have a high value, they would not take "civilization to the next level." The Economist notes that the fund and Thiel, personally, have a history of incubating startups that do hypersensitive work related to national security. The fund casts Palantir, Anduril and the newly minted nuclear startup General Matter as the three parts of a trilogy, to which it hopes to add others, among which a plan for onshoring ultraviolet light lithography. Business Insider reports that, among Thiel's inner circle (who know well the billionaire's fondness for Tolkien's works), the fund is nicknamed "the Precious", in reference to the One Ring of Sauron. In addition to Facebook, the Founders Fund made early-stage investments in numerous startups, including Airbnb, Slide.com, LinkedIn, Friendster, RapLeaf, Geni.com, Yammer, Spotify, Practice Fusion, MetaMed, Vator, SpaceX, IronPort, Votizen, Asana, Big Think, CapLinked, Nanotronics Imaging, Powerset (Thiel is on the board of Nanotronics and Powerset), Stripe, Bullish Global (the parent company Block.one had also received investment from Thiel ), AltSchool, Trade Republic, PsiQuantum (photonic quantum computing), and Rigetti Computing (superconducting quantum computing). Thiel also backed DeepMind, a UK start-up that was acquired by Google in early 2014 for £400 million. Founders Fund is an important backer of the Berlin-based platform ResearchGate. Since 2012, Founders Fund had been quietly buying bitcoin, with the investment totaling around $20 million" (Bloomberg remarked that, "the investment amounts to a rounding error for Thiel's firm."). The company sold the majority of its crypto holdings for $1.8 billion in March 2022 (with bitcoin making up two-thirds of its holdings), right before the market crashed. Also in 2017, Thiel was one of the first outside investors in Clearview AI, a facial recognition technology startup that has raised concerns in the tech world and media for its risks of weaponization. In 2024, alongside General Catalyst and Red Cell Partners, the Founders Fund incubated the defense incubator Valinor Enterprises. The co-founders are former Palantir's senior vice president Julie Bush (CEO), Trae Stephens, General Catalyst's Paul Kwan and Red Cell's Grant Verstandig. In 2024, the Founders Fund led a massive US$85 million seed round for the UAE's decentralized, open-source AI platform SentientAGI (Sentient Foundation), which seeks to challenge Perplexity and OpenAI's closed models as well as handle the problem of AI proliferation, which concentrates power in the hands of large players like Google and Amazon. In 2024 it also invested in Impulse Space (in-space transportation services), Ramp, Crusoe (AI infrastructure using clean energy). In 2025, the Founders Fund invests in Erebor (a new digital bank which is founded by Palmer Luckey and has quickly reached a US$2 billion valuation), EnduroSat (Bulgarian startup that produces Gen3 satellites at scale), Varda (space medicine and hypersonic testbed startup, founded by the Thiel Fellow Delian Asparouhov, Trae Stephens and Will Bruey, and incubated at the Founders Fund), Hadrian Automation. In 2026, the fund co-led investments in Amsterdam-based defense startup Onodrim (launched by Palantir alumni) and AI startup Arda (led by former OpenAI executive Bob McGrew), both of which bear Tolkien-themed names. It also backed the ocean data center startup Panthalassa, with Thiel leading the round personally.
Anduril Industries
Anduril is a defense hardware startup that was founded in 2017 by Palmer Luckey (who is Thiel's mentee), Joe Chen, Trae Stephens, Matt Grimm and Brian Schimpf (the latter three are Palantir and Founders Fund alumni). The Founders Fund backed the company since its inception, leading its 2017 seed round. The $1 billion (part of the $2.5 billion Series G funding round) the Founders Fund invested in Anduril in June 2025 was the largest investment in the fund's history. In December 2024, it was reported that Palantir and Anduril were forming a consortium of new generation defense companies (which included SpaceX, OpenAI, Scale AI, Saronic Technologies and others) that they would lead in order to challenge the dominance of traditional defense companies. In July 2025, when the Trump administration's budget bill included a provision that required border surveillance towers to be "tested and accepted by U.S. Customs and Border Protection to deliver autonomous capabilities", Edith Olmsted of The New Republic made the criticism that the government favoured Peter Thiel's business, as the provision (which only Anduril fulfilled) effectively ruled out Anduril's rivals, namely General Dynamics and the Israeli-based Elbit Systems.
General Matter
General Matter emerged from stealth in April 2025, focusing on "production and handling of High-Assay, Low-Enriched Uranium (HALEU)." Scott Nolan, who formerly worked for SpaceX, left the Founders Fund to focus on the company and become the CEO, Thiel is also on the company's board of directors, which is noted by the Economist to be a rare occurrence these days. The plant in Paducah, built by General Matter, will be the "first privately developed US uranium enrichment facility".
Valar Ventures
Valar Ventures is an internationally focused venture firm Thiel cofounded with Andrew McCormack and James Fitzgerald in 2010. Valar's portfolio includes TransferWise (now Wise), reforestation-funding finance platform Treecard, fintech startup Atoa (Wise, Treecard and Atoa are based in London), Miami-headquartered Novo and Fortú (digital bank which focuses on underbanked Latino and Hispanic communities), fintech unicorn Qonto, fintech startup Hero, accounting automation software startup Regate (all three are Paris-based), Vienna-based crypto unicorn Bitpanda, Lagos- and London-based banking startup Kuda Bank, Indonesian fintech startup Bukuwarung, Nigerian banking platform Maplerad, Mexican banking startup Albo, banking unicorn N26, B2B paytech Mondu, spend management platform Moss, tax filling unicorn Taxfix, instant payment API startup Ivy (N26, Mondu, Moss, Taxfix and Ivy are all Berlin-based; Ivy is founded by the Thiel Fellow Ferdinand Dabitz), Dubai-based fintech startup Baraka. Valar also invested in New-Zealand based companies including in the software firm Xero, undersea communication company Pacific Fibre and e-reader platform Booktrack. Recent investments include Arkansas-based Panacea Financial (digital fintech for medical practitioners), Riyadh-based SILQ ("largest B2B commerce platform across the Gulf and South Asia", resulted from the recent merger between Bangladesh-based Shop-Up and Saudi-based Sary), Canadian startup Neo (fintech), London-based fertility care startup Gaia.
Thiel Capital
Thiel Capital is a venture capital fund founded by Thiel in 2011 and based in Los Angeles, also referred to as Thiel's family office. It provides "strategic and operational support" for many of Peter Thiel's initiatives and ventures. It incubated and launched Founders Fund, Mithril, Valar, the Thiel Fellowship and Breakout Labs, and also sponsors Crescendo Equity Partners. The firm's investments include Alloy Therapeutics (with Founders Fund and 8VC), EnClear Therapies (Jason Camm became a board member in 2020), the German unicorn ATAI Life Sciences (found by Thiel's friend, the biotech billionaire Christian Angermayer; Jason Camm also became a director in 2020), Compass Pathways (also partly owned by ATAI), Pilgrim (dual-use biotech startup founded by Thiel Fellow Jake Adler), Hugoboom, Rhea, Bullish Global (Founders Fund and Angermeyer are also investors), FTX (also received investment from Rivendell LLC), QA Wolf, Rollup (software platform to develop complex hardware), Neros (military drone startup found by Thiel Fellow Soren Monroe-Anderson), Regent Craft (electric seaglider, invested together with Founders Fund). Thiel Capital is also an investor (including post-IPO financial investment as major backer) of the dual-use German laser communications startup Mynaric. Angermayer also backs Mynaric. Hugoboom's app 28 requires users to input the first day of their last period to calculate the menstrual phases. The app's pro-life rhetoric and scientific basis is controversial. Some of the firm's notable (past) employees include former Austrian chancellor Sebastian Kurz, American politician and entrepreneur Blake Masters, Kevin Harrington (Senior Director for Strategic Planning at the United States National Security Council) and Michael Kratsios.
Quantum-Systems and Stark Thiel Capital's investment in the Gilching-based drone startup Quantum-Systems as well as Thiel's subsequent backing of the Berlin-based attack drone startup Stark are sometimes considered controversial, due to Thiel's politics. In May 2025, Quantum-Systems became Europe's first dual-use unicorn and third defense unicorn, after fellow Bavarian startup Helsing and the Portuguese Tekever (Thiel has a role in the success of Helsing too and the startup is considered a part of the "Thiel ecosystem", although he does not directly invest in it). Thiel's mentee Moritz Döpfner brokered the deal with Quantum-Systems on Thiel's behalf and sits on its board. His venture fund Doepfner Capital also invests in Stark.
Mithril Capital In June 2012, he launched Mithril Capital Management, named after the fictitious metal in The Lord of the Rings, with Jim O'Neill and Ajay Royan. Unlike Clarium Capital, Mithril Capital, a fund with $402 million at the time of launch, targets companies that are beyond the startup stage and ready to scale up. Thiel holds shares in the space-based intelligence company BlackSky through Mithril. It also invests in Helion Energy.
1517 Fund The 1517 Fund was founded in 2015 by Danielle Strachman and Michael Gibson, who were both in the founding team of the Thiel Fellowship. The fund provides cash grants and investments, aiming at extending the support already granted by the Thiel Fellowship. It targets "dropouts, renegade students, and deep tech scientists". Peter Thiel backs the fund. Its portfolio companies include Luminar Technologies, Loom, Inc., Atom Computing and Durin Mining Technologies among others.
America's Frontier Fund Thiel is the co-founder of America's Frontier Fund, together with Eric Schmidt. The New York Times writes that, America's Frontier Fund is an organization committed to bring manufacturing back to the US, especially that of semiconductors, and the leaders are determined to carry out this mission whether the state helps them or not. InfluenceWatch notes the fund's bipartisan character, with the participation of Ashton B. Carter and H.R. McMaster and the fact that the two founders are left and right-of-center respectively. The chief executive is Gilman Louie. In December 2024, it got approval to get funding from the Small Business Investment Company Critical Technology Initiative (SBICCT), which is "a joint effort by the U.S. Small Business Administration and the Department of Defense." In July 2025, it reportedly raised US$315 million for its first fund. It backs Venus Aerospace, a company develops hypersonic flight using rotating detonation rocket engine (since November 2024) and Foundation Alloy. The fund is characterized by Intelligence Online as "China-sceptic".
Rivada Space Networks Around the early 2020s, the Bavarian startup Kleo-Connect successfully developed a highly advanced satellite technology, which is considered much more suitable for governmental and military use than that of Starlink, which was originally conceived for civilian use only. It was feared the technology would fall into the hand of the PLA through its Chinese investors (who invested in the startup since 2018) though. Thus, the German government banned the sale of the company to China, but 144 lawsuits worldwide deterred investors from helping the company to expand the constellation. The founders decided to bring in the US's "highest conservative circles" (which led to the formation of Rivada Space Networks, which drew its personnel mainly from Kleo-Connect, in 2022), among which Karl Rove participated as an investor and lobbyist, and former US secretary of state Mike Pompeo joined the board of the mother company in the US, alongside others like Richard Myers, Jeb Bush, James Loy, Lord Guthrie and the Democrat Martin O'Malley. Rivada Networks's chairman Declan Ganley notes in particular the power of Thiel's name (whose investment in the firm remains undisclosed) in negotiation with investors. The United States Department of Defense is also an investor. Newt Gingrich is noted to have lobbied for the firm too. By 2025, the "politically connected company" has already expanded to 33 countries and collected 16 billion dollars in investments, despite having not launched its satellites (deployment is set to begin in 2027 with initial tests set for 2026). Thiel reportedly works to help the company's development, especially regarding its legal battles.
SNÖ Ventures Thiel is an investor and strategic partner of the Oslo-based SNÖ Ventures, having joined the firm in 2021, accompanied by a group of international strategic advisors. In 2024, the fund made its first investment in the defense tech sector, an early funding for the Swedish startup Nordic Air Defence, which developed counter-drone missile technology and is staffed with former employees from Palantir and Quantum Systems. Arctic Today sees this as an evidence of Sweden's strong transatlantic bond which is "seeping into defence", which is also shown in Daniel Ek's Prima Materia's investment in Helsing (which is a strategic partner of Palantir), which happened three months before Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
Elevat3 In 2020, Thiel became a strategic partner and anchor investor of Elevat3, which is set up by Christian Angermayer's Apeiron Investment Group to invest in startups in German-speaking countries. The fund focuses on "life sciences, deep tech, fintech (financial technology), property and insurance". The fund has a partnership with the Founder Fund. In 2020, Thiel invested into the Neunkirchen-based startup Neodigital through the fund. The fund also backs other European startups such as the London-based aggregator startup Olsam. In 2022, through Elevat3 and in partnership with the Founders Fund, the Apeiron Group bought shares from the Chinese Fosun International and others to become a shareholder in the Hamburg-based NAGA Group. Thiel also holds shares in Heidelberger Beteiligungsholding (which will be renamed as SQD.AI Strategies AG), the first dedicated German crypto holding treasury, through the firm.
Octave companies Thiel is associated with a number of companies named Octave. Octave Japan or Octave Group, a Kantō- and Tokyo-based company controlled by Thiel, was founded in 2014. Together with Rakuten, Noevir Holdings and Alpen, this company established AirAsia Japan as a joint venture in 2014, but the low-cost carrier shut down in 2020 due to the Covid pandemic. Octave Ventures, a Thiel-backed, Nevada-based fund, has supported companies such as Luminar, the fabless semiconductor company Cornami as well as Qolab, a quantum company co-founded by Nobel laureate John M. Martinis. The manager of the fund is Michael S. Kim. It has two branches, Octave Life Sciences and Octave Tech Investment. The Mumbai-based biotech-focused Octave Life Sciences invests in companies such as D&D Pharmatech D&D and its branches such as Neuraly and Valted Seq are associated with neurologist Ted M. Dawson (Valted Seq is also backed by Octave Ventures's affiliate OV Principal Investments). Octave Ventures plays a role in the partnership between Palantir and OKWave as well.
Crescendo Equity Partners Seoul-based Crescendo Equity is a private equity firm which focuses on developing SME companies into hidden champions and bringing them to the global scale. According to the official website, "Crescendo was established in 2012 with the sponsorship of Peter Thiel". The fund is co-founded by Peter Thiel, Matt Danzeisen (who serves as a member of its investment committee and representative to selected portfolio companies), Andy Lee (company chairman), Matt Price (CEO) and Slava Zhakov (CTO). The president is Anand Chandrasekaran. General Catalyst is also heavily involved in its financing and organization. The fund invests in Line Next (a unit of the Line Corporation), a joint venture between Softbank and Naver. The Business Korea credits Crescendo Equity Partners with transforming Korea's HPSP, which it invested in since 2017, into a global player in the semiconductor equipment sector. Crescendo also plays an important role in the Korean semiconductor industry through investments and support of other companies like Hanmi Semiconductor, Samyang NCchem. and Movensys (originally known as Soft Servo Group or Soft Motions & Robotics; the name was changed to Movensys in 2021 after Crescendo's investment). In 2026, Crescendo became a major shareholder of Sungho Electronics after selling to them INTIMAX, a firm which provides semiconductor handlers to the "Big Three" memory manufacturers (SK Hynix, Samsung Electronics and Micron). In 2026, both HPSP and Hanmi were reported to prepare to work with Elon Musk on the Terafab project. The firm also invests in companies that make metal equipment, including Seojin System and Model Solution. Since 2019, Crescendo also owns Dong-Ah Geological Engineering, which in 2024 succeeded in manufacturing a tunnel boring machine (TBM) using its own technology.
Pronomos Capital Thiel began to explore investing in charter cities on land after his interest in seasteading faded. Thiel is the anchor backer of Pronomos Capital, a firm "set up like a venture capital fund" that seeks to establish experimental, semi-autonomous cities in vacant lands, with acceptance from the countries involved. The founder of the firm is Patri Friedman. Projects backed by the firm include Próspera in Honduras. The Próspera project attracted companies like Oklo Inc. (nuclear startup backed by Thiel's Mithril and Sam Altman) and biotech startups, but led to legal struggles when the new Honduran government changed the laws in 2022.
Praxis and controversies in Denmark Praxis is a company that seeks to establish a new city-state and has explored Greenland as a possible location. In 2025, when the Danish government was integrating Palantir into the country's military, police and intelligence services, a major argument put forth by opponents was that the Praxis project (backed by Thiel through Pronomos) was a threat to Greenland. Other arguments were concerned with Thiel's politics in the US and Palantir's association with American and other European intelligence services, as well as the security risk that might arise from handing citizens' data to Palantir. The Danish National Police answered with a reference to a 2021 response to the Folketing, but otherwise, the Police, the Danish Security and Intelligence Service and Minister of Justice Peter Hummelgaard refused to comment on the matter.
Thiel Bio The firm was found in 2023 by Jason Camm (Chief Medical Officer of Thiel Capital). The regulatory filing does not disclose the name of the single investor who provides US$100 million or Thiel's involvement beyond the use of his name. The fund has invested in Ataraxis AI and EnClear Therapies together with the Founders Fund. Reports about investments in October 2025 (infection therapeutics company Peptilogics and cancer treatment startup HistoSonics) confirm that the firm is Thiel's. Hannes Holste from Thiel Capital is a partner.
Rivendell companies Thiel owns multiple entities named Rivendell, such as Rivendell One LLC, Rivendell 7 and Rivendell 25. Rivendell 7 and Rivendell 25 are personal investment vehicles, which are also used to hold Palantir shares. ProPublica reports 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 by 2019. The Roth was held in Rivendell Trust since 2018. Thiel bankrolled the satellite imaging startup HySpecIQ, known for serving government agencies but struggling financially, through Rivendell Fund. Rivendell entities are known to participate in his German or Korean investments.
Other business enterprises According to a 2020 article from Bloomberg, Thiel was at the time an investor in funds managed by 8VC and in the bank Disruptive Technology Advisers. A 2017 Globe and mail article names Thiel as a limited partner at Social Capital. He also sponsored Sam Altman's first venture fund, Hydrazine Capital as well as J.D.Vance's Narya Capital. He also backs Doepfner Capital, the venture fund of Moritz Döpfner, the son of Mathias Döpfner. He funded 90% of Zeev Ventures's first fund and has backed it ever since. The Founders Fund was also a backer of the second fund of the Indonesia-focused Intudo. The involvement helped Intudo to validate its mission. Founders Fund is also among the backers of the Israel-based Mensch Capital. Thiel also backs the Singaporean venture investment firm Syfe Group through Valar. The Founders Fund also invested in the Seattle-based private equity fund Privateer Holdings in 2015, thereby becoming the first institutional investor in the cannabis industry. His first investment in a hedge fund managed by an outside manager was made in 2011: the firm was Grandmaster Capital Management, founded by Patrick Wolff, former Clarium and Thiel Macro executive. Also in 2011, he backed the second fund of Joshua Kushner's Thrive Capital. In 2019, Thiel, together with Mark Cuban and Marc Andreessen, backed the San Francisco-based crypto investment fund 1Confirmation. Thiel gives backing to Vivek Ramaswamy's financial firm Strive Asset Management, also described as an activist fund. The firm aims to free "corporate America" of what they deem to be "stakeholder capitalism" ESG mandates created by the three companies BlackRock, Vanguard and State Street and accuse them of causing the energy crisis. The firm does not deny climate science. In 2021, Thiel backed the first fund of A-Star Partners, founded by Kevin Hartz, former partner at Founders Fund. In 2022, he backed B2B-focused Wischoff Ventures founded by solo GP Nichole Wischoff. Thiel is also a major backer of the venture debt firm Tacora, founded by Keri Findley. Its inaugural fund in 2022 raised US$350 million in total, including US$250 million from Thiel. Bloomberg comments that, "It's an unusually large investment for Thiel, the size of which hasn't been previously reported." Findley was originally an associate of Danzeisen, whom she met because she and Thiel Capital both invested in SoFi. Thiel agreed to fund her after she discussed the idea with him at a casual dinner. Alexandra Ulmer and Joseph Tanfani from Reuters remark that Thiel was an instrumental force behind the creation of 1789 Capital, which was co-founded in 2022 by Omeed Malik and Chris Buskirk, a confidant of Thiel's. Blake Masters is also a board member. The fund is intended to create a "parallel economy", a network that combines "businesses, media outlets and political organizations" associated with the America First movement. In 2024, it recruited Donald Trump Jr. as a partner. He personally invests in Quora (leading its Series B), Reddit, and nuclear startup Seaborg Technologies (now Saltfoss Energy).
RoboteX Thiel initiated the idea of the company RoboteX, which was built in 2007 and headed by his Palantir co-founder Nathan Gettings. It provided robots for police, firefighters and SWAT teams. Thiel and Karp also served on the board as directors and investors.
AbCellera He served on AbCellera's board from 2020 to 2024, when he resigned for personal reasons. Both sides stated that there was no disagreement, with Thiel saying that he was proud to have helped the company and AbCellera's founder Carl Hansen thanking him for his mentorship. He also retains his stake in the company, as of November 2024.
Y Combinator In March 2015, Thiel joined Y Combinator as one of 10 part-time partners. In November 2017, it was reported that Y Combinator had severed its ties with Thiel.
Enhanced Games
In 2024, Thiel became the lead funder of the Enhanced Games, a multi-sport event that will allow athletes to use performance-enhancing substances without being subject to drug tests. The founder is the Australian lawyer Aron D'Souza, who came to know and become Thiel's confidant in the process of leading the Gawker case for him. Angermayer, who was introduced to D'Souza by Thiel, also invested, even though, as per Wired, Thiel and Angermayer were not normally interested in sports. The startup agrees to cover legal expenses for any clean athletes who participate in the event and are banned from mainstream competitions as a result.
Objection In 2026, Thiel invested in Objection.ai, a startup that evaluates claims made by journalists.
Carbyne
In 2018, the Founders Fund invested in the Israeli company Carbyne (emergency service). Leaked emails (released by the hacker group Handala, which "likely operates out of Iran's Ministry of Intelligence", according to Reuters) show that in 2014, Jeffrey Epstein leveraged his relationship with former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak to get access to Thiel. Epstein arranged for Barak to meet Thiel in New York on June 9, 2014. In 2016, Epstein pitched Reporty (later Carbyne) to Valar, but the proposal got rejected on account of being pre