Peter Thiel is a German-American entrepreneur and investor.
Thiel is associated with the intellectual dark web and has collaborated with other members, including Eric Weinstein, Bari Weiss, Tim Ferriss, and Dave Rubin.
Background
Thiel was born on October 11, 1967 in Frankfurt am Main, West Germany. Thiel’s parents moved to America soon after, then to South Africa before moving to the San Francisco Bay area. Thiel has a younger sibling.
Thiel earned a bachelor’s degree from Stanford in 1989. While there Thiel co-founded and edited conservative publication The Stanford Review. Thiel earned a law degree there in 1992, 11th Circuit Judge James Larry Edmondson. After a couple of years working in finance on the east coast, Thiel returned to California and founded Thiel Capital Management. ONe early investment got developed into PayPal, which merged with X.com founded by Elon Musk. PayPal went public in 2002 and was bought by eBay for $1.5 billion.
Thiel was a co-founder of PayPal, Palantir Technologies, and Founders Fund. Thiel was the first outside investor in Facebook. These investments earned Thiel billions of dollars.
Thiel was outed as gay in 2007 by the Gawker gossip blog network, and then funded a successful $140 million lawsuit against Gawker brought by Hulk Hogan for invasion of privacy. The verdict $31 million settlement effectively ended Gawker.
The Thiel Foundation supports young adult visionaries, speculative scientific research, AI, life extension, and seasteading.
Thiel has citizenship in Germany by birth, The US via naturalization, and New Zealand in 2011 through investments there.
Thiel married longtime partner Matt Danzeisen in 2017. Thiel was also reportedly in a relationship with model Jeff Thomas, who died in 2023 at age 35.
Anti-transgender activism
In 1995, Thiel and David O. Sacks co-authored The Diversity Myth, an attack on progressive policies in higher education. Thiel is a Republican and has become a major figure among conservative gay activism. Thiel has been a major donor to Republican and libertarian political candidates and founded Free Forever, an America-first political action committee.
Thiel was a major contributor to Donald Trump’s first presidential campaign. In 2016, Thiel spoke at the Republican National Convention, saying “I am proud to be gay,” and criticizing the GOP focus on cultural issues:
“When I was a kid, the great debate was about how to defeat the Soviet Union. And we won. Now we are told that the great debate is about who gets to use which bathroom. This is a distraction from our real problems. Who cares?”