Peter Thiel

Peter Thiel is a German-American entrepreneur and venture capitalist, born in Frankfurt am Main in 1967 and raised in the United States after his family emigrated when he was a small child. He studied philosophy at Stanford University, worked as a securities lawyer and derivatives trader, and founded Thiel Capital Management in 1996. In 1998 he co-founded PayPal with Max Levchin and Luke Nosek and served as its chief executive officer until the company was sold to eBay in 2002. He then founded the hedge fund Clarium Capital, launched the data analysis company Palantir in 2003 and has chaired it since. In 2004 he became the first outside investor in Facebook, and in 2005 he launched the venture firm Founders Fund with former PayPal colleagues. His political activity and views are widely discussed and contested, and sources describe them in sharply differing terms.