• Billionaire Peter Thiel has become one of the most controversial figures in Silicon Valley.
• The PayPal co-founder went on to have a successful career in venture capital.
• Known as a connector, he has mentored the likes of JD Vance and Sam Altman.

Like many billionairesPeter Thiel is already benefiting from Donald Trump’s second presidential victory.

His net worth surged after the election, reaching a record $14 billion on Friday, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

The election results were also a victory for the venture capitalist on a more personal level.

This virulent conservative and early Trump supporter played a key role in the rise of Vice President-elect JD Vance — and that’s a big reason why the Ohio politician was second on the ticket.

Thiel and other Silicon Valley elites called Trump repeatedly to implore him to choose Vance as vice president, hoping he would institute startup-friendly policies and reduce regulation. The Washington Post reported. He was instrumental in transforming Vance, once a non-Trumper, into a MAGA Republican.

The relationship between Thiel, co-founder of PayPal and Palantirand Vance dates back to at least 2011, when Thiel visited Yale Law School, where Vance was a student. Vance, who praised Thiel’s Christianity, called the talk in which he discussed the frantic race for achievement, “the most important moment of my time at Yale Law School.”

Thiel later defended the future politician, writing a blurb for Vance’s 2016 book “Hillbilly Elegy,” hiring Vance to work in his Venture capital firm Mithril Capitaland investing in Vance’s own venture capital fund, Narya Capital.

He helped finance Vance’s campaign, investing at least $15 million in his 2022 Senate bid, according to data from Open Secretsand helping him gain Trump’s endorsement following a 2021 meeting at Mar-a-Lago in which he introduced both, The New York Times reported.

Even if he didn’t contribute financially to the 2024 presidential election — “An extra $1 million or $10 million makes no difference,” he said of Trump, who would have called him a “bastard” – he was an early Trump supporter in Silicon Valley, supporting him in 2016, speaking at the Republican National Convention that year, donating $1.25 million dollars to pro-Trump groups and serving as a member of his transition team.

With Vance’s place on the ticket and the Trump-Vance victory, Thiel secured his position as a conservative kingmaker and one of the most powerful political players in tech.

The PayPal Mafia Donation

Long before he linked Trump and Vance, Thiel had become known as a connector and mentor in Silicon Valley.

Like many early tech founders, he studied at Stanford, where he also earned a law degree. While he was a student, his reputation for contrarian opinions began to form. In 1987, he co-founded The Stanford Reviewa student publication dedicated to “presenting alternative viewpoints”, which primarily manifest as a conservative bent. The first editions were aimed at political correctness on campus.

After brief stints as a lawyer and in commerce, Thiel burst onto the tech scene in 1998 when he co-founded PayPal. There, he earned the nickname “don” from PayPal Mafiaone of the most influential technology groups, which includes Elon Musk, Keith Rabois, David Sacks and Reid Hoffman.

It’s also what made him rich. It made around $100 million in its IPO. Bloomberg estimates. His fortune grew through his early investments in Facebook (he was its first outside investor), LinkedIn and Yelp, and through his role as co-founder of Palantir, the big data company and frequent partner of the federal government.

In 2005, he co-founded the venture capital fund Founders Fund, which invested in SpaceX and Airbnb and of which he remains a partner. He also co-founded venture capital firms Valar Ventures and Mithril Capital.

Thiel’s sphere of influence in Silicon Valley grew as he got richer. He became known as a mentor by creating the Thiel Fellowship, which awarded $100,000 and two years of support to founders under 20 years old. His best-known mentees – although not Thiel Fellows – include Mark Zuckerbergwhom he connected to Trump, and Sam Altman. He shares an interest in longevity with the latter, since he would have agreed to be cryogenically frozen and adapt an anti-aging routine.

Conservative kingmaker

His personal politics and contrarian streak also defined Thiel, setting him apart from the rest of the world. Largely Democratic Bay Area.

A self-described “libertarian,” Thiel has written extensively about his political beliefs, including piece in the 1990s, who spoke out against affirmative action.

“I oppose confiscatory taxes, totalitarian collectives and the ideology of the inevitable death of each individual,” he declared. wrote in 2009.

Over the past two decades, he has spoken numerous times at events for the conservative and libertarian Federalist Society. He contributed to the Seasteading Institutean attempt at an independent and libertarian floating nation.

There was also his feud with Gawkerwhich some saw as an attack on free speech. In 2007, the online site wrote an article about the sexuality of Thiel, who is gay. Nearly a decade later, it was revealed that he had invested approximately $10 million in cases against Gawker, including the Hulk Hogan case in 2012, which ultimately led to the website’s demise. (At the time, Thiel characterized his fight against privacy violations, not journalism.)

He had donated to conservative or libertarian politicians for years — including more than $2 million to Ron Paul’s presidential campaign in 2012 and millions to groups supporting Ted Cruz that same year, according to OpenSecrets.

It was Thiel’s endorsement of Trump in 2016 that cemented his status as tech’s most vocal conservative — and caused divisions with others in the tech world. Reed Hastingswho was on Facebook’s board of directors with Thiel at the time, reportedly called Thiel’s support for Trump “catastrophic poor judgment,” and there were calls for Y combiner, where Thiel worked as an advisor, only to fire him.

By 2018, Thiel’s friction with the San Francisco tech bubble had boiled over. He called Silicon Valley a “one-party state” during a 2018 speech at Stanford. Shortly after, he decamped to Los Angeles.

Although he did not donate to Trump in 2020, he solidified his reputation as a major GOP donor in 2022, supporting not only Vance but also Arizona senatorial candidate Blake Masters, who lost, the Wyoming Rep. Harriet Hageman and more than a dozen other conservatives. candidates.

Now that Vance is in the White House, it remains to be seen what Thiel’s relationship with Trump will be. However, he proved that his the contrarian point of view was right, at least this time.

Additional reporting by Sam Tabahriti and Jyoti Mann.