Peter Thiel rarely seeks public attention, yet his influence extends well beyond technology. The PayPal and Palantir co-founder was Facebook’s first outside investor and leads venture firm Founders Fund, which has stakes in companies including SpaceX and OpenAI. Forbes estimates his wealth at about $35 billion.
Palantir works in data analysis, surveillance and artificial intelligence. It has secured government contracts worth billions of dollars, including software work for the Pentagon and US Immigration and Customs Enforcement. A 22-point manifesto the company published in April drew criticism from commentators who saw what they described as techno-fascist elements; that is their interpretation of the document.
Thiel’s political profile rose in 2016, when he became one of Donald Trump’s most prominent Silicon Valley supporters, spoke at the Republican convention and later served as an adviser. That year he donated $1.25 million to Trump’s campaign. He has since backed Republican candidates, including JD Vance. In 2022, Thiel gave $15 million to Protect Ohio Values, a political committee supporting Vance’s Senate bid—the largest single contribution to a Senate candidate at the time.
Thiel has described technology as an alternative to politics and expressed distrust of government institutions, regulation and liberal elites. In an interview with Time, his biographer Max Chafkin said Thiel’s preference for company decisions made by one person bordered on authoritarianism and described his attitude to democracy as hostile. Thiel himself has repeatedly criticised what he sees as ineffective democratic decision-making. In recent years he has lectured on the Antichrist, focusing less on the biblical figure than on forces he believes could lead to an apocalyptic order. He has opposed AI regulation and attacked climate activist Greta Thunberg; in July he called Pope Leo XIV a “Chinese communist agent” over the pontiff’s support for stronger AI rules.
In Berlin, Thiel received the Axel Springer Award, the publisher’s tenth laureate. The award recognises people said to change markets and encourage entrepreneurship, risk-taking and unconventional thinking. Previous recipients include Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk and Tim Berners-Lee. At the ceremony Thiel called parts of the media a left-wing “hate factory” and said the media landscape was one-sided. He praised Springer chief executive Mathias Döpfner and journalist Bari Weiss.
The award prompted protests. Police said more than 200 people attended an event opposing Thiel, and the German Journalists’ Association had criticised the decision to honour him. During the ceremony, a worker from a service company briefly interrupted proceedings with a sign reading: “They know that we know that they lie.”
Thiel’s political network developed over decades. As a Stanford student, he co-founded the conservative Stanford Review with Norman Book in 1987. He met Vance in 2011 at a lecture at Yale Law School. Vance later described Thiel as an important mentor; their relationship also included financial and political support. Vance, now US vice-president, is discussed as a possible Republican presidential contender in 2028. The article traces their connection back roughly 15 years.
Thiel was born in Frankfurt in 1967 and moved with his family to the United States when he was one. The family lived in South Africa from 1971 and for a time in what is now Namibia, returning to the US in 1977. His path from PayPal and early Facebook investment to Palantir’s multibillion-dollar contracts and campaign funding shows how closely technology capital and politics can intersect.