The investor was among Mark Zuckerberg’s earliest supporters in building Facebook.
(Photo: imago images/ZUMA Wire)
san francisco Billionaire Peter Thiel was among the first financiers who believed in the future of Mark Zuckerberg and his platform. He accompanied the rise of the company for two decades. Thiel will now resign from the board of directors at the upcoming general meeting of the parent company Meta, as Meta announced on Monday.
Thiel, 54, said: “It has been a privilege to work with one of the greatest entrepreneurs of our time. Mark Zuckerberg’s intelligence, energy and conscientiousness are enormous.” With his talent he will lead Meta into a new era.
Zuckerberg said, “Peter has been a valuable member of our board.” Zuckerberg continued, “I am deeply grateful for everything he has done for our company, starting with believing in us when few others did , to teaching me so many lessons about business, economics and the world.”
Peter Thiel belongs in the club of super-rich tech billionaires. His fortune is estimated at two to eight billion dollars. Nevertheless, with his politically conservative to right-wing populist views, he is considered an outsider in the more liberal tech scene in the USA.
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He never shared the unbridled enthusiasm for technology of other Silicon Valley investors. On the short message service Twitter, he scoffed: “We were promised flying cars, but instead we got 140 characters.”
Facebook’s IPO brought Thiel billions
For several years he has been involved as a donor in conservative and populist circles in the USA. “Trumpism without Trump” is what biographer Max Chafkin calls Trump’s strategy. He hired Austria’s ex-Chancellor Sebastian Kurz as a “Global Strategist” at Thiel Capital.
Born in Frankfurt am Main, Thiel moved to the USA with his parents when he was just one year old. He studied philosophy and later law at the renowned Stanford University.
He became rich as a co-founder of the payment service provider PayPal. With its IPO and later sale to the online trading journal Ebay, he became a millionaire and began to invest his money in other companies. He was head of the Founder Fund when he met Mark Zuckerberg.
At one of their first meetings, Zuckerberg reportedly appeared in flip-flops and handed out a business card that read “I’m CEO…bitch,” well-informed technology reporter Steven Levy described the scene.
Despite or perhaps because of his appearance, a close bond developed between the two men. Thiel invested a total of $500,000 in Zuckerberg’s company in August 2004, bringing the company’s value to $5 million. Facebook’s IPO made Thiel a billionaire in 2012. Over the next few years, he sold blocks of shares again and again. In 2020 he is said to have held only 10,000 shares.
However, Thiel’s role on Facebook was very controversial. Thiel is one of the most prominent Republican supporters in the US tech scene. He has made multiple donations to groups supporting former US President Donald Trump.
Future focus on politics
According to research by the Wall Street Journal, Thiel used his role on Facebook to allow unfiltered political advertising on the platform before the 2020 presidential election. At the same time, Thiel is said to have invested in companies that claim to be able to crack the encryption of Meta’s own WhatsApp service.
According to unanimous media reports, Thiel wants to focus more on politics. Among other things, he supports the two candidates close to Trump, Blake Masters and JD Vance, in the Senate elections this November.
In addition to his position on the board of directors of Facebook, Thiel’s role as chairman of the software group Palantir is one of his most prominent tasks as a company. Initially, there was no feedback from Palantir as to whether changes could also be made there.
More: Right and extreme: billionaire Peter Thiel wants to keep the Republicans on Trump’s course with millions.