Peter Thiel

Peter Thiel co-founded PayPal and the software company Palantir Technologies, sat on Facebook’s board of directors from April 2005 until Meta’s 2022 annual meeting, and is among the largest reported individual donors to federal political committees.

Companies and Roles

Palantir’s own registration statement is the most complete first-party account of his positions. It records that he co-founded PayPal, Inc. in 1998 and served as its chief executive officer, president and chairman of the board from 2000 until eBay acquired it in 2002; that he has been a partner of the venture firm Founders Fund since 2005; that he has been president of Thiel Capital since 2011; and that he is a co-founder of Palantir and has served as chairman of its board since 2003. Facebook’s 2012 prospectus adds that he was president of Clarium Capital Management from 2002 and that he had earlier worked at Credit Suisse and at the law firm Sullivan & Cromwell. He holds a B.A. in philosophy from Stanford University and a J.D. from Stanford Law School.

Palantir’s 2026 proxy statement still lists him as co-founder and chairman, a director since 2003, and gives his age as 58 as of 6 April 2026. The Library of Congress name authority record gives his date of birth as 11 October 1967.

Palantir describes itself in the S-1 as having been founded in 2003 “to build software for use in counterterrorism operations,” beginning with the United States intelligence community; its first platform, Gotham, was released in 2008 and was built for analysts at defense and intelligence agencies. Thiel, Alexander Karp and Stephen Cohen are designated the company’s “Founders” in its charter documents, and their Class F shares are held in a voting trust that the S-1 says gives them the ability to control up to 49.999999% of the company’s total voting power.

Facebook Board Service

Facebook’s final pre-IPO prospectus states that Thiel had served on the board of directors since April 2005 and describes him as “one of our early investors.” He held the board seat designated by the holders of a majority of the Series A preferred stock, and the investors’ rights agreement to which his entities are party was originally entered into in connection with that 2005 Series A financing. He served on the audit committee alongside Marc Andreessen and Erskine Bowles, received $16,667 in director fees for 2011 and no equity award that year, and beneficially owned 44,724,100 shares of Class B common stock — 2.5% of the class — immediately before the offering, held through vehicles including Rivendell, Lembas and Founders Fund entities.

His service ended at Meta’s 2022 annual meeting. The proxy statement filed on 8 April 2022 carries a letter from Mark Zuckerberg thanking Thiel “for his distinguished service as a member of our board since 2005” and stating that he would be “retiring from our board when his term concludes at the Annual Meeting.” His last Section 16 filing as a Meta director covers 15 May 2022. Palantir’s later proxy statements describe the service as running “from 2005 to 2022.”

Funding of the Bollea Litigation Against Gawker

Thiel confirmed his role himself, in a signed New York Times opinion piece dated 15 August 2016. In it he writes that Gawker outed him in 2007; that in October 2012 Gawker “published a sex tape without the consent of the people in the video”; that the person filmed, the wrestler Terry Bollea, chose to fight back; that a unanimous jury “assessed damages of $140 million”; and that Gawker Media Group had put itself up for sale in part to satisfy that judgment. He states: “For my part, I am proud to have contributed financial support to his case. I will support him until his final victory.”

The court record confirms the surrounding chronology without depending on that account. Bollea sued Gawker Media in federal court in Florida in 2012 (M.D. Fla. No. 8:12-cv-02348) and in Pinellas County circuit court (case 12-012447-CI, identified as the lower tribunal in Florida Second District Court of Appeal case 2D16-2535). Gawker Media, LLC filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the Southern District of New York on 10 June 2016 (No. 16-11700), followed by Gawker Media Group, Inc. on 12 June 2016 (No. 16-11719).

The same op-ed is also the source for his statement that he spoke at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland in July 2016 and said there that he was proud to be gay.

Reported Federal Political Spending

Committees reporting to the Federal Election Commission have itemized 22 individual contributions from Thiel of $500,000 or more. The two largest are$10 million to Protect Ohio Values PAC on 12 March 2021 and $10 million to Saving Arizona PAC on 23 April 2021; he made further seven-figure payments to both committees through the 2022 cycle, bringing the reported totals to$15 million to Protect Ohio Values and $20 million to Saving Arizona at this reporting threshold.

Other reported recipients at that threshold include Endorse Liberty, Inc. ($2.45 million across December 2011 and January 2012), Club for Growth Action (payments in 2012, 2018 and 2026), Conservative, Authentic, Responsive Leadership for You and for America ($2 million in August 2015), Fighting for Ohio Fund and Make America Number 1 ($1 million each in 2016), Free Forever Political Action Committee ($1.5 million in 2020) and Grow the Majority ($852,200 in February 2025). His reported employer changes across the filings from Clarium Capital to Thiel Capital to Founders Fund.

Those committees’ own Form 24 reports of independent expenditures identify the races they spent in. Protect Ohio Values PAC reported spending in support of J.D. Vance’s Ohio Senate candidacy; Saving Arizona PAC in support of Blake Masters’s Arizona Senate candidacy; Fighting for Ohio Fund in opposition to Ted Strickland in the 2016 Ohio Senate race; Make America Number 1 in opposition to Hillary Clinton in the 2016 general election; Endorse Liberty, Inc. in support of Ron Paul in the 2012 presidential primaries; Conservative, Authentic, Responsive Leadership for You and for America in support of Carly Fiorina in the 2016 New Hampshire primary; and Free Forever Political Action Committee in support of Kris Kobach in the 2020 Kansas Senate primary. A contribution to a committee is not a contribution to a candidate, and these filings show only where the committees reported spending, not how any particular receipt was used.

What Is Not Established Here

The previous version of this page stated that Thiel was the “first outside investor in Facebook” and dated the investment to 2004. Facebook’s own prospectus calls him “one of our early investors,” gives April 2005 as the start of his board service, and ties his registration rights to the 2005 Series A financing; it nowhere says first, and no filing consulted here dates an investment to 2004. The Library of Congress record repeats the “first outside investor” phrasing, but does so in a note sourced to Wikipedia, which is not a citation for this project’s purposes. The claim is therefore removed rather than restated.

Also removed for want of a source: that he served on Facebook’s board “influencing platform governance decisions affecting political content,” and the summary claims that he shaped “early Facebook governance and content policies,” funded “media and technology ventures aligned with his political interests,” influenced “tech industry political engagement” and supported “alternative technology platforms.” His documented Facebook committee assignment was the audit committee; nothing consulted here connects him to content policy. The description of Palantir as technology “used by government agencies and political campaigns” is narrowed to what Palantir states about itself — intelligence and defense customers — because no source consulted supports the political-campaign half.

The unsourced followerCount of “500k+ on Twitter” has been removed; x.com does not serve automated clients, so no figure could be confirmed. primaryPlatforms has been removed as well: “tech-conferences” is not a platform page in this repository, and no evidence was gathered for a significant platform presence. The palantir connection was removed because there is no Palantir page in any collection for it to point at; the relationship is documented in the body instead.

The 2016 statement that he “publicly supported the Trump campaign” is reduced to what his own op-ed says — that he spoke at the 2016 Republican National Convention. His $1 million to Make America Number 1 is recorded as a receipt by a committee that reported independent expenditures opposing Hillary Clinton; that is not the same as a contribution to Donald Trump, and no source consulted here shows one. The same caution applies throughout the political-spending section: the committees' Form 24 filings show where each committee reported spending, not how any individual receipt was applied. No total figure for his lifetime federal giving is stated, because the query behind this page was capped at receipts of$500,000 or more and does not capture smaller itemised contributions. No Form 24 was located for Grow the Majority or Club for Growth Action within the filings examined, so no candidate is attached to those receipts.

The full text of the Florida appellate opinions in the Gawker litigation was not retrievable, so the $140 million figure rests on Thiel’s own signed account rather than on a court document.