Peter Thiel is a German-American billionaire entrepreneur, venture capitalist, and political thinker best known for his role in shaping Silicon Valley and the modern tech industry.
Career highlights include co-founding PayPal, serving as its first CEO, making the first outside investment in Facebook, co-founding Palantir Technologies (a data analytics company), and launching investment firms such as Founders Fund and Thiel Capital. He also created the Thiel Fellowship, which pays young people to skip college and pursue entrepreneurial ventures.
He is influenced by the mimetic theory of René Girard, the elitist political philosophy of Leo Strauss, and libertarian thinking that values free markets, individual freedom, and minimal government. His intellectual framework blends deep skepticism of mass democracy with admiration for exceptional individuals and timeless truths.
Politically, he began as a libertarian but has shifted toward an anti-establishment, nationalist conservatism. He was a prominent supporter of Donald Trump and has financially backed candidates aligned with the populist and post-liberal New Right. Thiel is critical of "woke" culture, political correctness, and what he sees as Western civilizational decline, advocating instead for bold leadership by visionary elites.
Religiously, he identifies as a Christian, with strong interest in Christian Platonism and Girard’s idea that Christianity uniquely reveals and restrains human violence. He sees religion—especially Christianity—not merely as a private belief system but as a cultural force with the potential to ground moral order and counter destructive human desires.
Career highlights include co-founding PayPal, serving as its first CEO, making the first outside investment in Facebook, co-founding Palantir Technologies (a data analytics company), and launching investment firms such as Founders Fund and Thiel Capital. He also created the Thiel Fellowship, which pays young people to skip college and pursue entrepreneurial ventures.
He is influenced by the mimetic theory of René Girard, the elitist political philosophy of Leo Strauss, and libertarian thinking that values free markets, individual freedom, and minimal government. His intellectual framework blends deep skepticism of mass democracy with admiration for exceptional individuals and timeless truths.
Politically, he began as a libertarian but has shifted toward an anti-establishment, nationalist conservatism. He was a prominent supporter of Donald Trump and has financially backed candidates aligned with the populist and post-liberal New Right. Thiel is critical of "woke" culture, political correctness, and what he sees as Western civilizational decline, advocating instead for bold leadership by visionary elites.
Religiously, he identifies as a Christian, with strong interest in Christian Platonism and Girard’s idea that Christianity uniquely reveals and restrains human violence. He sees religion—especially Christianity—not merely as a private belief system but as a cultural force with the potential to ground moral order and counter destructive human desires.