PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel has become one of Silicon Valley’s most influential figures, backing US Vice President JD Vance, helping Donald Trump’s political rise and building a business empire that includes surveillance and defence technology company Palantir. His mix of libertarian economics, anti-democratic ideas and religious warnings about the Antichrist has made him a powerful and controversial voice in the technology industry.
Thiel’s influence extends well beyond Silicon Valley. A decade ago, he secretly financed Hulk Hogan’s legal battle against Gawker, a media outlet that had publicly outed him as gay. Hogan won the case in 2016, receiving $140 million in damages, and Gawker eventually shut down. Thiel saw the verdict as a sign of changing public attitudes and began to anticipate Donald Trump’s political success before many observers did. He went on to speak at the Republican National Convention that year, helping to establish his position within the conservative movement.
Now 58, Thiel has helped shape a network of investors, entrepreneurs and political figures who favour technological innovation with minimal government oversight. Vice President JD Vance worked for Mithril Capital, one of Thiel’s investment funds, before entering politics. Thiel has also supported politicians including Texas Senator Ted Cruz and promoted a vision of American technological nationalism that challenges the international institutions established after the Second World War.
The Antichrist and the politics of technology
Thiel’s recent lecture series in Nashville brought renewed attention to his religious and political ideas. He warned about the Antichrist while criticising efforts to regulate artificial intelligence, echoing arguments he has made at previous events in the United States and Europe.
His critics say religious language has become a way to frame technology regulation as an existential struggle between good and evil. Writer and journalist Gil Durán, author of The Nerd Reich: Silicon Valley Fascism and the War on Democracy, argues that Thiel’s rhetoric helps promote an anti-democratic worldview among influential technology executives.
Thiel’s thinking draws on French philosopher René Girard, whose theory of mimetic desire examines how people imitate one another’s ambitions, creating rivalry and conflict. Thiel has combined these ideas with the concept of the Katechon, a theological term for the force that restrains the Antichrist.
His intellectual influences also include conservative political theorists Leo Strauss and Carl Schmitt, a former member of the Nazi Party. Philosopher Mark Coeckelbergh of the University of Vienna says Thiel’s interpretation of these thinkers reflects a belief that society requires strong authority and that a self-selected elite should guide technological progress.
Thiel has previously drawn criticism for questioning the compatibility of capitalism and democracy. In a 2009 essay, he argued that the expansion of welfare programmes and voting rights had undermined the idea of “capitalist democracy”. He later issued a partial apology following a backlash.
Palantir and the power of surveillance
The apparent contradiction between Thiel’s opposition to government control and his business interests is central to the debate over his influence.
He co-founded Palantir, a data analytics company established in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks with support from the CIA. Its software analyses large datasets to identify patterns and potential threats, and its customers include governments and intelligence agencies around the world.
Thiel’s investment firm, Founders Fund, has also backed companies including Palantir, Anduril, Clearview AI and Flock Safety, which operate in defence, surveillance and security technology. Roberto J. González, author of War Virtually, argues that Thiel’s greatest influence comes not from his philosophical writings but from the investment decisions that help determine which technologies reach government and military customers.
The contrast is striking: while Thiel advocates limiting the state’s reach, several companies in his investment network rely on public-sector contracts. His support for technology that strengthens state surveillance has therefore become a recurring point of criticism.
Thiel has also pursued the idea of creating autonomous communities that operate under their own legal frameworks. He has invested in Próspera, a special economic zone on Honduras’s island of Roatán, and has explored opportunities in Argentina, where he has developed ties with President Javier Milei’s government. His broader vision challenges the traditional relationship between national governments, territory and economic power.
From PayPal to Silicon Valley’s investment elite
Born in Frankfurt in 1967, Thiel moved to the United States with his family as a child after spending several years in apartheid-era South Africa. He grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area, where he developed a strong interest in chess, science fiction and fantasy, particularly J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings.
At Stanford University, where he enrolled in 1985, Thiel encountered libertarian philosophy and Girard’s work. These influences helped shape his scepticism towards universities, established intellectual institutions and conventional political structures.
After unsuccessful spells in finance and government, he returned to California and began investing in technology companies. In 1998, he teamed up with engineer Max Levchin to establish PayPal, an online payments company that sought to make digital transactions easier and less dependent on traditional financial institutions. Elon Musk later joined the company, which was sold to eBay in 2002 for more than $1.5 billion.
Thiel used the proceeds to build an investment portfolio that helped define the next generation of technology companies. In 2004, he invested $500,000 in Facebook, acquiring a 10% stake in the young social network. A year later, he established Founders Fund, which went on to invest in companies including SpaceX, Airbnb, OpenAI and Anduril.
His book Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future sets out his approach to entrepreneurship. Thiel argues that the most valuable companies do not simply compete in existing markets but create new ones and establish dominant positions. Critics see this philosophy as an endorsement of monopolistic power and an economic model in which a small number of founders retain extraordinary control.
A billionaire convinced the world has stopped innovating
Despite his investments in some of the technology industry’s most successful companies, Thiel believes humanity has fallen short of its technological potential. He has argued that advances expected in the mid-20th century — including flying cars, large-scale space exploration and cities built on or beneath the ocean — have failed to materialise.
He views the internet’s development as having lost momentum and has questioned whether the smartphone represents a fundamental technological breakthrough. Artificial intelligence, however, remains one of the few fields he believes could overcome this stagnation.
For Thiel, innovation means creating entirely new markets rather than improving existing products. That conviction underpins his support for entrepreneurs willing to challenge established rules, even when their companies acquire enormous market power.
His critics argue that this model concentrates wealth and influence in the hands of a small technological elite, while weakening democratic oversight. Supporters of his investment approach point to the companies he has helped finance as evidence of his ability to identify transformative technologies early.
Thiel’s reach now spans politics, defence, surveillance and artificial intelligence. Whether viewed as a visionary investor or a proponent of an increasingly concentrated form of technological power, his influence is rooted in more than his provocative speeches: it lies in the companies he finances, the political figures he supports and the future he wants technology to create.
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