HomeBusiness InsiderWho is Peter Thiel, the billionaire investor and PayPal cofounder who says he had $50 million in Silicon Valley Bank when it collapsed?
Who is Peter Thiel, the billionaire investor and PayPal cofounder who says he had $50 million in Silicon Valley Bank when it collapsed?
Peter Thiel is worth about $8 billion, per Bloomberg's Billionaire Index.
John Lamparski/Getty Images
Billionaire Peter Thiel said he had $50 million in Silicon Valley Bank when it collapsed.
With a net worth of $8 billion, he's among Silicon Valley's most successful venture capitalists.
Here's a look at his colorful life, from cofounding PayPal to setting up the Founders Fund.
Peter Thiel, 55, was born in Germany but his family came to the US when he was one year old. He moved to Foster City, California, when he was in fifth grade.
While studying philosophy and law at Stanford, Thiel founded a newspaper called The Stanford Review to take aim at the university's emphasis on political correctness.
Before moving into the tech sector, Thiel worked as a clerk for an appeals judge. He had interviews to clerk for US Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy and Justice Antonin Scalia, but wasn't successful.
After working as a securities lawyer for seven months, Thiel became a derivatives trader at Credit Suisse and made enough money to launch PayPal with Max Levchin.
The same year PayPal was founded, Thiel coauthored a controversial book with David Sachs titled "The Diversity Myth" that challenged what he called political correctness in education.
In 2004, Thiel and Alexander Karp cofounded Palantir, which can sift through photos, videos and other data to detect criminality. It was based on Thiel's idea of using financial industry fraud-detection software to monitor terrorist activity.
In 2011, he launched the Thiel Fellowship, which gave $100,000 and two years of support to 20 applicants under the age of 20 so they could launch their companies.
His mantra was to not copy existing ideas. "The next Bill Gates will not build an operating system. The next Larry Page or Sergey Brin won't make a search engine. And the next Mark Zuckerberg won't create a social network."
Thiel wrote in a 2015 Reddit post that he aimed to live to be 120 years old and takes human growth hormone daily. He's also expressed interest in getting blood transfusions from younger people to slow aging.
In 2007, Thiel began a feud with Gawker after it published a story headlined "Peter Thiel is totally gay, people." He responded by comparing the site to Al-Qaeda "in that it scares everybody."
In 2016, it was revealed that Thiel had been funding Hulk Hogan's 2012 case against Gawker because he thought the site was a "bully." He'd put about $10 million into similar cases against Gawker.
Gawker lost against Hulk Hogan, who sued after it published a sex tape featuring the wrestler, and shut down. Thiel's position on Facebook's board also came into question at the time.
In 2018 he also backed the Seasteading Institute, which wanted to build self-sustained floating cities and experiment with different types of governments.
His fellowship program helped birth power players like Dylan Field, who founded design software firm Figma which Adobe acquired for $20 billion. But the fellowship also faced some controversies.
Thiel told his portfolio companies to pull their funds from Silicon Valley Bank before it collapsed in March. He later said he had $50 million of his own money in a personal account at the bank.
Nikolas Liepins/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images
Thiel call for startups to withdraw their funds from SVB was blamed by some for adding momentum to the bank run that triggered the bank's implosion.
He said his SVB account was frozen when regulators took control of the bank on March 10. He regained access to the funds it after regulators guaranteed all deposits.
Who is Peter Thiel, the billionaire investor and PayPal cofounder who says he had $50 million in Silicon Valley Bank when it collapsed?
Reviewed by mimisabreena
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Sunday, March 19, 2023
Rating: 5
Reviewed by mimisabreena
on
Sunday, March 19, 2023
Rating:
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