Peter Andreas Thiel

Peter Andreas Thiel born October 11, 1967 is an American entrepreneur, venture capitalist, and hedge fund manager. Thiel cofounded PayPal with Max Levchin, and later, Elon Musk, and served as its CEO. He also cofounded Palantir, of which he is chairman. He serves as president of Clarium Capital, a global macro hedge fund with $700 million in assets under management; a managing partner in Founders Fund, a $275 million venture capital fund that he launched with Ken Howery and Luke Nosek in 2005; and cofounder and investment committee chair of Mithril Capital Management. He was the first outside investor in Facebook, the popular social-networking site, with a 10.2% stake acquired in 2004 for $500,000, and sits on the company's board of directors. Thiel was ranked #293 on the Forbes 400 in 2011, with a net worth of $1.5 billion as of March 2012. Thiel lives in San Francisco, California.

 Born to German parents in Frankfurt am Main, West Germany, Thiel moved to the United States with his parents when he was a toddler, and was raised in Foster City, California. Thiel was a US-rated Chess Master and one of the highest ranked under-21 players in the country.

As a venture capitalist and entrepreneur, Peter has been involved with some of the most dynamic companies to emerge from Silicon Valley in the past decade. Peter’s first start-up was PayPal, which he co-founded in 1998, and led as Chairman and CEO. Peter’s tenure culminated in PayPal’s sale to eBay for $1.5 billion in 2002. After the eBay acquisition, Peter founded Clarium Capital Management, a global macro hedge fund.

Peter also helped launch Palantir Technologies, an analytical software company, and serves as the chairman of that company’s board. Peter is also involved with a variety of philanthropic, academic, and cultural pursuits. He serves as a primary supporter of the Committee to Protect Journalists, a group that promotes press freedom worldwide; the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence, which seeks to foster the responsible development of advanced computing technologies; and the SENS Foundation, a medical charity dedicated to extending healthy human lifespans. Peter remains active at his alma mater, and has taught at Stanford Law School, in addition to serving on the Board of Overseers of the Hoover Institution at Stanford.