Peter Thiel

, Thiel had an estimated net worth of $9.7 billion and was ranked 213th on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

He worked as a securities lawyer at Sullivan & Cromwell, as a speechwriter for former U.S. Secretary of Education William Bennett and as a derivatives trader at Credit Suisse.

Peter Andreas Thiel (born 11 October 1967) is a German-American entrepreneur, venture capitalist, and political activist.

A co-founder of PayPal, Palantir Technologies, and Founders Fund, he was the first outside investor in Facebook.

Thiel was born in Frankfurt am Main, West Germany, on 11 October 1967, to Klaus Friedrich Thiel and his wife Susanne Thiel.

The family emigrated to the United States when Peter was one year old and lived in Cleveland, Ohio, where his father worked as a chemical engineer.

Klaus then worked for various mining companies, creating an itinerant upbringing for Thiel and his younger brother, Patrick Michael Thiel.

Thiel's mother became a U.S. citizen, but his father did not.

Before settling in Foster City, California, in 1977, the Thiels lived in South Africa and South West Africa (modern-day Namibia).

Peter changed elementary schools seven times.

He attended a strict establishment in Swakopmund that required students to wear uniforms and utilized corporal punishment, such as striking students' hands with a ruler.

This experience instilled a distaste for uniformity and regimentation later reflected in his support for individualism and libertarianism.

Thiel played Dungeons & Dragons, was an avid reader of science fiction, with Isaac Asimov and Robert A. Heinlein among his favorite authors, and a fan of J. R. R. Tolkien's works, stating as an adult that he had read The Lord of the Rings over ten times.

Six firms (Palantir Technologies, Valar Ventures, Mithril Capital, Lembas LLC, Rivendell LLC and Arda Capital) that he founded adopted names originating from Tolkien.

Thiel excelled in mathematics and scored first in a California-wide mathematics competition while attending Bowditch Middle School in Foster City.

At San Mateo High School, he read Ayn Rand, admired the optimism and anti-communism of then-President Ronald Reagan, and became valedictorian of his graduating class in 1985.

He studied philosophy at Stanford University.

During that time, debates on identity politics and political correctness were ongoing.

A "Western Culture" program, which was criticized by The Rainbow Agenda because of a perceived over-representation of the achievements of European men, was replaced with a "Culture, Ideas and Values" course, which instead pushed diversity and multiculturalism.

This replacement provoked controversy on the campus and led to Thiel co-founding The Stanford Review, a conservative and libertarian newspaper, in 1987 with funding from Irving Kristol.

Thiel served as The Stanford Review's first editor-in-chief and remained in that post until completing his Bachelor of Arts in 1989.

Over the years, Thiel has continued that relationship, consulting with the top editorial staff several times a year, hosting events at his house, donating to the newspaper and placing graduating students in internships or jobs within his network.

Thiel enrolled in Stanford Law School and earned his Juris Doctor degree in 1992.

While at Stanford, Thiel met René Girard, whose mimetic theory influenced him.

Mimetic theory posits that human behavior is based upon mimesis, and that imitation can engender pointless conflict.

Girard notes the productive potential of competition: "It is because of this unprecedented capacity to promote competition within limits that always remain socially, if not individually, acceptable that we have all the amazing achievements of the modern world," but states that competition stifles progress once it becomes an end in itself: "rivals are more apt to forget about whatever objects are the cause of the rivalry and instead become more fascinated with one another."

Thiel applied this theory to his personal life and business ventures, stating: "The big problem with competition is that it focuses us on the people around us, and while we get better at the things we're competing on, we lose sight of anything that's important, or transcendent, or truly meaningful in our world."

He founded Thiel Capital Management in 1996.

He co-founded PayPal with Max Levchin and Luke Nosek in 1998, serving as chief executive officer until its sale to eBay in 2002 for $1.5 billion.

After PayPal, he founded Clarium Capital, a global macro hedge fund based in San Francisco.

In 2003, he launched Palantir Technologies, a big data analysis company, serving as its chairman since its inception.

Earlier, Thiel became Facebook's first outside investor when he acquired a 10.2% stake for $500,000 in August 2004.

In 2005, he launched Founders Fund with PayPal partners Ken Howery and Luke Nosek.

He co-founded Valar Ventures in 2010; co-founded Mithril Capital, serving as investment committee chair, in 2012; and served as a part-time partner at Y Combinator from 2015 to 2017.

Through the Thiel Foundation, Thiel governs the grant-making bodies Breakout Labs and Thiel Fellowship, and funds non-profit research into artificial intelligence, life extension, and seasteading.

After the Fifth National Government intervened on his behalf, Thiel was controversially granted New Zealand citizenship in 2011 after spending 12 days in the country non-consecutively.

He sold the majority of his shares in Facebook for over $1 billion in 2012 but remains on the board of directors.

In 2016, Thiel confirmed that he had funded Hulk Hogan in the Bollea v. Gawker lawsuit because Gawker had previously outed Thiel as gay.

The lawsuit eventually bankrupted Gawker and led to founder Nick Denton declaring bankruptcy.

Thiel is a conservative libertarian who has made substantial donations to American right-wing figures and causes.