Peter Andreas Thiel is a 52-year-old German-American billionaire. He is known as one of the founders of PayPal (whose founders are often referred to as the PayPal Mafia) and the founder of Palantir Technologies. Read the related article

His fortune is estimated at $2.3 billion.

A brief look at his investments and what he does today

He invested in Facebook at a fairly early stage and remains a member of its board today. He invested $500,000 for approximately 10% of the company back in 2004.

Sean Parker, a former founder of Napster and former president of Facebook, first approached then LinkedIn CEO Reid Hoffman with an offer to invest in Facebook. Hoffman then introduced Parker to Thiel. The rest is history.

Peter Thiel earned about $1 billion from selling shares when Facebook listed on the American Nasdaq stock exchange on 18 May 2012. He has said that he regrets not taking part in a second round of investment in Facebook, known as a Series B round, in which selected investors can contribute capital in return for shares in the company. That would have allowed Thiel to earn more when he later sold his shares.

Shortly after joining Facebook’s board, he started the venture capital firm Founders Fund, for which he is well known today.

Founders Fund has made early investments in companies including SpaceX, Airbnb, Spotify and Lyft Inc.

LinkedIn and Yelp are among the companies in which he has invested personally, as an angel investor.

He is a well-known supporter of Donald Trump and one of Trump’s Silicon Valley go-to people.

Peter Thiel’s work today includes:

President of Clarium Capital

Chairman of Palantir

Partner at Founders Fund

Chairman of Valar Ventures (note the word Valar, also from The Lord of the Rings)

Chairman of Mithril Capital (note the name Mithril, also from The Lord of the Rings)

And a position on Facebook’s board

Read a little about Palantir Technologies here. Read the related article

Here is a 2015 article about Peter Thiel’s choice of Lord of the Rings names for companies. https://www.bizjournals.com/bizjournals/news/2015/04/16/peter-thiel-has-founded-at-least-five-lord-of-the.html

More about Valar and Mithril here and here. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vala_(Middle-earth) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mithril