Dhe German-born investor Peter Thiel will leave the Board of Directors of Meta Platforms. As the parent company of the social network Facebook announced on Monday after the market closed, Thiel no longer wants to stand for re-election at the upcoming shareholders’ meeting. CEO Mark Zuckerberg gave no direct justification, but said it was always clear to him that Thiel wanted to pursue “other interests” at some point.
According to several consistent media reports, the withdrawal has to do with Thiel wanting to step up his political engagement ahead of this year’s US congressional elections, while supporting former President Donald Trump’s agenda. He does not want his political activities to become a “distraction” for Meta. Thiel is funding the campaigns of two Republican Party candidates for Senate seats, and he has given them $10 million each.
They are Blake Masters, who is looking to win an Arizona Senate seat, and JD Vance, who is running in Ohio. Both are protégés with business ties to Thiel, and both support Trump. Masters, for example, said in a commercial that he believes Trump won the 2020 election. Vance is best known as the author of the book Hillbilly Elegy. In it he drew a portrait of the economically desolate regions of America in which he grew up and was thus celebrated as the explainer of the Trump phenomenon. Vance used to be critical of Trump, but sided with the former president as he ran for the Senate.
Proximity to Trump
Thiel was already very active in the 2016 presidential campaign and one of the few representatives of the technology industry who openly supported Trump. He donated millions to help Trump win the election and was speaking at the Republican convention at the time. After the election, he became an adviser to Trump, helping organize a meeting between him and prominent founders and top executives in the tech industry, for example. In the meantime, however, it was also said that Thiel had distanced himself from Trump. He didn’t play a very visible role in the 2020 election campaign.
Co-founder of Paypal
Thiel was born near Frankfurt in 1967, but emigrated to America with his parents a year later, where he had a brilliant career. In 1998 he was one of the co-founders of the PayPal payment service, which was sold to the online retailer Ebay in 2002 for $1.5 billion. The PayPal sale made Thiel rich, after which he became a venture capitalist. He is also a co-founder and major shareholder of Palantir, a company specializing in data analysis. Forbes estimates Thiel’s net worth at $2.6 billion.
Thiel has been on the Facebook board of directors since 2005. He played a formative role in the company and was considered a mentor to co-founder Mark Zuckerberg. He was also the first outside investor, giving Facebook $500,000 in its early days.
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