Peter Thiel: Power, Palantir, and the antichrist

He may not hog the limelight in the same way as Donald Trump, Elon Musk, or many of his other friends and associates, but Peter Thiel has a fair claim to be one of the world's most influential figures — as well as one of its richest.

Born in 1967 in Frankfurt am Main in what was then West Germany, the Thiel family moved to the US when Peter was just a year old. The family also spent six years in South-African occupied Namibia from 1971 to 1977. 

Thiel's later rise to prominence came on the back of his tech firms and investments. His first major success was Paypal, a digital payments provider with which Musk was initially involved. Thiel then became the first outside investor in Facebook.

Today he also owns part of Musk's SpaceX, as well as OpenAI, and multiple other companies. Forbes puts his personal wealth at $35.7 billion (€31.1 billion).

But perhaps his most noteworthy company is Palantir. The surveillance, AI, and data-analytics company has won government contracts worth billions to create software for the Pentagon as well as US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The company released a 22-point manifesto in April that critics said bore the imprint of "techno-fascism."

But Thiel could be considered as influential in politics as he is in business, and not just in the US.

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Though several European countries, including the UK, the Netherlands, France, Germany, and Spain are starting to reevaluate or end their governmental and military links with Palantir due to security concerns, the company is deeply embedded in security systems across the globe.

Thiel himself has recently moved to Argentina, where he has reportedly held talks with the country's right-wing president, Javier Milei, as the government proposes a series of regulations that include incentives for foreign companies and targets investments in AI data centers. 

Early Trump support paid off

Thiel was an early backer, and later advisor, of Donald Trump, donating $1.25 million to Trump's 2016 election campaign and speaking at the Republican National Convention in the same year, at a time when Silicon Valley was broadly considered to be Democrat-leaning. Bar a hiatus between 2023 and 2025, he has been a generous donor to Republican campaigns and figures, including Vice President JD Vance.

Thiel's own political beliefs are not easy to pin down. He's been described as a libertarian nationalist and consistently expressed the belief that "technology is the alternative to politics." 

He also shows a distrust of authorities, regulation, and liberal elites. This is partly born of a frustration with what Thiel considers inefficient decision-making by elected officials and voters.

"It's bordering on fascism," Max Chafkin, who wrote a 2021 biography of Thiel, told Time magazine. "He talks about how companies are better run than governments because they have a single decision-maker — a dictator, basically. He is hostile to the idea of democracy. That's pretty scary when you consider the role the companies that he's been involved in play."

These beliefs seemed to start to rise to the surface during his time at Stanford University in California. Thiel railed against the prevailing liberal campus ideology and founded the Stanford Review, a publication to express those contrary beliefs, something that would echo his current disdain for beliefs labeled as "woke."

Christianity, the antichrist, and AI

Thiel was raised in a strongly Christian household, and there is little doubt that his religion has colored his life and career. Thiel recently described himself as a "small 'o' orthodox Christian," something which seems to influence his conservative politics. His homosexuality, and marriage to American financier Matt Danzeisen, seem to many go against that grain. But paradox is not unusual for Thiel.

More recently, he has become preoccupied with the concept of the antichrist, touring with a series of lectures all over the world during the last few years. Rather than the figure depicted in the Bible, Thiel sees this as someone, or some group, who will deliver the apocalypse "by playing on our fears of technology and seducing us into decadence with the antichrist's slogan: Peace and safety."

Among those who have been, somewhat vaguely, cast in the role of soldiers of the antichrist have been environmental activist Greta Thunberg, whom he sees as a "Luddite who wants to stop all science," or governments that seek to regulate AI. He accused Pope Leo XIV of "working for the Chinese communists" in July after the pontiff warned about the "risk of dehumanization" by AI.

Despite his deep association with tech, Thiel also benefits from his relationships with powerful people, Musk, Trump, and Vance among them.

"I've built some great friendships over the years with people I've worked with," Thiel told the Washington Post in 2014. "And I think that's a really important part of what enables one to be successful in the long run in our society."

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Using Vance to future-proof his interests?

Many observers think that Thiel may be using his relationship with Vance to help protect himself and his business interests in the future, with the vice presidentconsidered the most likely Republican to succeed Trump.

The pair met back in 2011 when Thiel gave a talk at Yale Law School. Vance, whose religious beliefs and politics have since shifted, wrote in Christian magazine The Lamp that Thiel "defied the social template I had constructed — that dumb people were Christians and smart ones atheists."

Thiel then reportedly became a mentor figure for Vance, before smoothing the relationship between Vance and Trump as Vance U-turned from previous opposition to the president to join his 2024 ticket. Most notably though, Thiel donated $15 million to Vance's Senate campaign in 2022, the largest amount ever donated to a single US Senate candidate.

The recent calls to slow the pace of AI, made in part by CEOs in similar positions to Thiel, may end up having an impact on Thiel's business interests. But his distinct character and connections have so far kept him a step ahead.