In this exclusive extract from a new unauthorised biography of the Silicon Valley billionaire, author Max Chafkin describes some of the mogul’s contradictions.
Peter Thiel isn’t the richest tech mogul but he is probably the most influential. His first company, PayPal, pioneered ecommerce. His third company was Palantir, which paved the way for surveillance capitalism. He now heads venture capital firm Founders Fund, which has invested in Airbnb, Stripe, Yammer, Spotify and SpaceX.
He has deep personal relationships with the founders of YouTube, Yelp and LinkedIn, and is still on speaking terms with Elon Musk, who he fired from PayPal in 2000.
