Peter Thiel

Peter Thiel co-founded PayPal with Elon Musk and others in 1998 (acquired by eBay for $1.5 billion in 2002), co-founded Palantir Technologies in 2003 (now a publicly traded data analytics company with a market capitalization exceeding $50 billion), was the first outside investor in Facebook in 2004 at a valuation that ultimately produced a return of more than $1 billion, and has been the most consistently counterintuitive and strategically consequential technology venture capitalist of his generation. Born October 11, 1967, in Frankfurt, Germany, to German parents, Thiel grew up in the United States and graduated from Stanford University in 1989 with a degree in philosophy before earning his law degree from Stanford Law School in 1992. He is a libertarian-leaning conservative with a deeply heterodox intellectual orientation who has been among the most vocal critics of establishment consensus across technology, economics, and foreign policy.

Thiel's engagement with Israel is rooted primarily through Palantir, which has deep and sustained ties with the Israeli government and military. Palantir's data analytics platforms are used by Israeli defense and intelligence agencies, and the company has been one of the most significant American technology providers to the Israeli security apparatus. Palantir CEO Alex Karp has been more publicly vocal about this partnership than Thiel himself, but the strategic direction of the company reflects Thiel's conviction that Western technological superiority must be deployed in defense of Western civilization — a framework in which Israel occupies a central role. Thiel has spoken at security forums about the alignment between American and Israeli strategic interests, and his personal investment activities through Founders Fund have included Israeli defense and cybersecurity technology companies.

Thiel's political influence — including his early support for and funding of Donald Trump's 2016 campaign and his backing of J.D. Vance's 2022 Senate race — has given him a track record of identifying candidates who subsequently advanced strongly pro-Israel policies from positions of power. His significance on the Iron 100 reflects less his personal advocacy rhetoric than the leverage his investment decisions and political intelligence have produced. At Rank 29, Thiel is the venture capitalist as geopolitical actor: using capital allocation and political patronage to shape the technology and political landscape that determines Israel's security environment.