Palantir co-founder and chair; financier of the targeting machine and JD Vance
Palantir co-founder and chair · Person
Peter Thiel is the money and ideology behind Palantir. He co-founded it in 2003 with about $30M of his own and has chaired its board ever since; he still holds roughly 3% of the company, worth more than $10B (Motley Fool, August 2026), and Forbes puts his fortune at $37.7B (4 Oct 2026). In January 2024, as Israel pulverised Gaza, Thiel and Karp met Israeli military officials in Tel Aviv, where Palantir held its board meeting 'in solidarity with Israel' and signed a strategic partnership with Israel's Ministry of Defense for 'war-related missions.' Middle East Eye reported in July 2024 that Palantir's capabilities include supplying Israel's military and intelligence agencies "with the data to fire missiles at specific targets in Gaza - be it inside homes or in moving vehicles." Thiel has said he 'defers' to Tel Aviv on foreign policy and called the Israeli army's conduct 'broadly right.' His company also builds ICE's deportation targeting tools, ImmigrationOS and ELITE, and its Maven system was used for US targeting in Israel's war on Iran. His Founders Fund seeded the weapons maker Anduril in 2017 and has since put $1B into it; he was an early backer of the facial-recognition firm Clearview AI. "I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible," he wrote in 2009. He gave Donald Trump's campaign $1.25M in 2016 and bought JD Vance a Senate seat with $15M in 2021, then the most ever given to a single Senate candidate. In 2025 he branded climate activist Greta Thunberg among the 'legionnaires of the Antichrist.'
Peter Thiel co-founded Palantir and has chaired it since 2003; with Karp he met Israeli officials in Tel Aviv in January 2024 when Palantir agreed its war partnership. In 2009 he wrote: 'I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible.'
Sources: Thiel's Palantir, Israel Agree Strategic Partnership for Battle Tech (Bloomberg reprint hosted by Palantir), upi.com
He still holds about 3% of Palantir, worth more than $10B, per the Motley Fool (Aug 2026); Forbes puts his net worth at $37.7B. Vice President JD Vance worked for Thiel's fund Mithril Capital, and Multinationals Observatory documents former Palantir staff placed across the Trump administration.
Sources: The Motley Fool, Forbes, jpost.com
● confirmed by a primary document · ○ reported
"Thiel made $15 million in donations to Vance's SuperPAC, Protect Ohio Values, a staggering amount from a single individual for a Senate race" ... Thiel hired Vance at Mithril Capital
JD Vance ... $53,985 in pro-Israel PAC support in past federal races (2022)
Mr. Thiel is one of our co-founders and has served as the Chairman of our Board of Directors since 2003.
Peter Thiel 58 Co-Founder and Chairman 2003
He launched Palantir in 2003, a big data analysis company, and has been its chairman since then.
a Thursday meeting between Israeli defense officials and Palantir co-founders Peter Thiel and Alex Karp in Tel Aviv
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