Founded in 2005 in San Francisco by PayPal alumni Peter Thiel, Ken Howery and Luke Nosek, joined later by Sean Parker. The firm positioned itself against conventional VC with its manifesto "What Happened to the Future?", lamenting that "we wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters".
Contrarian, founder-aligned, multi-stage; concentrated bets on hard, often unfashionable technology and a stated policy of never voting against founders.
Aerospace and defense, AI, biotech, crypto, frontier deeptech
SpaceX, Palantir, Facebook, Stripe, Anduril, Airbnb, Neuralink
Facebook IPO (Thiel was its first outside investor), Palantir direct listing, Airbnb IPO
The firm claims it has never removed a founder from a company it backed, a core promise in its founding manifesto.
| Company | Rounds | Invested |
|---|---|---|
| Anthropic AI | 1 round, 1 led | $30B |
| Stripe Fintech | 2 rounds | $13B |
| Ramp Fintech | 9 rounds, 5 led | $3.1B |
| Anduril deeptech | 2 rounds, 1 led | $3B |
| Crusoe Energy | 2 rounds, 1 led | $2B |
| Trade Republic Fintech | 1 round | $900M |
| Kavak Marketplace | 1 round | $700M |
| The Boring Company Mobility | 1 round | $675M |
| Cognition DevTools | 1 round, 1 led | $500M |
| Rippling HR Tech | 2 rounds | $450M |
| Cognition AI DevTools | 1 round, 1 led | $400M |
| Hermeus Hardware | 1 round | $350M |
| Neuralink DeepTech | 1 round, 1 led | $323M |
| Radiant Nuclear Energy | 1 round | $300M |
| Workrise HR Tech | 1 round | $300M |
| Fractile Hardware | 1 round, 1 led | $220M |
| Northwood SpaceTech | 1 round | $100M |
| Stord Logistics | 1 round | $90M |
| Varda Space SpaceTech | 1 round | $90M |
| Sentient Labs Web3 | 1 round, 1 led | $85M |
| Sundae PropTech | 1 round | $80M |
| Nominal SaaS B2B | 1 round, 1 led | $80M |
| PortalOne Gaming | 2 rounds | $75M |
| Freeform Hardware | 1 round | $67M |
| Tibber Energy | 1 round | $65M |
| Built Robotics Robotics | 1 round | $64M |
| Endurance Energy Energy | 1 round, 1 led | $54M |
| Poetic AI | 1 round | $50M |
| Inworld AI AI | 1 round | $50M |
| Mosaic Building Group PropTech | 1 round | $44M |
| Huspy PropTech | 1 round | $37M |
| Giraffe360 PropTech | 2 rounds, 2 led | $32M |
| Even Healthcare Healthtech | 1 round | $30M |
| Avalanche Energy Energy | 1 round | $29M |
| withco PropTech | 1 round | $28M |
| Hoxton Farms FoodTech | 2 rounds, 1 led | $25M |
| Mosaic SaaS B2B | 1 round, 1 led | $25M |
| Mendaera Healthtech | 1 round | $24M |
| Campus EdTech | 1 round, 1 led | $23M |
| Ondo Web3 | 1 round, 1 led | $20M |
| Inventa Marketplace | 1 round | $20M |
| Superplastic Media | 1 round | $20M |
| Stenon AgriTech | 1 round, 1 led | $20M |
| 9am.health Healthtech | 2 rounds | $19.7M |
| Lula InsurTech | 1 round, 1 led | $18M |
| Settle Fintech | 1 round | $15M |
| Biofire Hardware | 1 round | $7M |
| Even Healthtech | 1 round | $5M |
| AfterHour Fintech | 1 round, 1 led | $4.5M |
| Playbook SaaS B2B | 1 round, 1 led | $4M |
| Alinea Health Healthtech | 1 round, 1 led | $3.9M |
| Contact Media | 1 round | $3.8M |
| Delphi AI | 1 round, 1 led | $2.7M |
| Tactic Fintech | 1 round, 1 led | $2.6M |
| Radar Logistics | 1 round | $0 |
| Stark Robotics | 1 round, 1 led | $0 |