Man-of-many-passports Peter Thiel has been in something of a holding pattern over the past year.
The Californian-based, German-born New Zealand citizen made his initial fortune through PayPal, sold to eBay in 2002 for $US1.5b. Two years later, he became the first outside investor in Facebook, taking a 10.2% stake for $US500,000.
Thiel offloaded a large chunk of his shares with the social network’s 2012 IPO. He sold most of his remaining stock in 2017. All up, his half-million dollar investment netted him a $1.17 billion profit.
The entrepreneur also profited from his early investment in Xero, and has also backed Kiwi point-of-sale software startup Vend, now valued at more than $100m.
Where’s his next big payday coming from?
Through one of his investment companies, Founders Fund, Thiel has been an investor in bitcoin, the virtual currency that more than halved in value over the first half of 2018. The entrepreneur says bitcoin could one day be the online equivalent of gold. But he also freely admits he’s taking a punt. In March, he told the Economic Club in New York there was a “50-80%” chance bitcoin could turn out to be worthless.
For much of the past 12 months, the US business press has also been expecting a Nasdaq IPO for his data mining or “spook software” company, Palantir, whose customers include the CIA, FBI and our own SIS and GCSB (according to reports; the two agencies won’t confirm or deny).
There is little concrete information about Palantir, which is as secret squirrel as its customers.
But if a public listing does go ahead, it could represent the next great leap forward for Thiel’s wealth. For its most recent fund raising round, in 2017, Palantir had a private equity valuation of $US20 billion mark.
In 2013, Forbes reported Thiel owned just over 10% of Palantir. There have been 11 funding rounds since, according to Crunchbase, each potentially diluting his stake (the company has repeatedly declined to publish its share registry).
Palantir’s top management now includes New York-based expatriate Jonty Kelt. While some are concerned about the company’s culture of secrecy, the transplanted Kiwi says working there is “exhilarating.” He calls it a workplace modelled on the philosophies outlined in Thiel’s book Zero to One; a blue print for an always-learning entrepreneurial culture.
According to Vanity Fair, Zero to One was also “compulsory reading” for Donald Trump staffers during the president’s election campaign.
But despite frequently appearing by Trump’s side during the early months of his presidency as an adviser and liaison with Silicon Valley, Thiel has been absent from the White House in 2018.
At a March appearance at the Economic Club in New York, he was downbeat about the president’s track record so far, telling the audience, “Obviously there are all sorts of things that are somewhat disappointing – and at the same time, I don’t know how much one can expect. It’s very hard to get things to work in this country.”
Asked if his libertarian philosophy gelled with Mr Trump’s interventionist policy in areas like immigration and trade, Mr Thiel said he felt many free traders were “too doctrinaire.”
But while Mr Trump has been winding up a trade war with China, Bloomberg notes Mr Thiel has been a frequent visitor there recently. The Rich Lister is tipped to make a series of investments in the country.
Mr Thiel also made a recent visit to New Zealand in December 2017 (earlier the same year, it was revealed the billionaire became a New Zealand citizen in 2011, despite having spent just 12 days in the country).
He was spotted, with an entourage, at the Michael Lett gallery in the Auckland CBD. Academic Max Harris, who made the sighting, told NBR Mr Thiel was viewing an exhibition called The Founder's Paradox, by international expatriate New Zealand artist Simon Denny, which features a likeness of the billionaire – albeit with green skin in the manner of a fantasy character (something that could have been to Mr Thiel’s taste; “Palantir” comes from the name of a “seeing stone” in Lord of the Rings).
In 2011 he bought a four-bedroom Queenstown holiday home known locally as the “Plasma Screen,” due to its big windows, for $4.8m.
But the home suffered a serious fire, causing more than $500,000 in damage. According to the NZ Herald building consents for the repairs filed with the Queenstown Lakes District Council show Thiel took this opportunity to rebuild and repurpose a walk-in closet as a panic room.
Thiel has since bought a 193ha block of former Crown leasehold farmland on the shores of Lake Wanaka for $15.5 million.
Photo: Getty