Biography
Peter Thiel is a German-American entrepreneur and venture capitalist who co-founded PayPal in 1998 with Max Levchin and Luke Nosek, serving as its chief executive until the company was sold to eBay in 2002 for roughly $1.5 billion. He became Facebook's first outside investor in 2004, acquiring a 10.2% stake for $500,000, and in 2005 he launched the venture firm Founders Fund alongside PayPal alumni Ken Howery and Luke Nosek. Thiel is a central figure in the so-called PayPal Mafia, a network of former PayPal employees and founders who went on to build and fund many influential technology companies.
Thiel is counted among Reddit's early individual investors. In Reddit's September 2014 Series B round, which raised $50 million at a roughly $500 million valuation, Thiel participated alongside institutional backers such as Andreessen Horowitz and Sequoia Capital and led by Y Combinator's Sam Altman. The round also drew other notable individual participants, including Ron Conway, Jared Leto, and the entertainer Calvin Broadus Jr. (Snoop Dogg), and carried an unusual condition that investors return 10% of their stake to the Reddit community.
Thiel's backing reflects the strong support Reddit received from high-profile Silicon Valley investors in the years after it was spun out from Condé Nast's parent company in 2011 and reincorporated as an independent entity able to raise outside capital. His participation, alongside other prominent venture and angel investors, helped fund Reddit's growth during a formative period as it expanded its user base and began building toward a sustainable business.
Reddit went public on the New York Stock Exchange in March 2024 under the ticker RDDT, pricing its IPO at $34 per share, which rewarded investors who had backed the company in its earlier rounds. Thiel is frequently cited in coverage of Reddit's investor base, often grouped with figures such as Marc Andreessen, and his involvement underscores how Reddit's rise was tied to the broader Silicon Valley financing network. Through Founders Fund and his personal investments, Thiel has remained one of the most recognizable and influential investors of the modern technology era.