RawStory
Billionaire Peter Thiel, one of the most powerful men in Silicon Valley and its most prominent conservative, plans to move his home and personal investment firm to Los Angeles because he's disaffected with what he sees as the left-leaning politics of the San Francisco Bay Area, a person familiar with his plans said Thursday.
Thiel, 50, was a co-founder of PayPal Inc. and an early investor in Facebook Inc. — where he still sits on the board — and he has helped finance several other tech startups.
He's also a controversial figure in Silicon Valley because of his support of President Trump and other conservative causes.
He made a $1.25-million donation to help elect Trump and spoke on Trump's behalf during the Republican National Convention in 2016. His support of the president drew heavy criticism from his tech-industry peers, in particular within Facebook's ranks.
Thiel this year plans to permanently relocate his residence to his home in Hollywood, and he plans to move his Thiel Capital and Thiel Foundation organizations to a new headquarters in Los Angeles, according to a person familiar with his plans who was not authorized to publicly discuss them.
Another of his firms, the venture capital firm Founders Fund, will remain in San Francisco, the person said.
Thiel — whose net worth is $2.5 billion, according to Forbes — also has discussed with people close to him the possibility of resigning from Facebook's board.
The plans were first reported Thursday by the Wall Street Journal. Thiel Capital spokesman Jeremiah Hall declined to comment.
Thiel also funded a massive libel lawsuit on behalf of former wrestling star Hulk Hogan that shut down the website Gawker, years after Gawker disclosed that Thiel is gay. A Florida jury awarded $140 million to Hogan in 2016; the suit later was settled for $31 million.
Thiel, an avowed libertarian, has made no apologies for his support of Trump. He said in 2016 that he was surprised by what he called a "visceral reaction" in socially liberal Silicon Valley to his support of the president.
More recently, Thiel has said the Bay Area tech industry has become increasingly intolerant of conservative political views. "Silicon Valley is a one-party state," he said in January during an appearance at Stanford University.
Southern California is a bastion of liberalism and Democratic support too, but it is also where some of the bigger names in conservative media — such as the Drudge Report, Breitbart News and the Daily Wire — got their start. Plus, Trump's Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, senior advisor Stephen Miller and former chief strategist Stephen K. Bannon have backgrounds in Hollywood.
In addition to PayPal and Facebook, Thiel made early investments in Elon Musk's rocket maker Space Exploration Technologies Inc., or SpaceX, in 2008. He also helped launch Palo Alto software company Palantir Technologies Inc., which makes powerful data-analytics software used by military and intelligence agencies as well as commercial companies.
According to the person familiar with his thinking, Thiel's interest in moving to Los Angeles also stems from his view that the region's technology efforts are expanding, as illustrated by Hawthorne-based SpaceX and Snapchat maker Snap Inc., which is based in Venice.
Thiel, who earned an undergraduate degree and a law degree from Stanford University, also is among those who have questioned whether everyone with interests in high-tech inventions and entrepreneurship needs an expensive college education.
To that end, his Thiel Foundation offers a fellowship to young people who skip or drop out of college, offering $100,000 grants so they can pursue their ideas and business plans.
Don't let the door hit you on your way out, scumbag!
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