Billionaire investor and PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel will resign from the board of Meta. Thiel is an early investor and close trustee of Facebook CEO; However, he will not participate in the 2022 annual meeting of the company’s shareholders. The company said it will continue to work on the board until its annual meeting.
It is worth noting that Peter has been working on the Facebook Board since 2005. The company has since raised $1 trillion in market capitalization. In 2021, it generated more than $117 billion in revenue. On Wednesday, Facebook released its first-quarter forecast, which cut stocks by 26%. This was the worst drop in the history of the company.
While Peter was praised for investing in Facebook when the entrepreneur was just a college kid on a popular website; The activity was full of controversy. Thiel dumped a significant portion of its shares in its 2012 IPO. After a while, he did not shy away from investing in other startup companies competing with Facebook or using the data in unauthorized ways. Also, his political views caused the most significant unrest. Peter was an active supporter of Donald Trump during the 2016 presidential campaign.
Peter Thiel Investment Journey
It is worth noting that Thiel invested $500,000 in Facebook in 2004; Consequently became the first significant external investor in a rapidly growing social network. Before investing in Facebook, Thiel developed its initial assets as a co-founder of PayPal. He then moved on to investments; First through the hedge fund and then as a venture capitalist. Peter founded the Founders’ Fund in 2005. The firm has supported companies including Airbnb, Stripe, and Affirm. He has also made investments. For example, in 2019, he endorsed a startup called Clearview AI; Which cleans the internet profiles to create a face recognition tool that can be used by law enforcement. Facebook has told the company to stop using the data.
In addition, Peter is the Chairman and Co-Founder of Palantir Technologies. The firm, which went public in 2020, provides software that helped the U.S. government track terrorists. Although Peter has been relatively silent about Trump in recent years, he has continued to support it. He has invested more than $10 million in the PAC, which supports J.D. Vance; Who will vote in the U.S. Senate in Ohio in 2022. In addition to funding Republican campaigns, Thiel has invested in straightening accounts.
