Is PayPal still owned by Peter Thiel?

Thiel was CEO when PayPal was acquired by eBay in 2002. It's theoretically possible he still owns some shares today -- he's not required to disclose this because he's no longer a company insider and isn't a beneficial owner. So, investors can't be sure. But it's likely that he doesn't own any shares today.

What is Peter Thiel's annual return?

Thiel used a $2,000 Roth IRA investment in 1999 to build a $5 billion nest egg, yielding an annualized return of 88%.

How much has Peter Thiel invested in SpaceX?

It's unclear how much Peter Thiel has personally invested in SpaceX. His Founders Fund has participated in at least two funding rounds but the total investment was undisclosed.

Peter Thiel's Investment Strategy

How to Invest Like Peter Thiel

By Jon Quast – Updated May 1, 2026 at 1:12 AM EST | Fact-checked by Frank Bass

Key Points

Peter Thiel's net worth is $28.6 billion, ranking him among the top 100 richest globally.
Thiel co-founded PayPal and Palantir, with Palantir now valued at $333 billion.
He focuses on startup investments and holds significant shares in firms like Meta Platforms.

Peter Thiel has an estimated net worth of about $28.6 billion as of May 2026, placing him among the top 100 richest people on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. As an accomplished entrepreneur, investor, and author, Thiel is a public figure whom investors can learn from.

Digital background with $100 bills in front of it. — Image source: Getty Images.

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Who is Peter Thiel?

Peter Thiel is an entrepreneur, investor, and author. His parents immigrated to the U.S. from Germany when he was young. He excelled in math and chess from an early age and was valedictorian of his California public high school's graduating class. At Stanford University, he founded a political publication to promote more independent thought. In 2011, he became a New Zealand citizen, saying that the country aligned with his "view of the future."

Thiel is perhaps most well-known for co-founding PayPal (PYPL -0.57%) after college, and he's sometimes called the "don" of the so-called PayPal Mafia -- the name given to a group of prominent early PayPal insiders. His early success with the financial technology (fintech) pioneer allowed him to later invest in many more start-up businesses and launch new companies, and helped give him more credibility as an author on entrepreneurship.

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NASDAQ: PLTR

Palantir Technologies

Premium Feature

Moneyball Superscore

87/100

Today's Change

(-0.16%) $-0.29

Current Price

$175.96

Key Data Points

Market Cap

$424B

Day's Range

$172.00 - $177.75

52wk Range

$106.37 - $207.52

Volume

12.1M

Avg Vol

39.6M

Gross Margin

84.80%

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Peter Thiel's personal stats

Age: Thiel was born on Oct. 11, 1967.
Source of wealth: Thiel has co-founded multiple unicorn companies and has invested in several successful start-ups.
Marital status: Thiel married Matt Danzeisen in 2017.
Residence: With properties in California, Florida, Washington, D.C., and New Zealand, Thiel can be hard to pin down. But his primary residence is believed to be in Los Angeles.
Education: Thiel graduated from Stanford University.

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Peter Thiel's investment approach

Various investment strategies can be successful, and every investor plays the game according to their own unique style. For example, investor Warren Buffett focuses on mature, profitable companies where he believes competitive advantages can be sustained for the foreseeable future.

By contrast, Peter Thiel approaches investing from the opposite end of the spectrum: He invests in start-ups, usually in the technology sector. For those wanting to learn his style, Thiel outlined many of his investing principles and philosophies in his bestselling book Zero to One.

Thiel starts with a contrarian view of the economy or an industry -- a belief few others share. Then, he looks for a business that's offering a product or service that's an order of magnitude better than the competition. In some instances, there's really no competition at all because the business is venturing into uncharted territory -- territory that happens to coincide with one of Thiel's contrarian views.

Being first or being exponentially better can lead to one business controlling a large percentage of a market, allowing for strong profitability in the company's core competence. From there, a business can use profits to expand into ancillary business opportunities. This is what Thiel finds attractive about this investing style.

Peter Thiel's investments

In addition to the investments made by Founders Fund, Peter Thiel also owns stock in his personal portfolio. A complete list is impossible to compile from publicly available information due to Thiel's various investment vehicles and because he's not always obligated to disclose his positions. Here are some of his top personal stock holdings as of June 2025.

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Source: Securities and Exchange Commission filings. Market caps according to YCharts as of May 1, 2026.
Name	Market Cap	About This Company	Thiel's Stake
Palantir Technologies (NASDAQ:PLTR)	$333 billion	The company's software is used for complex data analytics.	Thiel owns roughly $68.8 million shares directly and indirectly, worth around $10 billion.
AbCellera Biologics (NASDAQ:ABCL)	$1.3 billion	The company uses software to discover and develop novel antibody drugs.	Unclear. He owned more than 14 million shares (currently worth around $48 million) in 2023. But upon resigning from the board of directors in 2024, he's no longer required to file paperwork when buying or selling.
Fractyl Health (NASDAQ:GUTS)	$101.5 million	A healthcare company trying to address the root causes of obesity and diabetes.	Via his Mithril funds, Thiel owned about 6.4 million preferred shares of various classes as of April 2026.

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While it's unclear how many stocks he owns today, Thiel has made many noteworthy investments over the last 20 years.

Thiel's first home run came in 2004 when he invested $500,000 in Facebook, the company now called Meta Platforms (META -1.55%), making him the first big outside investor in the company. This gave him about a 10% ownership stake in the business. When Meta Platforms went public in 2012, Thiel began selling his shares. Over the years, he continued selling shares in multiple transactions, totaling more than $1.1 billion from his initial investment.

In his bio for Founders Fund, Thiel claims to have been an early investor in career networking company LinkedIn. The platform eventually went public and was later acquired by Microsoft (MSFT -0.82%) for $26 billion. It's unclear how much of the company Thiel owned and for how long he held an interest in it. But he clearly identified a multi-billion-dollar opportunity early.

Similarly, Thiel identified the review platform Yelp (YELP -1.38%) in its very early stages and invested. Yelp went public in 2012 and was still worth more than $2 billion as of mid-2025.

Question-and-answer platform Quora is still privately held. But Thiel led a funding round for the company back in 2012 that valued it at $400 million. A 2024 funding round only valued Quora at $500 million. But at its peak, it was also worth more than $1 billion and could be again, especially as its efforts in artificial intelligence (AI) start to pay off.

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More from this investor

Peter Thiel isn't active on social media. However, he occasionally makes guest appearances on podcasts and has appeared on TV, as well as contributing to CNBC.

In 2014, Thiel authored Zero to One, which landed on the New York Times bestseller list. Thiel's book still ranks in the top 10 books on Amazon (AMZN +0.85%) for entrepreneurship.

A great investor

Peter Thiel's investment strategy is clearly working. His successful past investments in small companies have allowed him to increase his net worth at an enormous rate. By imitating his thinking, other investors could identify promising start-up companies, too.

Peter Thiel FAQ

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About the Author

Jon Quast is a contributing writer for The Motley Fool covering consumer goods, technology, and cryptocurrency. Before The Motley Fool, he was a missionary in South America.

TMFJonQuast

@TMFJaguar

Jon Quast has positions in Airbnb. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends AbCellera Biologics, Airbnb, Amazon, Meta Platforms, Microsoft, Palantir Technologies, PayPal, Spotify Technology, and eBay. The Motley Fool recommends the following options: short June 2026 $50 calls on PayPal. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

How to Invest Like Peter Thiel

Key Points

Who is Peter Thiel?

NASDAQ: PLTR

Key Data Points

Peter Thiel's personal stats

Peter Thiel's investment approach

Peter Thiel's investments

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How much has Peter Thiel invested in SpaceX?

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Is PayPal still owned by Peter Thiel?

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What is Peter Thiel's annual return?

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How much has Peter Thiel invested in SpaceX?

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