One of Facebook’s first investors, Peter Thiel, will retire from the board of directors of the company, which is now called Meta, in May. Thiel has been associated with Mark Zuckerberg’s company since 2005 as an early investor, but wants to focus more on political goals and is therefore not running for re-election in May.
Thiel, who earned his billions by founding payment company PayPal and data company Palantir and successful investments in Facebook, among others, has been politically active for several years. He is seen as an influential conservative and would like to work for Trump’s political agenda during the midterm elections later this year, according to an anonymous source who spoke to Bloomberg news agency.
According to the anonymous source, Thiel would not want Facebook or parent company Meta to be hindered by this. In particular, he would target a number of Republican candidates for the Senate, such as Blake Masters of Arizona and JD Vance of Ohio. Both candidates are known as pro-Trump. Thiel helped Trump become president in 2016 by donating money to his campaign and by giving a speech at the Republican Party’s national convention that year.
Big influence on Zuckerberg
Thiel became involved with Facebook early, when it was only a social medium for students at American universities. The billionaire is said to have had a major influence on the young founder Zuckerberg, among other things by pushing for explosive user growth. Even later, Thiel Zuckerberg often gave advice. For example, Thiel would be the one who made Zuckerberg decide in 2020 not to have political ads on Facebook fact-checked.
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