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What do Trump’s picks for deputy secretary of Health and Human Services, “AI and crypto czar,” and ambassador to Denmark all have in common?
If you guessed that they are all tech-industry insiders (and men), you’re only partially correct.
A less obvious but important bond linking these techies together is their shared history with Peter Thiel, the reclusive billionaire venture capitalist who famously wrote the first check that funded Facebook.
Thiel’s endorsement of Donald Trump during the 2016 presidential election, and his speech at the Republican National Convention, are considered key factors in Trump’s improbable path to victory. Nine years later, Thiel isn’t a visible part of Trump 2.0—but his fingerprints are everywhere.
Networks are powerful. And Thiel has long been at the center of some of the tech industry’s most influential ones.
There’s the crew that got its start at PayPal, the seminal internetpayments company Thiel cofounded and ran as CEO for several years before it was sold to eBay. The company’s cofounders and early executives, dubbed the “PayPal mafia” by Fortune in 2007, include Roelof Botha, who went on to run venture capital firm Sequoia Capital; Max Levchin, who founded the $18 billion buy-now, pay-later company Affirm; and Elon Musk, the entrepreneur behind space exploration company SpaceX and long-standing chief executive of Tesla.
But that’s just one of Thiel’s networks. There is also the alumni network of the Stanford Review, a student newspaper Thiel started with a colleague while he was an undergraduate at Stanford University, where venture capitalists David Sacks and Joe Lonsdale wrote before going on to work in tech. Thiel’s fellowship program, which incentivizes promising candidates to drop out of universities to pursue bold tech ideas, has spawned Vitalik Buterin, cofounder of the Ethereum blockchain network; Dylan Field, the cofounder and CEO of design software company Figma; and Lucy Guo, who cofounded Scale AI.
These networks have wielded tremendous influence across Silicon Valley for two decades, shaping the ideas, funding, and strategies that underpin some of the most successful companies and innovations. With the Trump–Silicon Valley alliance now a defining aspect of the administration, Thiel’s circle is poised to take its clout to the next level and play an ever bigger role on the world stage.
It was Thiel himself who introduced Trump to his running mate, JD Vance, who had worked at one of Thiel’s venture capital firms. Thiel’s longtime colleague Ken Howery, who worked with Thiel at PayPal and launched the esteemed VC firm Founders Fund with him, was nominated to be the ambassador to Denmark. It was Thiel himself who introduced Trump to his running mate, JD Vance, who had worked at one of Thiel’s venture capital firms. Thiel’s longtime colleague Ken Howery, who worked with Thiel at PayPal and launched the esteemed VC firm Founders Fund with him, was nominated to be the ambassador to Denmark. Sacks, who coauthored a book with Thiel criticizing policies like affirmative action, is Trump’s aforementioned AI and crypto czar. A Thiel protégé who worked at Thiel’s former hedge fund Clarium Capital is now director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, responsible for overseeing Trump’s tech policy agenda. Musk, whose companies Thiel has backed over and over, is one of Trump’s close advisors. Even some of the people working in the Department of Government Efficiency, who have been slicing up various federal agencies, have ties to Thiel.
A conservative libertarian who has supported causes ranging from autonomous floating societies, via the Seasteading Institute, to scientific research via his Breakout Labs initiative (essentially a seed fund for hard science), Thiel took a step back as a donor in the 2024 election cycle. In an interview with Fortune two years ago he said he wasn’t convinced money mattered all that much in presidential politics. It turns out he had something that might be better: connections.
Thiel may not be the face of this administration—but it’s the network he has assembled over his career that’s staffing it.
This article appears in the June/July 2025 issue of Fortune with the headline “Peter Thiel’s deep state: A common thread runs through Trump’s tech team.”
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com
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