Early Facebook Investor Peter Thiel Steps Down From Meta’s Board of Directors
16 years after his early investment in “Facebook.”
Early Facebook investor Peter Thiel has now left Meta‘s board of directors after having joined for 16 years.
As one of the social media giant’s earliest investors, Thiel injected $500,000 USD into the company back in 2005, joining the board at the time and becoming a key advisor for CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Despite his success as a venture capitalist, he’s had a controversial track record after co-founding Paypal, funding a secretive data-mining company working for various government agencies as well as a lawsuit that led to the bankruptcy of Gawker Media.
Most significantly, as an early supporter of Donald Trump, he was present at a 2019 White House dinner where Zuckerberg reportedly “came to an understanding” with Trump’s team that Facebook would not fact-check the president. The New York Times reports that Thiel will now be shifting his focus to “influencing” the November midterm elections while “backing candidates who support the agenda of former President Donald J. Trump.”
“Peter has been a valuable member of our board and I’m deeply grateful for everything he has done for our company — from believing in us when few others would, to teaching me so many lessons about business, economics, and the world,” a statement from Zuckerberg reads. “Peter is truly an original thinker who you can bring your hardest problems and get unique suggestions.”
Elsewhere in tech, the U.S. House of Representatives has passed a bill to fund domestic semiconductor research and production.
