Peter Thiel offers a pair of hundred dollar bills to attendees during an address at an April 2022 conference.Rebecca Blackwell/AP
In 2023, Peter Thiel, the billionaire tech titan and investor, issued a proclamation: He would not make political donations in 2024 to any candidate, including Donald Trump, whom he had backed in 2016.
Now, after sitting out the 2024 election cycle, Thiel is back in the game. He has quietly donated more than $850,000 this year to finance Republican incumbents attempting to retain their party’s control of the House in next year’s midterm elections.
That renewed largesse comes as the stock price of Palantir, the company Thiel founded and still owns much of, soars, with the firm raking in profits from contracts awarded by the Trump administration.
Palantir, which describes itself as a software company that helps clients manage data, has played a supporting role in the administration’s mass deportation efforts. It also is helping implement Trump’s call to create a massive, searchable federal database, reportedly using information from Americans’ tax returns.
Critics, including congressional Democrats, say Thiel’s company may be helping the administration to violate privacy laws and to implement an unprecedented US surveillance state. Republican lawmakers appear uninterested in scrutinizing the company’s work.
Asked about its federal contracting, a Palantir spokesperson replied in an email, “We are delighted to support the US government as our growth reflects growing government AI adoption. Meanwhile, our growth in the private sector still significantly outpaces our government growth (45% vs. 71%).”
A spokesperson for Thiel did not respond to multiple inquiries from Mother Jones seeking comment about his political donations.
Thiel was once a steady source of campaign funds for Republicans, including Sens. Orrin Hatach and Ted Cruz, as well as for libertarian groups and the anti-tax Club for Growth. In 2016, he contributed $1.25 million to Trump’s campaign, earning himself a speaking slot at the Republican convention. And in 2022, he poured $15 million into the Senate campaigns of JD Vance of Ohio and Blake Masters of Arizona. Thiel’s support for Vance, who once worked for Thiel’s venture capital firm, was crucial for launching the vice president’s political career.
Trump’s first term, however, left Thiel disappointed. Thiel, who presents himself as a political theorist, was yearning for a slashing of regulations and demolition of the so-called administrative state. That, he hoped, would foment disruption conducive to the development of a futuristic libertarian techno-state that could deliver flying cars, new forms of food production, and scientific efforts to achieve something approaching immortality. That’s not what happened. (In 2009, he had written, “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible.”)
When Trump campaigned for reelection in 2020, Thiel sat it out. There was no public endorsement from the billionaire, and no contributions, though he did support congressional Republicans that year and in the 2022 midterms. But apart from his funding of Masters and Vance, the donations were relatively modest.
This year, Thiel has returned aggressively, with a focus on helping Republicans preserve their majority in the House. In February, he gave $852,200 to House Speaker Mike Johnson’s political action committee, Grow the Majority. The PAC then distributed those funds to the House GOP campaign arm and to Republicans in competitive districts around the country. Recipients included Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick in Pennsylvania, Don Bacon in Nebraska, Young Kim in California, and Derek Van Orden in Wisconsin.
Thiel’s support this early in the 2026 midterm cycle may augur more to come for Republican lawmakers.
To hear Thiel tell it, his political aims are high-minded—if kind of out there. During a recent interview with New York Times columnist Ross Douthat, he groused that current politics have led to a societal stagnation that impedes technological progress. He decried government regulation. He warned against the rise of a “one-world totalitarian state” that would exploit popular concerns over climate change and nuclear war and choke the development of AI and other technologies. He mused about the threat posed by the coming of a woke “Antichrist”—possibly in the form of environmental activist Greta Thurnberg.
He did not enthuse about Trump. Rather, he described the president like an investment that hadn’t panned out. Thiel said he supported Trump in 2016 hoping the populist candidate would cause a disruption that would bring about technological dynamism. This turned out to be “a preposterous fantasy,” he told Douthat. But he remarked that the populism of Trump 2.0 is “still by far the best option we have.”
Asked whether he had stopped funding politicians, Thiel did not mention his recent support of Republicans. Instead, he replied, “I am schizophrenic on this stuff. I think it’s incredibly important and it’s incredibly toxic.” He indicated that he did not enjoy the criticism he has received after backing conservative candidates.
Thiel chided Elon Musk for having been sucked into political brawls over such common issues as the federal budget. He recounted to Douthat a conversation he had with last year with Mus: “I said: ‘If Trump doesn’t win, I want to just leave the country.’ And then Elon said: ‘There’s nowhere to go.’”
Musk, as Thiel saw it, had lost faith in his hope that populating Mars would save humanity: “In 2024 Elon came to believe that if you went to Mars, the socialist US government, the woke AI would follow you to Mars.”
Here on Earth, Thiel also has more pedestrian interests. In April, Palantir inked a contract to assist ongoing efforts by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement to remove undocumented immigrants by building a platform to track migrants’ movements in real time. That deal helped the company pull in more than $113 million, as of early May, as part of its new and previous federal contracts, according to the New York Times. That figure does not include other contracts Palantir has obtained from the Trump administration including a $795 million deal—which could go as high as $1.3 billion—to provide AI-powered software to the Department of Defense.
These deals have helped Palantir’s stock rise from around $40 a share in November to more than $150 a share on Wednesday.
That’s good news for White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, the influencial architect of Trump’s fanatical immigration policies. He owns $100,000-$250,000 worth of Palantir stock, according to his financial disclosure form, a holding that creates a colossal potential conflict of interest, the Project on Government Oversight reported last month.
If the Democrats manage to recapture either congressional chamber in 2026, they will likely make Washington less hospitable for Palantir. Last month, Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), Rep. Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), and eight other Democrats sent a letter peppering the company with questions about its “enabling and profiting from serious violations of Federal law by helping the Trump Administration compile a database including Americans’ taxpayer data.”
Palantir has issued statements disputing the lawmakers’ letter and the New York Times reporting on its federal contracts. The company contends that its software is supporting US soliders and helping hospitals save lives. “We are committed to America, regardless of which party the American people have voted into office,” the firm said.
But the Democrats’ plans are clear. These legislators asked Palantir to preserve records related to its work for the Trump administration for “future Congressional oversight.”
“Congress will fully investigate and hold accountable Trump Administration officials that violate Americans’ rights, as well as contractors like Palantir that profit from and enable those abuses,” they wrote.
Thiel talks about encouraging political disruption that unleashes AI and allows tech pioneers to run unfettered. But as he bankrolls Republican lawmakers, keeping the Democrats from gaining subpoena power may also be on his mind.
Russ Choma contributed reporting.