That’s enough to put Thiel comfortably ahead of the Mowbray family, which topped NBR’s 2024 list of wealthy Kiwis on $20.0b.
The Mowbray family overtook Graeme Hart last year ($12.1b) and rank well ahead of the third-placed Todd family ($4.3b).
New Zealand-born technology industry figure Rod Drury was 10th on $1.45b (and would now be neck and neck with Sir Peter Beck following Rocket Lab’s recent stock surge).
NBR has previously included Thiel, who lives in the US, on its list, but did not include him for 2024. Nevertheless, the German-born Thiel has been a New Zealand citizen since 2011.
Thiel, an infrequent visitor, is the owner of a 193-hectare block of farmland on the shores of Lake Wānaka, where he has unsuccessfully sparred with the local council over plans to develop a luxury lodge.
He has previously told podcaster Joe Rogan that he was considering a permanent move here to escape California’s tax laws and talked up our tech scene.
But last week the Herald revealed the billionaire is, in fact, winding down Valar Ventures and Valar NZ, the vehicles for many of his local tech investments.
From Facebook to facial recognition
Former securities lawyer Thiel co-founded PayPal and sold it to eBay in 2002 for US$1.5b.
He then became Facebook’s first outside investor when he acquired a 10.2% stake in the company for US$500,000 in August 2004. He sold most of his shares for more than US$1b in 2012 but retained a small stake and remained on the board until 2022.
Palantir, named after a mystical, all-powerful seeing stone used by the evil wizard Saruman in JRR Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, was founded in 2004 but didn’t hit headlines until Trump’s first term, when its data-mining software was used as a profiling tool by the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE).
The firm’s clients also include the NSA, CIA and FBI, which uses its software to mine mountains of “big data” from electronic surveillance.
Our GCSB and SIS won’t confirm or deny if they are Palantir customers but the company has an office in Wellington and the GCSB has advertised for staff proficient in Palantir’s software. The NZ Defence Force is a customer.
Thiel has progressively sold down his stake in Palantir, which Forbes estimates at 5% today.
He also invests in multiple firms, including facial-recognition start-up Clearview AI (at one point used by the NZ Police), Ramp and, on a smaller scale, New Zealand’s HeartLab, through his Founders Fund.
New York-based Ramp, which manages expenses, corporate cards and accounting automation for businesses, was last valued at US$7.65b in April last year.
The FT says its leap in valuation to US$13b – on the back of Americans sticking more on their cards – puts Ramp among the most highly valued US start-ups outside of a handful of artificial intelligence companies such as OpenAI.
Chris Keall is an Auckland-based member of the Herald’s business team. He joined the Herald in 2018 and is the technology editor and a senior business writer.
