2 weeks ago
10
Leo Sun, The Motley Fool
Thu, April 16, 2026 astatine 12:30 PM CDT 5 min read
PayPal (NASDAQ: PYPL) and Palantir (NASDAQ: PLTR) mightiness not look to person galore characteristics successful common. PayPal is 1 of the world's largest integer outgo companies, portion Palantir is simply a information mining and AI institution that serves authorities agencies and commercialized customers. Over the past 5 years, PayPal's banal plunged 80% arsenic its maturation cooled -- but Palantir's banal skyrocketed much than 530% arsenic its maturation accelerated.
Yet some companies were co-founded by Peter Thiel, 1 of Silicon Valley's astir salient investors. Let's look backmost astatine Thiel's engagement successful these 2 companies, however overmuch helium profited from those stakes, and what his way grounds mightiness mean for semipermanent investors.
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Peter Thiel, Max Levchin, and Luke Nosek co-founded Fieldlink successful 1998. Fieldlink subsequently became Cofinity, a developer of information bundle for handheld devices, earlier launching its archetypal mentation of PayPal's integer wallet successful 1999.
Thiel invested astir $100,000 successful the archetypal institution earlier it evolved into PayPal, giving him a outgo ground of astir zero. He sold his 3.7% involvement for $55 cardinal aft eBay (NASDAQ: EBAY) acquired PayPal for $1.5 cardinal soon aft its 2002 IPO. After accounting for eBay's 2015 spin-off of PayPal (which gave eBay's investors adjacent shares successful some companies), Thiel's archetypal involvement would beryllium worthy billions of dollars today.
Thiel near a batch of wealth connected the table, but it isn't antithetic for founders to merchantability their stakes successful palmy start-ups aft they spell nationalist oregon get acquired. In fact, nary of PayPal's founders inactive holds a meaningful involvement successful the institution today.
Peter Thiel co-founded Palantir with Stephen Cohen, Joe Lonsdale, Alex Karp, and Nathan Gettings successful 2003. Thiel invested astir $30 cardinal (from his ain pockets and his Founders Capital task superior fund) successful the company.
Before Palantir went nationalist via a nonstop listing successful 2020, Thiel owned 7%-10% of its backstage shares. He sold millions of shares aft Palantir's marketplace debut, but helium inactive holds a 3% involvement and remains the company's chairman. That involvement is worthy much than $10 cardinal today.
Thiel's determination to instrumentality with Palantir portion selling PayPal mightiness suggest he's much assured successful the former's semipermanent maturation potential. However, it could besides mean that Thiel doesn't privation to miss retired connected immoderate monolithic gains, arsenic helium did with PayPal.
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