PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel quits Meta's board; shifts focus to US midterm elections

Peter Thiel, the co-founder of PayPal and Palantir Technologies, on Monday, has stepped down from the board of directors of Facebook parent company Meta nearly after 17 years. According to The Guardian, Thiel has decided to quit the post with an aim to support the midterm election campaign of Donald Trump's allies Notably, the Silicon Valley billionaire and adviser to former President Trump, who joined the social media giant in 2005, is considered as the major supporter of Trump and reportedly donated $10m each to the Senate campaigns of Blake Masters, who is running for a seat in Arizona, and JD Vance, who is running in Ohio.

Also, the report said since its inception in Facebook, he has been considered as the most controversial board member due to his conservative ideology. As per The Guardian, it was Thiel who provided a shield to the controversial posts of the former US President during the Presidential election held in 2020. Facebook did not take down Trump’s posts despite he violated its community standards multiple times. Meanwhile, Meta, in a statement released on Monday said that Thiel will stay on until Meta’s next shareholder meeting later this year, where he will not stand for reelection.

"Peter is truly an original thinker who you can bring your hardest problems and get unique suggestions. He has served on our board for almost two decades, and we’ve always known that at some point he would devote his time to other interests," Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a statement.

Peter Thiel called Zuckerberg one of the "great entrepreneurs"

Reacting to Zuckerberg statement, Thiel called Zuckerberg one of the "great entrepreneurs of our time” and applauded his “brilliance, power and conscientiousness”. It is worth mentioning the 54-year-old German-American billionaire entrepreneur joined Facebook as a board member in 2005. Notably, he joined a year after the social media giant was founded and seven years before it made its debut on Wall Street. Peter Thiel has been an increasingly polarising figure among the company’s directors due to his conservative politic according to a report by the Associated Press. 

Image: AP