Founders Fund

Founders Fund is a San Francisco-based venture capital firm founded in 2005 by Peter Thiel, Ken Howery, and Luke Nosek, all members of the original PayPal founding team and alumni of the so-called PayPal Mafia. The firm invests across seed, Series A, Series B, and growth stages with initial checks from $2 million to $10 million, and manages multiple billion-dollar funds. The firm's founding philosophy was a direct challenge to what Thiel and his co-founders saw as the timidity of conventional venture capital: backing ambitious founders making genuine technological breakthroughs rather than incremental software improvements. SpaceX, Elon Musk's commercial space and rocket company, is the firm's most celebrated investment and is currently valued at approximately $350 billion. Palantir Technologies completed a NYSE direct listing in 2020. Stripe was backed by Founders Fund at an early stage. Airbnb received Founders Fund investment. Beyond its original investments in SpaceX, Palantir, and Stripe, the portfolio includes Anduril Industries, Boom Supersonic, Stemcentrx (acquired by AbbVie for $5.8 billion), and additional deep technology companies.