Wednesday, March 22, 2017

Palantir Founder and Funder Thiel Ready for New Zealand


Founders Fund and Clarium Capital Management's Peter Thiel made billions from Palantir, a company named after a seeing rock. Not long ago Palantir's value was trumpeted at $20 billion.

The company gets an estimated 40 percent of its revenue from government sources who include the FBI, the CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Securities and Exchange Commission, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the military’s Special Operations Command. 
Thiel used his partially publicly funded riches to buy New Zealand citizenship.

The billionaire investor and vocal Trump supporter was able to secure New Zealand citizenship after "categorically" declaring that he has "found no other country that aligns more with my view of the future than New Zealand." 

That was in 2011, the year he was granted citizenship by the New Zealand government even though he did not fulfill the residency requirement and had no immediate plans to live in the South Pacific island nation.
New Zealand served as the movie set for the home of the Lord of the Rings trilogy.

PEU news from January revealed:

Peter Thiel’s Mithril Capital Management has stormed to an $850m final close for its latest fund, it has emerged.

Mithril, named after the silver material stronger than steel mined by dwarves in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, targets businesses which “use technology to solve intractable problems, often in traditional sectors long overdue for innovation."
Note that technology is not being used to reduce decades of growing income disparity or attack the greed of Peter Thiel's PEU peers.   Health care is not the least bit more affordable due to technology.  I'd love to have my health insurance coverage and cost from 2011, the year Thiel became a New Zealander.

Back to Peter.  After making billions from defense contracts Thiel has a man inside the Pentagon to steer business to Palantir and warn when he should flee to New Zealand:

Palanatir Technology’s Justin Mikolay, formerly a chief in-house lobbyist for the company who worked to win over billions of dollars in Army contracts, was quietly appointed to serve as a special assistant in the Office of the Secretary of Defense.

Should Thiel need to move to avoid populism New Zealand awaits.  Until then Thiel has a prime section in the Trump Swamp.

Update 8-18-22:  A local council denied Thiel's application to build an 18 acre series of buildings in their New Zealand community.   His sprawling lodge community will have to go somewhere else.