Peter Thiel’s support for Donald Trump in the 2016 U.S. presidential election has not only soured his relationship with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, but convinced the venture capitalist to leave Silicon Valley altogether — and possibly the Facebook board.
One of Facebook’s earliest investors, Thiel has grown disenchanted with the tech haven because of its intolerance towards conservatives, according to a new report published Thursday in the Wall Street Journal.
“Silicon Valley is a one-party state,” Thiel said last month at Stanford University, the Journal noted. “That’s when you get in trouble politically in our society, when you’re all in one side.”
After spending four decades in Northern California, Thiel is relocating his home and investment firms to Los Angeles, according to the Journal. The 50-year-old has a 7,000-square-foot home overlooking the Sunset Strip. The 50 employees that make up Thiel Capital and Thiel Foundation are expected to move to L.A. as well, the paper wrote.
Thiel’s support of President Trump has made him an outcast in left-leaning Silicon Valley, and irritated other members of Facebook’s board, where he’s been a director since 2005. Netflix CEO Reed Hastings told Thiel in 2016 he was showing “catastrophically bad judgment” by throwing his weight behind Trump, The Journal wrote.
The billionaire investor grabbed headlines in 2016 for being the first LGBTQ speaker in the Republican National Convention’s history.
“Every American has a unique identity. I am proud to be gay,” said Thiel on the stage. “I am proud to be a Republican, but most of all I am proud to be an American.”
Thiel and Zuckerberg discussed his position on the Facebook board at the time, according to the Journal, although Zuckerberg didn’t push him to resign. Thiel let Zuckerberg know he didn’t plan on leaving the board.
But that has apparently changed, with Thiel considering leaving the board as he departs from Silicon Valley. An unnamed source told the paper Thiel plans on staying on the board “for now.”