Thiel Fellowship

On September 27, 2010, at the end of an interview at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference in San Francisco, Peter Thiel announced a new initiative: grants of up to $100,000 for as many as 20 young people under the age of 20, encouraging them to “stop out of school,” with the aim of finding young people thinking about big things early in life. He argued that college had become far more expensive than when he was in school, leaving many young people with debt after graduating and making it hard for them to focus on creating. Applications were accepted through the end of the year, with those selected starting in 2011.⁠[1][1][1][1][1][1][1][1]

The Thiel Fellowship gives 2011 as its founding year. On May 25, 2011, the program announced its first 24 Thiel Fellows under the name “20 Under 20 Thiel Fellowship.” Selected from more than 400 applicants, all younger than 20, each would receive $100,000 from the Thiel Foundation and mentorship over two years to pursue scientific and technical projects and learn entrepreneurship. Because the number of outstanding candidates exceeded expectations, more than the originally planned 20 were selected; their fields spanned biotech, career development, economics and finance, education, energy, information technology, mobility, robotics, and space.⁠[2][3][3][3][3][3][3][3][3][3][3][3][3][3][3][3][3]

In June 2012, as the program entered its second year, the second class of Fellows was working on areas including nuclear fusion, 3D printing, and biomedical imaging; among them, Dylan Field had stopped out of Brown University and was working with his former classmate Evan Wallace on creative tools. Jim O’Neill, the foundation’s co-founder, said the selection criteria were still intellectual independence and a determination to make something new, and the application kept Thiel’s well-known question, “Tell us something about the world that you think is true that most people think is not true”; there were no plans to scale the fellowship beyond 20 people a year.⁠[4][4][4][4][4][4][4]

In June 2013, 21-year-old Thiel Fellow Dylan Field raised $3.8 million for Figma, the company he founded.⁠[5][5]

In October 2013, former Harvard President Larry Summers said at the Nantucket Project conference that the program used money to “bribe” young people to drop out of college and was “the single most misdirected bit of philanthropy in this decade”; Stanford researcher Vivek Wadhwa also wrote a critique arguing that the Fellows’ projects fell short of expectations that they would change the world. At that point the program had had one successful exit, and the Fellows were working on areas including 3D printing, biomedical imaging, and solar energy.⁠[6][6][6][6][6]

In 2014, University of Waterloo student Vitalik Buterin received a $100,000 grant from the Thiel Fellowship and subsequently left Waterloo to work full-time on Ethereum, which he had proposed in 2013.⁠[7][7]

In the summer of 2014, a new class of 20 Fellows was selected from more than 1,000 applicants, each receiving $100,000 over a two-year term. Of the 20 Fellows interviewed that year, 8 said they might return to college afterward; a program spokesman said at the time that 6 Fellows had gone back to college, out of about 80 Fellows in total, half of whom were still in the program.⁠[8][8][8][8][8][8]

In October 2014, the program clarified to TechCrunch that the Fellowship did not accept applicants older than 20; those older could only attend the Thiel Summit, which connects young people with mentors. At the time, the program awarded 20 fellowships each year.⁠[9][9][9]

In April 2015, OYO Rooms, the Indian budget hotel network founded by Thiel Fellow Ritesh Agarwal, raised $25 million from Lightspeed, Sequoia, and others, the largest funding round for a Thiel Fellow project at that time.⁠[10]

As of October 2026, the Thiel Fellowship provides those selected with $250,000 in total, spread over two years, without taking equity in their companies; Fellows also receive support from the Thiel Foundation’s network of founders, investors, and scientists. Anyone aged 22 or younger without a university degree may apply, and enrolled students who are selected must drop out to accept the grant.⁠[2][11][2][11][11]

The program does not require applicants to have incorporated a company or built a full product, but they must demonstrate meaningful progress toward a concrete goal; Fellows are not limited to software engineers and have also started nonprofits, created consumer products, launched media companies, and built hardware. Applicants are reviewed as individuals, applications are accepted year round, and Fellows do not need to move to San Francisco.⁠[11][11][11][11][11]

Citing figures such as Plato and Margaret Mead, the program argues that college is good at teaching what has already been done but can discourage people from doing something new; it encourages young people to take on big risks rather than big debt, and leaves it to Fellows to decide how to spend their two years.⁠[2][2][2]

The Thiel Foundation, founded by Peter Thiel, supports science, technology, and long-term thinking about the future; its programs include the Thiel Fellowship and Imitatio, a research site on René Girard.⁠[2][12][12][12]

Thiel Fellowship: Official website: https://thielfellowship.org/ (opens in a new window).⁠[2]

Thiel Foundation: Official website: https://www.thielfoundation.org/ (opens in a new window).⁠[12]