Founders Fund

Peter Thiel launched Founders Fund in early 2005 and recruited his former PayPal colleagues Ken Howery and Luke Nosek; the three wanted to build a venture firm run by former entrepreneurs for entrepreneurs. The firm’s name reflected Thiel’s belief that founders should get more of a stake and a say in their companies, and instead of San Francisco’s Financial District or Silicon Valley’s Sand Hill Road, its office was in the Presidio complex that houses George Lucas’ movie empire.⁠[1][1][1][1]

The partners raised a first fund of $50 million in 2005 from wealthy individuals and their own pockets. By late 2006 the fund had invested in about a dozen companies; it was an investor in the security firms IronPort Systems and CipherTrust, which were later acquired by Cisco and Secure Computing, respectively.⁠[2][1][2]

Sean Parker, an early veteran of Napster, Plaxo, and Facebook, joined in 2006 as the fourth managing partner; he had convinced Founders Fund to invest in Facebook. One early case was Powerset, the natural-language search company founded by Thiel’s university classmate Barney Pell: Founders Fund put $800,000 into its $2 million angel round and then invested more in a $10.5 million round.⁠[1][3][1][1]

Parker devised a new arrangement that let founders sell a small portion of their own shares in a funding round rather than waiting until the company was sold or went public, and Powerset was the first company to adopt it. Howery said this made founders more likely to reject low-ball buyout offers.⁠[1][1][2]

Founders Fund announced that it had raised a $220 million second fund from institutional investors, more than four times the size of the first; unlike the first fund, which drew mainly on individuals, its backers included foundations, universities, and endowments. By then the first fund had invested in 23 companies, including Max Levchin’s Slide.com and David Sacks’ genealogy site Geni, and the two companies already sold had netted tens of millions of dollars.⁠[2][2][2][2][2]

Founders Fund has invested in SpaceX numerous times since 2008, and Luke Nosek has served on SpaceX’s board since July 2008. Brian Singerman, who later became a partner, said he was drawn to the firm precisely because it was considering a “literal moonshot” investment in SpaceX.⁠[4][5][6]

The third fund, Founders Fund III, made its first sale on February 19, 2010. According to an amended SEC Form D filed in July 2010, it had sold about $188 million to 37 investors, and the related persons listed were Peter Thiel, Ken Howery, Luke Nosek, and Sean Parker.⁠[7][7][7][7][7][7][7]

Founders Fund published its manifesto “What Happened To The Future?”, subtitled “We wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters,” setting out areas of interest including aerospace and transportation, biotechnology, advanced machines and software, energy, and the internet.⁠[8][8][8][8][8][8][8]

The manifesto said Founders Fund invests in smart people solving difficult problems, often difficult scientific or engineering problems; criticizing venture firms that remove roughly half of founders as CEO within three years of investing, it said Founders Fund had never removed a single founder. It also said the firm’s partners and employees were collectively the largest investors in its funds, with about 20% of the capital it managed being their own.⁠[9][9][9][9]

Founders Fund announced that its fourth fund had raised $625 million, more than its first three funds combined. The heavily oversubscribed round included many previous backers, and the new fund would continue investing in early- and mid-stage startups in sectors including education, robotics, and the consumer internet. Bruce Gibney, the partner who led the fundraising, said its limited partners understood that extraordinary opportunities existed for venture firms willing to back truly outstanding entrepreneurs pursuing real innovation.⁠[10][10][10][11][10]

According to its SEC Form D, the main vehicle, Founders Fund IV, LP, made its first sale on November 17, 2011, and had sold $500 million to 58 investors. The partners at the time included Thiel, Nosek, Brian Singerman, Lauren Gross, Gibney, and Parker, among others, and about 20% of the new fund was the partners’ own money. With this fund Parker became an “executive general partner” and stepped back from full-time involvement.⁠[12][12][12][13][13][3]

Founders Fund launched a “transparent” term sheet tool, designed by Gibney, that helps founding teams calculate how option pools, dilution, and liquidation preferences affect their returns in different exit scenarios.⁠[14][14]

Gibney left Founders Fund. An early investor in PayPal who had worked at Thiel’s hedge fund Clarium Capital, he had been brought into Founders Fund mainly to help raise its fourth fund.⁠[11][11][11][11]

Founders Fund first invested in Bitcoin in 2014, when it traded below $1,000, and built up the position over the next eight years; by 2022 about two-thirds of its crypto holdings were in Bitcoin, with the rest in related tokens and equity.⁠[4][15][4][4]

Founders Fund announced that it had raised a $1 billion new fund. Spokeswoman Erin Gleason said Parker had been winding down his involvement over the previous few years and, as of the close of fund V, was no longer making investments on behalf of Founders Fund, though he kept his board seats at active portfolio companies including SpotifySpotifySpotify is an audio streaming subscription service offering on-demand music, podcasts, and audiobooks through a free ad-supported service and a paid Premium subscription. Its parent company, Spotify Technology S.A., is incorporated in Luxembourg, has its principal operations in Stockholm, Sweden, and is listed on the New York Stock Exchange (ticker SPOT). It helped move the recorded-music business from buying and owning music to on-demand streaming and is one of the largest audio streaming subscription services by users.Open the full entry; in each of the first three funds, Parker had taken a major operating role at a portfolio company—Causes, Spotify, and Airtime, respectively.⁠[3][3][3][3][3]

The sixth fund closed at $1.3 billion, bringing Founders Fund’s total capital under management to more than $3 billion; it was led by Lauren Gross, Ken Howery, Geoff Lewis, Scott Nolan, Luke Nosek, Brian Singerman, and Peter Thiel. Singerman said a fund of this size would let the firm put more capital behind its strongest entrepreneurs. At the time, Founders Fund’s largest investments to date were Airbnb, Oscar, Palantir Technologies, Stemcentrx, and Stripe.⁠[16][16][16][16][16]

Its SEC Form D shows that Founders Fund VI made its first sale on March 17, 2016, and sold about $1.274 billion to 197 investors.⁠[17][17][17]

As of October 2026, the partners listed on the firm’s website included Peter Thiel, Napoleon Ta, Trae Stephens, Lauren Gross (also chief operating officer), Scott Nolan, John Luttig, Matias Van Thienen, Delian Asparouhov, Amin Mirzadegan, Joey Krug, Sean Liu, and Ryan Beiermeister. Stephens is co-founder and executive chairman of Anduril, Nolan is founder and CEO of the uranium enrichment company General Matter, Asparouhov is president and co-founder of Varda, and Krug was previously co-CIO of Pantera Capital; Michael Solana is chief marketing officer.⁠[18][18][18][18][18][18][18][18][18][18][18][18]

As of October 2026, the companies listed on the firm’s portfolio page included SpaceX, Palantir, Anduril, Stripe, Facebook, Airbnb, Ramp, Neuralink, OpenAI, Cognition, Nubank, Trade Republic, Spotify, Rippling, Affirm, Crusoe, PolymarketPolymarketPolymarket is a prediction market platform founded by Shayne Coplan in 2020, on which users buy and sell shares in the outcomes of political, sports, financial, cultural, and other events, with trading prices regarded as the market’s estimate of the probability that an event will occur. It rose to prominence during the 2024 US election, returned to the US market in 2025 by acquiring a licensed exchange and clearinghouse, and received a major investment from Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), the parent company of the New York Stock Exchange, while facing gambling-regulation and insider-trading scrutiny in US states and several countries.Open the full entry, Figma, Varda, General Matter, PsiQuantum, DeepMindGoogle DeepMindGoogle DeepMind is Google’s artificial intelligence research organization, formed in April 2023 by merging DeepMind, which Google acquired in 2014, with the Brain team from Google Research, and led by CEO Demis Hassabis. It developed AlphaGo, AlphaFold, and the Gemini family of models, and Hassabis and John Jumper received the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for AlphaFold’s protein structure prediction work.Open the full entry, Scale, Flock SafetyFlock SafetyFlock Safety is a public safety technology company headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, United States, founded in 2017 by Garrett Langley and others. Its main business is automatic license plate recognition (ALPR) cameras and a vehicle data network that law enforcement agencies can query across jurisdictions, and it also offers gunshot detection, video, drones, and other products. Its camera network has expanded rapidly in the United States and has drawn controversy over privacy, data sharing, and uses related to immigration enforcement.Open the full entry, Boring CompanyThe Boring CompanyAn American tunneling company founded by Elon Musk that develops Prufrock machines and builds and operates Loop transportation systems.Open the full entry, Oculus, Twilio, Credit Karma, Oscar, Flexport, Asana, Lyft, Wish, Postmates, and ZocDoc, among others.⁠[19][19][19][19][19][19][19][19]

Founders Fund: Official website: https://foundersfund.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[20]