The Info Web

#PayPalMafia

15 entries

People (10)

  • David Sacks David Sacks is a South African-born American entrepreneur and political figure who served as chief operating officer of PayPal, founded Yammer, cohosted the All-In Podcast, and was appointed White House AI and cryptocurrency czar under the second Trump administration.
  • Elon Musk South African-born billionaire who cofounded PayPal and runs SpaceX and Tesla, acquired Twitter, and was reported in 2024 to have been in regular contact with Vladimir Putin since late 2022.
  • Joe Lonsdale Joe Lonsdale is an American technology entrepreneur and investor who cofounded Palantir Technologies as a founding engineer in 2003, founded the venture capital firm 8VC, and has been a central figure in the Thiel-aligned defense-technology investment cluster backing Anduril Industries.
  • Keith Rabois American lawyer and venture capitalist, former PayPal and Square executive, Khosla Ventures and Founders Fund partner, Opendoor co-founder and chairman, Republican donor, and husband of Under Secretary of State Jacob Helberg.
  • Ken Howery PayPal and Founders Fund co-founder who served as Trump's ambassador to Sweden from 2019, gave 1 million dollars to America PAC in June 2024, and became ambassador to Denmark in 2025.
  • Luke Nosek PayPal co-founder, Founders Fund co-founder and Gigafund managing partner, a SpaceX director since July 2008 whose 2026 prospectus lists 32,987,360 shares, 2,381,000 pledged against personal debt.
  • Max Levchin Co-founder with Peter Thiel of Confinity, PayPal's chief technology officer, and founder, chairman and chief executive of the lender Affirm, whose 2020 filing listed Founders Fund among its backers.
  • Peter Thiel Peter Thiel is the German-born investor who cofounded PayPal, Palantir and the Dialog society, founded Founders Fund, funded Curtis Yarvin, and corresponded with Jeffrey Epstein from 2011 to 2019.
  • Reid Hoffman Reid Hoffman is the PayPal executive, LinkedIn cofounder and Greylock partner who co-hosted an August 2015 Palo Alto dinner attended by Jeffrey Epstein and apologized in 2019 for aiding Epstein's image repair.
  • Roelof Botha South African-born actuary and venture capitalist, PayPal chief financial officer at its 2002 offering, Sequoia Capital partner from 2003 and senior steward from 2022 to 2025, and SpaceX director from June 2026.

Organizations (4)

  • Founders Fund Founders Fund is a San Francisco venture capital firm founded in 2005 by Peter Thiel, Ken Howery, and Luke Nosek, whose early investments in Facebook, SpaceX, Airbnb, Stripe, Palantir Technologies, and Anduril Industries made it the financial vehicle of the Thiel commercial network.
  • PayPal Online payments company formed in 2000 by merging Elon Musk's X.com with Peter Thiel and Max Levchin's Confinity, run by Thiel from September 2000, floated in February 2002 and sold to eBay that October.
  • PayPal Mafia The PayPal Mafia is the informal network of founders and early executives of PayPal who, after the company's 2002 sale to eBay for 1.5 billion dollars, dispersed to found or lead the subsequent generation of Silicon Valley companies including YouTube, LinkedIn, Yelp, Palantir Technologies, Founders Fund, Tesla, SpaceX, and the convening network Dialog.
  • Sequoia Capital Menlo Park venture capital firm founded by Don Valentine in 1972, early investor in Apple, Cisco, PayPal, Square and FTX, which separated from its China and India affiliates in 2023 and 2024.

Places (1)

  • Silicon Valley The technology district of the southern San Francisco Bay, in the vault the home ground of the PayPal Mafia, the Thiel network's courtship of the Pentagon and the presidency, and the money behind rationalism, longevity and accelerationism.