Peter Thiel Just Became Wall Street’s Loudest AI Skeptic—Here’s Why It Matters
Silicon Valley's contrarian kingpin is betting against the AI hype train—and the market's starting to sweat.
### The Thiel Effect: When a Tech Titan Talks, Markets Listen
Peter Thiel's track record reads like a VC crystal ball: PayPal, Facebook, Palantir. Now the billionaire investor is shorting artificial intelligence—calling the sector 'the most crowded trade since crypto's 2021 peak.' Ouch.
### Bearish Bets and Burning Questions
While Nvidia soars and startups burn through $50M seed rounds, Thiel's quietly accumulating puts on AI infrastructure plays. His thesis? 'Generative AI is just spreadsheet 2.0—useful, but not $10T useful.'
### The Cynic's Take
Of course, this comes from the man who made billions bankrolling data-mining empires. Maybe he's just clearing the field before his next fund's AI plays. Classic Thiel.
A look into Peter’s rewired portfolio
Peter’s portfolio has always been weirdly fascinating. Since the 90s, the guy has loaded up on tech, crypto, recently healthcare, and almost nothing from Europe, which is quite odd for a man who has been on Wall Street this long.
He was early in Facebook, early in Palantir, early in Bitcoin and Ethereum, early in crazy national-security startups no one had ever heard of until they showed up in congressional hearings. He was never the “buy the S&P” type. He puts his money where disruption happens, or where he thinks civilization needs pressure points.
As of press time, Palantir is 77.86% of Peter’s entire portfolio, worth $17.459 billion across 100,335,000 shares. The second-largest holding is Airbnb, worth $3.24 billion at 14.45%, followed by Affirm at $1.275 billion with 5.69%.
After that comes healthcare for Peter. He holds Oscar Health ( worth$299.834 million), AbCellera ($52.99 million), BlackSky ($30.713 million), Invivyd ($26.418 million), Chemomab ($15.05 million), a tiny slice of Meta ($8.467 million), and Fractyl Health ($8.079 million).
He built Founders Fund in 2005 with Sean Parker, Ken Howery, and Luke Nosek. Later, they pumped money into hypersensitive national-security firms like Palantir, Anduril, and General Matter. They even have a plan to bring ultraviolet lithography production onshore. Inside his circle, the fund is literally nicknamed “the Precious.”
Pater has put cash into everything from Airbnb, Spotify, Quora, Nanotronics, Stripe, SpaceX, PsiQuantum, Rigetti, Bullish Global, and ResearchGate. In 2017, Founders Fund threw $15–20 million into Bitcoin, and by early 2018, those holdings had climbed into the hundreds of millions. He also backed Clearview AI, which made headlines for reasons everyone remembers.
Since 2024, Founders Fund has incubated Valinor Enterprises, invested $85 million into SentientAGI to challenge OpenAI and Perplexity, and funded Impulse Space, Ramp, and Crusoe. In 2025, they added Erebor, EnduroSat, Varda, and Hadrian. The man has been betting on everything from satellites to quantum computing to space medicine.
Thiel seemingly sides with Altman against Elon Musk with Nvidia somehow a part of it
The other force shaping this whole thing is the increasingly interesting Sam Altman. As you may know, Sammy and Elon Musk have been snapping at each other for years. They co-founded OpenAI in 2015, but Elon had to leave in 2018, and they’ve been throwing shots ever since.
OpenAI and xAI compete directly now. Sam wants OpenAI public in 2027, and Wall Street expects the IPO to be huge. In the meantime, Sam likes to rage bait Elon on his own platform X, with posts that seem purposefully aimed to enact a reaction out of Elon completely unprovoked.
Meanwhile, Sam and Peter get along pretty well. Sam has called him a mentor multiple times and has received “advice” from him on how to run OpenAI since as far back as 2017.
Elon and Peter, on the other hand, have quite a messy history. They worked together at PayPal, but Peter and his allies pushed Elon out while he was on his honeymoon. One source said Elon sees Peter as “a sociopath.” Peter sees Elon as “a fraud.” Elon never trusted him again after that.
An investor who has attended their shareholder events WOULD tell you their personalities never matched. See Elon is loud and impulsive, while Peter is quiet and calculated. Basically, Elon bets the house and Peter plays defense.
Peter’s exit followed SoftBank’s massive offload and came at a point when Michael Burry was taking huge put positions against Nvidia and Palantir.
James Anderson flat-out said Nvidia’s proposed $100 billion financing idea for OpenAI was “disconcerting.”
As surprising as it may be also, Jensen Huang is a part of this too. The Nvidia CEO has been cosying up to Elon in public, something he only does with people he is really close with (there have been very few).
Jensen and Elon now HYPE each other on X, speak kindly about each other in interviews, and have mentioned each other in at least 2 earnings calls this year.
The author of this article believes that what we’re seeing is two alliances forming. On one side, Peter and Sam. On the other, Jensen and Elon.
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