Like many billionaires, Peter Thiel is already benefiting from Donald Trump’s second presidential win.
His net worth jumped following the election, reaching a record high of $14 billion on Friday, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
The election results were also a win for the venture capitalist on a more personal level.
The vocal conservative and early Trump supporter was instrumental in the rise of vice president-elect JD Vance — and a big reason the Ohio politician was second on the ticket.
Thiel and other Silicon Valley elite called Trump numerous times to implore him to choose Vance as his vice president, hoping that he’d institute startup-friendly policies and cut regulation, The Washington Post reported. He was pivotal in turning Vance, once a never-Trumper, into a MAGA Republican.
The relationship between Thiel, who cofounded PayPal and Palantir, and Vance goes back to at least 2011, when Thiel visited Yale Law School, where Vance was a …