11-18-2025, 10:26 AM
Now that Vance is in the national spotlight, it’s worth looking at the long, very public connection between JD Vance (born James Donald Hamel) and Peter Thiel, because their relationship didn’t start in politics — it goes all the way back to Yale and has continued in business, ideology, and campaign financing ever since. Whatever anyone thinks of either guy, there’s no denying the two paths have been intertwined for over a decade.
Vance first crossed paths with Thiel while he was at Yale Law School. Vance has actually said that a talk Thiel gave there was “the most significant moment” of his time at Yale. After that point, you start seeing the relationship take real shape: Vance moves into the venture capital world and ends up working at Mithril Capital, a firm Thiel co-founded. He wasn’t a major operator there, but it put him inside Thiel’s orbit.
Later, when Vance created his own VC fund, Narya Capital, Thiel showed up again — this time as one of the key early backers. So by the time Vance shifted from the tech/VC world into politics, the connection was already well established. That’s what makes the next part less surprising: when Vance launched his 2022 Senate run, Thiel poured $15 million into a Super PAC supporting him. That’s one of the largest single-candidate contributions Thiel has ever made. On top of the money, Thiel also helped bring in other tech donors and hosted fundraising events where Vance was the centerpiece.
There’s also the ideological angle people like to bring up. Vance has openly referenced writers like Curtis Yarvin — one of the main thinkers behind the “Dark Enlightenment” — and Thiel has long had ties to the rationalist/NRx-adjacent tech circles that orbit the same ideas. It doesn’t necessarily mean they share identical views, but it’s clearly part of the same intellectual ecosystem. At minimum, they move in overlapping networks that blend tech futurism, anti-institutionalism, and a belief that elites can (or should) steer society.
So from Yale → VC backing → career mentorship → major donor support → shared intellectual circles → all the way to national politics today, the Vance–Thiel connection is a straight line. None of this is speculation; it’s all openly reported and documented. Whether people see that as good, bad, or irrelevant depends entirely on their perspective, but it’s definitely a relationship worth understanding if you’re trying to make sense of how Vance got here and who’s been helping guide his trajectory from the beginning.
Vance first crossed paths with Thiel while he was at Yale Law School. Vance has actually said that a talk Thiel gave there was “the most significant moment” of his time at Yale. After that point, you start seeing the relationship take real shape: Vance moves into the venture capital world and ends up working at Mithril Capital, a firm Thiel co-founded. He wasn’t a major operator there, but it put him inside Thiel’s orbit.
Later, when Vance created his own VC fund, Narya Capital, Thiel showed up again — this time as one of the key early backers. So by the time Vance shifted from the tech/VC world into politics, the connection was already well established. That’s what makes the next part less surprising: when Vance launched his 2022 Senate run, Thiel poured $15 million into a Super PAC supporting him. That’s one of the largest single-candidate contributions Thiel has ever made. On top of the money, Thiel also helped bring in other tech donors and hosted fundraising events where Vance was the centerpiece.
There’s also the ideological angle people like to bring up. Vance has openly referenced writers like Curtis Yarvin — one of the main thinkers behind the “Dark Enlightenment” — and Thiel has long had ties to the rationalist/NRx-adjacent tech circles that orbit the same ideas. It doesn’t necessarily mean they share identical views, but it’s clearly part of the same intellectual ecosystem. At minimum, they move in overlapping networks that blend tech futurism, anti-institutionalism, and a belief that elites can (or should) steer society.
So from Yale → VC backing → career mentorship → major donor support → shared intellectual circles → all the way to national politics today, the Vance–Thiel connection is a straight line. None of this is speculation; it’s all openly reported and documented. Whether people see that as good, bad, or irrelevant depends entirely on their perspective, but it’s definitely a relationship worth understanding if you’re trying to make sense of how Vance got here and who’s been helping guide his trajectory from the beginning.
