Jeffrey Epstein Reportedly Invested $40 Million in a Company Co-Founded by Peter Thiel

Tech billionaire Peter Thiel has spent the last few years gabbing about Jeffrey Epstein—sometimes to fan the flames of conspiracy theory, and, at other points, to tie other well-known tech magnates to the dead pedophile. However, a new report claims that Thiel, himself, had significant financial ties to Epstein prior to the accused sex trafficker’s death in a New York jail cell in 2019.

The New York Times reported on Wednesday that in 2015 and 2016, not long before his death, Epstein invested a substantial sum into a company that Thiel had co-founded. Valar Ventures, a venture capital firm that (like many of Thiel’s other companies) is named after a creature from J.R.R. Tolkein’s mythos, received $40 million from Epstein, according to the report.

The sum that Epstein invested is now reportedly worth close to $170 million, based on a confidential financial analysis from Epstein’s estate and a statement from a Valar spokesman viewed by the New York Times. Epstein’s estate is benefiting from the investment, the Times report states.

During this period, Epstein was reportedly attempting to rehabilitate his image after his 2008 conviction for procuring a child for prostitution. As such, the shady billionaire was known to throw money at technology and science projects, and some have speculated that he was attempting to position himself as a money manager for the tech elite. Many other figures in tech—including Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergei Brin, LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, and Microsoft CEO Bill Gates—have been questioned about their ties to Epstein. In 2023, Elon Musk was also subpoenaed as part of a legal case involving Epstein.

Gizmodo reached out to Valar Ventures and Mr. Thiel through his company Palantir. We will update this story if we receive a response.

Epstein knew a great many powerful and influential people and had business relationships with some of them. That said, the new information about Epstein’s substantial investment in a Thiel company is somewhat amusing, given how much Thiel has discussed Epstein as an abstract figure in the culture war rather than a real flesh-and-blood human that he personally knew. Epstein’s ties to Thiel were previously reported back in 2023.