Peter Thiel: Power, Palantir, and the antichrist

He may not hog the limelight in the same way as Donald Trump , Elon Musk , or many of his other friends and associates, but Peter Thiel has a fair claim to be one of the world's most influential figures — as well as one of its richest.

Born in 1967 in Frankfurt am Main in what was then West Germany, the Thiel family moved to the US when Peter was just a year old. The family also spent six years in South-African occupied Namibia from 1971 to 1977.

Thiel's later rise to prominence came on the back of his tech firms and investments. His first major success was Paypal, a digital payments provider with which Musk was initially involved. Thiel then became the first outside investor in Facebook.

Today he also owns part of Musk's SpaceX, as well as OpenAI, and multiple other companies. Forbes puts his personal wealth at $35.7 billion (€31.1 billion).

But perhaps his most noteworthy company is Palantir. The surveillance, AI, and data-analytics company has won government contracts worth billions to create software for the Pentagon as well as US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The company released a 22-point manifesto in April that critics said bore the imprint of "techno-fascism."

But Thiel could be considered as influential in politics as he is in business, and not just in the US.

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Though several European countries , including the UK, the Netherlands, France, Germany, and Spain are starting to reevaluate or end their governmental and military links with Palantir due to security concerns , the company is deeply embedded in security systems across the globe.