Peter Thiel is best known to many investors as the co-founder of PayPal Holdings (NASDAQ:PYPL) and Palantir Technologies Inc (NYSE:PLTR).

Here's a look at five things investors may be less familiar with when it comes to looking at the life of the famous investor and executive.

First Outside Facebook Investor: Today, social media company Meta Platforms Inc (NASDAQ:META) is valued at $1.3 trillion. Thiel invested $500,000 in the company back in 2004 as the first outside investor. The company's valuation back then was $4.9 million.

Thiel owned 10.2% of the company and held more than 44 million shares when the company held its IPO in 2012. Thiel sold 16.8 million shares in the IPO, making $640 million and would later sell the majority of his position.

All told, Thiel turned his $500,000 investment in Facebook into more than $1 billion, as reported by CNN.

"If you hold a gun to my head, I will vote for Trump. I'd rather have him…than Biden," Thiel said earlier this year.

While Thiel donated over $1 million to Trump for the 2016 election and spoke in support of him at the 2016 Republican National Convention, the investor said he would be less involved for the 2024 election. Thiel also ruled out donating to Trump's super PAC (political action committee).

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Relationship with Musk: As a prominent Silicon Valley investor, Thiel's path has crossed with Elon Musk many times. Their most prominent connection over the years was at PayPal.

The merger of Thiel's Confinity and Musk's X became PayPal. Musk served as CEO of the payments company before he was ousted by a group that replaced him with Thiel.

Vitalik Buterin, who is the most famous co-founder of Ethereum, may never have launched the cryptocurrency if it wasn't for a small change made in the popular video game World of Warcraft. This change led to Buterin becoming heavily interested in Bitcoin (CRYPTO: BTC) and would go on to write for Bitcoin Weekly and co-found Bitcoin Magazine.

Buterin dropped out of university to focus on cryptocurrency and later obtained a $100,000 grant from the Thiel Foundation, which was created by Thiel.

"I went around the world, explored many crypto projects and finally realized that they were all too concerned about specific applications and not being sufficiently general — hence the birth of Ethereum, which has been taking up my life ever since," Buterin previously said.

While the change in World of Warcraft may have had a bigger impact, it could be theorized that if Buterin didn't get the Thiel Foundation award, Ethereum might not exist in the same capacity today. The fellowship award came after Buterin's idea for Ethereum but before the official launch of the cryptocurrency.

Thiel was also obsessed with author J.R.R. Tolkien, who wrote "The Lord of the Rings." Multiple Thiel-related companies have names that are connected to Tolkien including Mithril Capital (a precious metal found in Middle-earth) and Palantir, named after "seeing stones" in "The Lord of the Rings."

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