Peter Thiel, an early Facebook investor, is stepping down from Meta board

(Image credit: Stephanie Keith/Getty Images)

published 8 February 2022

Billionaire tech investor Peter Thiel is stepping down from the board of Facebook's parent company Meta.

Monday's announcement comes after Meta's stock price dropped 26 percent last Wednesday and the social media giant reported that last quarter, for the first time in its history, it lost daily users.

Thiel was Facebook's first outside investor, and joined the company's board in 2005. Meta said he will remain on the board until the next annual meeting. In a statement, Meta Chairman and CEO Mark Zuckerberg said he was "deeply grateful" for everything Thiel has done for Facebook, "from believing in us when few others would, to teaching me so many lessons about business, economics, and the world."

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Thiel is an enthusiastic supporter of former President Donald Trump, donating to his campaigns and serving as an adviser during his presidency. He now plans on spending the next several months doing what he can to help elect J.D. Vance, a Republican running for Senate in Ohio, and Blake Masters, a Republican running for Senate in Arizona, a person familiar with Thiel's plans told The Wall Street Journal. Masters is president of the Thiel Foundation, while Vance is a partner at a venture capital fund that has invested alongside Thiel.

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Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.

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