A few weeks after allegations surfaced in the global media that Jeffrey Epstein forced a teenager to have sexual relations with Prince Andrew, he contacted tech entrepreneur Peter Thiel to say he had two finance ministers and “a bunch of bankers” for him to meet in New York.
“Does my bad press give you pause,” Epstein added in the 2015 message.
“If I was intimidated by bad press, I would not have gotten anywhere in life… But I do hope that you’re holding up well, and that the cycle won’t go much further,” Thiel responded.
Those emails, and hundreds of others between the two, were contained in a cache of Epstein files released by the US Justice Department. While Thiel has said that he met Epstein a “few times”, the correspondence reveals the depth and duration of a relationship that, the emails suggest, was beneficial for both men.
Epstein, whose emails also often contained misspellings and stray punctuation, was persistent in courting Thiel and keen to meet with him as regularly as possible, according to the Epstein files. However, in a November 2017 exchange, he slighted Thiel when discussing who would be the new Treasury secretary in Trump’s new administration.
In an email to former US Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, he said Thiel was “austistic” with “no global sense”.
Some details of their correspondence have been previously reported by the Stanford Daily, Wired and others. But Bloomberg’s review of the emails provides further insights into how Epstein wooed one of Silicon Valley’s biggest names, a billionaire contrarian who now has deep connections in the Trump administration.
A representative for Thiel declined to comment, other than to say he never visited Epstein’s island in the US Virgin Islands. In a 2024 podcast with Joe Rogan, Thiel said he met Epstein “a few times” after he was described as “one of the smartest tax people in the world” by fellow Silicon Valley investor Reid Hoffman. Thiel said he assumed Epstein didn’t go to jail for that long because the crimes were not as serious as had been alleged.
Thiel told Rogan his desire to meet Epstein was a “moral weakness,” adding that he thought Hoffman “always had good judgment in people.” Hoffman told Bloomberg recently that he had been cleared of wrongdoing by the FBI and welcomed scrutiny into Epstein’s connections “to expose those who committed crimes.” He didn’t respond to a request for comment for this story.
Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, the former Prince Andrew who was stripped of his royal titles last year, has denied the allegations.
Unlike some of the other prominent men who Epstein courted, Thiel didn’t discuss sexual matters with him, according to the emails reviewed by Bloomberg. In one exception, Thiel suggested that sexual reproduction was a “deceptive strategy” — part of a broader conversation about the role of deception in evolution.
Epstein and Thiel also communicated on the telephone and on the encrypted messaging app Signal, the emails indicate, but the details of those communications aren’t entirely known.
Epstein served about 13 months in custody in Florida starting in 2008 for procuring minors for prostitution and soliciting prostitution. In 2019, he was charged with sex trafficking of minors but he was found dead in a New York jail cell before he could stand trial. Authorities concluded he died by suicide.
The full details of when and where Thiel and Epstein met aren’t entirely clear. On at least 10 occasions, Thiel was invited to dine with Epstein, either at his Manhattan townhouse or elsewhere, though the emails are less clear on how often he may have turned up. They also discussed Thiel visiting Epstein’s homes in the US Virgin Islands and New Mexico. Thiel didn’t visit Epstein’s island, his spokesperson said. In the emails, Thiel said it was too hot in the Caribbean in May.
Epstein attended a dinner in Palo Alto hosted by Thiel and Hoffman in 2015 for a group of Silicon Valley dignitaries, according to an email from Epstein’s assistant, and he had lunch at one of Thiel’s offices in California.
Their digital exchanges began in 2014, roughly five years after Epstein was released from custody in Florida, and they lasted more than four years, according to the emails reviewed by Bloomberg. The exchanges ended in 2019, months before Epstein was arrested and sent back to jail.
The correspondence ebbed and flowed. They offered to introduce each other to high-profile contacts and discussed everything from cryptocurrency and magic mushrooms to Brexit and mosquitoes. On the latter point, Thiel said he disdains the insects.
In trying to convince Thiel to visit him in the Caribbean, Epstein indicated that he sprayed for the bugs. “I fog the island.,” he wrote, adding that he hadn’t seen a “mosquite in years.”
They often traded ways to expand their wealth. In a 2015 email, Epstein advised Thiel that multimillion-dollar planes were a good way to write off taxes — and sent along an advertisement for a $12 million jet.
In another instance, Thiel advised Epstein on buying private Palantir Technologies Inc. shares — during a period of internal turmoil at the company — and suggested that he should wait to possibly get “an ever better price.”
“I’m being offered a chunk of palentir at 5.5 thoughts?,” Epstein wrote on Oct. 14, 2016 to Thiel, who was the co-founder, chairman and majority shareholder of Palantir at the time.
Thiel replied, “$5.50/share? That’s somewhat below ‘market.’” He then added, “I suspect you will be able to get an even better price sometime in the next 12 months.”
Palantir was then a private company, and BuzzFeed News later reported that it had been struggling to maintain trophy clients. It isn’t clear whether Epstein used the information in a trade. Palantir didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Another recommendation from Thiel paid off for Epstein.
In October 2014, Thiel suggested that Epstein put “$10-20MM” into Valar Ventures, a fund focused on early-stage investments that the tech entrepreneur founded. “I’d be happy to discuss more when I see you in person,” Thiel wrote. Epstein would put $40 million into two funds owned by Valar Ventures, the fund confirmed last year to the New York Times. That investment today is worth nearly $170 million, the largest asset still held by Epstein’s estate, according to the article.
Representatives for Valar didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Epstein described himself as a “major investor with Thiel” in trying to convince a cryptocurrency startup to let him invest anonymously, and encouraged them to reach out to Thiel to vouch for him, according to July 2018 emails.
A member of the “PayPal Mafia,” an early Facebook investor and a co-founder of Palantir, Thiel has forged a profile as the Silicon Valley contrarian. He has advocated Libertarian political views, was an early supporter of Donald Trump, endorsed creating autonomous floating communities in international waters and signed up to have his body frozen after he dies in the hopes that it can be brought back sometime in the future.
More recently, Thiel has given extensive talks on the Antichrist. His ties to the Trump administration include White House Special Advisor for AI and Crypto David Sacks, a colleague of Thiel’s at PayPal, and Vice President JD Vance, who joined Mithril Capital Management, a venture fund backed by Thiel, after graduating from Yale Law School.
Epstein amassed at least some of his wealth by running a money management firm that catered to affluent clients. In 2008, he pleaded guilty to a pair of state charges, including procuring a minor to engage in prostitution.
That same year, Epstein identified Thiel as someone to bring into his inner circle, according to the emails. At that time, Thiel was giving lectures on the singularity, a theoretical scenario in which technological growth evolves past human control. A friend of Epstein’s emailed him, saying he had seen Thiel speak at a Google event on singularity and “didn’t think he knew what he was talking about.” Nonetheless, Epstein wanted to meet him, according to the emails.
The emails indicate Epstein hoped to meet Thiel in 2011 via a connection from Ian Osborne, a former political adviser who parlayed connections into influence in the tech world and who, according to the Justice Department cache, discussed brokering meetings between Epstein and other Silicon Valley entrepreneurs. Osborne declined to comment. A person close to Osborne said the meeting never took place.
Thiel would later say on Rogan’s podcast that he met Epstein in 2014, thanks to Hoffman.
In the emails, Epstein regularly listed Thiel under “people to see” in his monthly schedules, and his assistant set reminders to “call Peter Thiel.” The DOJ files suggest the correspondence between the two was sometimes as often as weekly but slowed toward the end of 2018. Epstein used Thiel to his advantage when inviting others into his circle, dangling him as a connection he could offer, the emails indicate.
He also offered Thiel connections to politicians and diplomats. That included Bill Burns, who was under secretary of state at the time and would later become CIA director, Anil Ambani, Indian businessman, politician and heir of India’s wealthiest family, and Ehud Barak, former Israeli prime minister.
Burns has since said he “deeply regrets” ever meeting with Epstein. A spokesperson for Burns said he didn’t meet Thiel through Epstein and that he “did not know anything about him” before two meetings with Epstein more than a decade ago as he was preparing to leave government.
It’s unclear whether Ambani and Thiel met.
A representative for Ambani declined to comment.
Barak previously apologised for their relationship in an interview with Israeli media earlier this year, saying he regretted knowing Epstein.
Epstein’s accountant, Richard Kahn, also took an interest in Thiel, the emails indicate.
Kahn requested that Epstein’s personal assistant, Lesley Groff, alert him when Epstein met with Thiel. He would exchange news articles with Epstein over the next few years, about Thiel’s allegiance to Trump, his political views and his bid to buy Gawker, the news and gossip site he helped bankrupt by secretly funding a lawsuit.
Aside from investing in Thiel’s Valar Ventures fund, Epstein sought Thiel’s advice on buying Spotify shares and inquired about whether Facebook, of which Thiel was an early investor and a board member from 2005 to 2022, had considered the tax issues for its ultimately ill-fated digital currency.
In one extended exchange, Thiel and Epstein discussed the role of “deception” in evolution, the idea being that animal and human predators imitate the appearance or behavior of something else to gain advantages in survival or mating.
Reproduction, Thiel suggested, was possibly a “deceptive strategy.” “Making copies of oneself makes the odds better = that the predator gets only a copy and not you,” Thiel wrote.
Epstein responded that deception was a tool “to protect or conquer free energy.”
“In essence if the predator can read your algorithm, you are easy food,” he wrote, later adding, “Deceptive self confidence is also a winning game strategy.”
