| Hi all. It's Lizette. For most people, 2020 will go down as a staggeringly dreadful year—including a pandemic, police brutality, protests and wildfires. But in tech, a few people made a fortune. One of them was Peter Thiel. The billionaire investor and sometime politico saw his wealth surge an estimated 113% this year through Dec. 22, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index—exceeding $7 billion. Thiel has long had a knack for being ahead of the curve on big trends. He co-founded digital payments company PayPal, backed Facebook Inc. and was an outspoken supporter of Donald Trump when his candidacy seemed like a long shot. This year, Thiel's timing proved especially lucrative. In the early days of the pandemic, Thiel's data-mining company Palantir Technologies Inc. secured more than 100 deals, including contracts to help governments and corporations combat Covid-19. When Palantir finally staged its long-awaited public listing in September, the company's market value climbed from $15.7 billion to $49 billion as of Tuesday. Today, in addition to Palantir's more controversial government work, the U.S. is using the company's technology to distribute the vaccine and coordinate supply chains. In a record year for IPOs, Thiel also raked in an outsize portion of returns. His venture firm Founders Fund backed several companies that went public, including vacation rental site Airbnb Inc., productivity software startup Asana Inc. and ContextLogic Inc., the parent company of discount shopping site Wish. (Another Founders Fund investment, lending startup Affirm Inc., came close to listing but delayed its IPO.) While investors mostly treated unicorns well this year, Wish's market cap sank to just $13 billion after its debut last week, disappointing some investors. Still, because Founders Fund first invested in Wish back in 2014, when the company was valued at just $270 million, Wish was a home run. This was also a big year for special purpose acquisition companies, or SPACs, which raised $60 billion in 2020—more than in the previous 10 years combined. One major SPAC debut was Luminar Technologies Inc., a lidar company created by Austin Russell and backed by Thiel. Russell's success is particularly notable because he was a Thiel Fellow, meaning he participated in Thiel's eponymous program encouraging young people to skip college and start companies. Russell's success—he became one of the world's youngest self-made billionaires at 25—gave the program added credibility. Thiel also decided to spin up his own SPAC in September, teaming with Hong Kong billionaire Richard Li to create Bridgetown Holdings Ltd., which is now considering a deal with Indonesia's e-commerce giant PT Tokopedia. Even some of Thiel's personal decisions look prescient. He caused a stir in 2018 when he left Silicon Valley for sunny Los Angeles, bemoaning the Bay Area's high rents and taxes and poor infrastructure. Those critiques have been echoed in the more recent departures of Thiel's PayPal colleagues Keith Rabois and Elon Musk, as well as Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale. Of course, controversies surrounding Thiel remain. It took Palantir well over a decade to add a woman to its board. And immigrants rights groups have criticized Thiel's ties to Trump, as well as Palantir's work with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, claiming the company is using technology to erode privacy. One downside for Thiel this year may be Trump's election loss. But during the 2020 campaign cycle, Thiel wasn't an active supporter of the president, and Palantir's stock actually climbed on the news of Trump's defeat. Thiel may now be finished with politics, or simply biding his time for the next cycle. He is, as he's proved in 2020, pretty good at playing the long game. —Lizette Chapman | 
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