The Thiel Fellowship (originally named 20 under 20) is a fellowship created by billionaire Peter Thiel through the Thiel Foundation in 2010. The fellowship is intended for students aged 22 or younger and offers them a total of $200,000 over two years, as well as guidance and other resources, to drop out of school and pursue other work, which could involve scientific research, creating a startup, or working on a social movement. Selection for the fellowship is through a competitive annual process, with up to 20 fellows selected annually. In addition to the grant, fellows gain mentorship and access to a community of founders and resources offered by the Thiel Foundation.[1][2][3][4]
Peter Thiel announced the fellowship at TechCrunch Disrupt in September 2010.[5] The first round of fellows, based on applications made at the end of 2010, was announced in May 2011.[6][7] The second round of fellows, based on applications made at the end of 2011, was announced in June 2012.[8][9] That year, the fellowship launched a website called "20 Under 20 Documentary Series" that features an online documentary series of four Thiel Fellowship recipients.[10][11]
The third class (announced in May 2013) included 22 fellows working on projects from garment manufacturing and B2B web products to ARM powered servers and biomedicine. The class included 7 fellows from outside of the US.[12]
By the fourth year, the fellowship had achieved few successes. In 2015, Thiel replaced the directors and changed the rules so that young people as old as 22 could join as well.[13]
In a July 2014 interview with Bill Kristol, Peter Thiel compared the modern university to the corrupt Church in 1514, where people were buying indulgences—the equivalent, he suggested, to the salvation a modern diploma represents—rather than pursuing intrinsic values. He believed that, as with the Reformation, meaningful change would come from outside first before any possible internal pressure to adapt emerged.[17][18][19] In December 2014, during a talk hosted by the Farley Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation, he clarified that he did not want to "blow up the universities and have everyone become an entrepreneur," but instead envisioned a future education system that "offers vastly different kinds of tracks for different people," where going to university would be just one of the available options, instead the current one-size-fits-all approach.[20]
Thiel mentors and funds other college dropouts who do not receive the fellowship as well. CNBC notes that Mark Zuckerberg is probably "the most famous college-dropout-turned-tech-billionaire". Thiel was his long-time mentor and the first outside investor in Facebook.[21][22]Business Insider also notes that Thiel's most famous mentees are not Thiel fellows, but Zuckerberg and Sam Altman (both college dropouts).[23][24]Palmer Luckey tried to apply for the fellowship but missed the date. Nevertheless Thiel funded his first startup, Oculus VR, and the Founders Fund incubated the company he was primarily known for, Anduril Industries.[25][26][27] Thiel was also the mentor of the Collison brothers and an early investor in their company Stripe.[28][29][30]
Reception
Initial perspectives
Initially, Thiel's announcement of the Fellowship met with diverse responses. Some, such as Jacob Weisberg, criticized Thiel's proposal for its utopianism and attack on the importance of education.[31] Others, such as academic Vivek Wadhwa, expressed skepticism about whether the success or failure of the Thiel Fellowship would carry any broader lessons regarding the value of higher education or the wisdom of dropping out.[32] In May 2011, shortly after the first Thiel Fellows were named, the admissions office at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) congratulated two of its students for receiving the Fellowship; both MIT students would, the blog stated, be able to return to MIT to resume studies after completing the two-year fellowship if they desired.[33]
A year after first Fellows were named, opinions on the program ranged from the skeptical and critical to the laudatory and optimistic. In 2012, Eric Markowitz offered a mixed review of the Thiel Fellowship in Inc. magazine.[34] In 2013 the program attracted criticism for its limited results. In April, an article by Richard Nieva for PandoDaily took a close look at how the first batch of Thiel Fellows had fared, finding that some had succeeded and others planned to return to school in the fall once their two years were up.[35] In September, Vivek Wadhwa wrote that the Fellowship had failed to produce notable successes to date, and its limited successes were instances where its Fellows were collaborating with experienced individuals.[36] Also in October, former Harvard University President Larry Summers, speaking at The Nantucket Project conference, said:
I think the single most misdirected bit of philanthropy in this decade is Peter Thiel's special program to bribe people to drop out of college.[37][38][39]
Thiel Fellow Dan Friedman, also a mentor for the Fellowship, published an October 2013 op-ed response, restating in TechCrunch the Fellowship's thesis, and arguing that liberal arts education was becoming less relevant.[40] In a supportive December 2013 Wall Street Journal article, the Thiel Fellowship and its recipient's accomplishements were summarized, up to that point, in this way: "64 Thiel Fellows have started 67 for-profit ventures, raised $55.4 million in angel and venture funding, published two books, created 30 apps and 135 full-time jobs, and brought clean water and solar power to 6,000 Kenyans who needed it."[41]
Thiel's biographer Max Chafkin notes that in the early days, Thiel mismanaged the fellows (the idea of the fellowship had come to him on a whim, after he read the script of the The Social Network, which portrayed him in a way he did not like), showing favoritism and gave them unqualified staff with zero structure, leading to many fellows feeling like failures, followed by mental health issues and drug abuse.[13]
Longer term perspectives
In October 2023, the Washington Post reported that: "Eleven of the 271 recipients of the Thiel Fellowship have founded unicorns so far, an impressive accomplishment that doesn’t even take into account the inspiring innovations of other fellows and the many exciting projects yet to mature."[42]
In a 2025 op-ed article for Bloomberg, finance researchers Aaron Brown and Richard Dewey[44][45] remarked that despite early criticisms, the fellowship had achieved "shocking success", and not only finance-wise. The researchers named Laura Deming, Chris Olah and Boyan Slat as examples of fellows who had formed networks and infrastructure to develop science and technology. Regarding entrepreneurs, the researchers pointed out that other scholarships were also designed to identify high-potential students and offered networks of powerful people that Thiel arguably could not match, yet "All of them put together can’t match the kind of entrepreneurial success before age 35 of Thiel fellows" and that entrepreneurial institutes and incubators organized by colleges did not produce this kind of success too. They concluded that "Thiel has not proven that college is bad for everyone, nor that post-secondary education in the US is a dismal failure. But he has demonstrated a competing idea that has been vastly more successful, if only for a few students and only for certain types of projects."[46] Back in 2013, Alexis Ohanian made the criticism that the program was not scalable: "There are two problems with Thiel’s education solution. First, the Thiel Fellowship isn’t scalable. Helping 20 kids a year is great, but more than 21 million students enroll in college each year, so the Thiel Fellowship is only helping less than 0.00000095 percent of students. The second problem is that giving a select number of students the option of going to college or getting $100,000 to work on a business creates a false and harmful dichotomy".[47]
In a 2019 interview with Eric Weinstein, Thiel himself recognized that the Thiel Fellowship was not scalable.[48] Nevertheless, Thiel and companies associated with him have offered other alternative education programs. From April 2025, Palantir Technologies has offered Palantir Meritocracy Fellowship, which gives high school graduates a four-month internship and a chance at full-time employment in exchange for skipping or delaying college enrollment (The motto is "Skip the debt. Skip the indoctrination. Get the Palantir Degree."). TheStreet remarks that the company is taking a page out of its founder's playbook.[49][50] The Founders Fund is the major backer of Campus, a startup established by Tade Oyerinde to create an online alternative to traditional community colleges. Campus hires adjunct professors currently teaching at colleges like Princeton, NYU and Vanderbilt, paying them $8,000 a course, while offering students a laptop, Wi-Fi and tutoring. The Founders Fund's Trae Stephens has called the project "Thiel Fellowship for the masses". Sam Altman also backs the project.[51][52][53]
Fabian Gruber, a Fellow whose startup Manex AI is already developed and sells software to BMW, Audi, Heinkel, Stellantis and others, said that he was not interested in the grant itself, but decided to join because of the ecosystem, with exciting people working on real problems.[54][55] Commenting on the case of Manex AI, the German tech site IT-Boltwise notes that Thiel helps startups not only with financial resources, but also contacts and strategic support.[56]
Notable recipients include the following people (with their place of origin and the year they were awarded the fellowship is indicated in parentheses):
Laura Deming (New Zealand, 2011) –founder and partner at Longevity Fund.[57]
Eden Full Goh (Calgary[59], Canada, 2011): founder of the NGO SunSaluter, which by 2017 had spread to 18 countries and provided electricity to over 10,000 people (the technology, which involved "a low-cost mechanism that allows solar panels to rotate and follow the sun throughout the day, boosting the panels' efficiency by 30%", was developed by her when at highschool). She also worked for Palantir Technologies, spearheading "the development of experimental client-facing products." She now works on Mobot, which develops "'infrastructure-as-a-service' platform that lets developers use physical robots to automate app testing on devices."[60][61]
James Proud (UK, now U.S.-based, 2011): he skipped university to join the Thiel Fellowship. Initially, he worked on the Giglocator, a concert-tracking website startup, that he sold after the first year in Silicon Valley. After that, he founded the sleep monitoring startup Hello, which was the first Thiel Fellow startup that Thiel privately invested in.[62][63] This startup ultimately unraveled. Later he began working on the semiconductor startup Substrate, which uses X-ray lithography instead of the EUV method. In October 2025, Substrate received $100 million in funding from the Founders Fund, General Catalyst and others, which valued the firm at $1 billion. According to 2024 reports, the facility it intended to build in Texas would ultimately cost $10 billion.[64][65][66][67]
Taylor Wilson (Arkansas, United States, 2012) –the second youngest person to produce nuclear fusion.[70]
Chris Olah (Canada, 2012): co-founder of Anthropic, billionaire.[71]
Riley Ennis (New Hampshire, United States, 2013): co-founder and chief product officer at cancer test developer Freenome Holdings Inc.(unicorn since January 2022).[72][73][74]
Cathy Tie (China, moved to Canada at age four, 2015) –founder of Ranomics, Partner at Cervin Ventures[86]
Joey Krug (Illinois, United States, now Puerto Rico-based, 2016) –founder of decentralized prediction market platform Augur, later co-CIO at Pantera Capital, partner at Founders Fund.[87][88]
Alex Rodrigues (Calgary[90], Canada, 2016), self-driving trucking pioneer, founder of Embark, with a net worth of half-billion dollars at the age of 26 (2021); now works as AI researcher for Anthropic.[91][92][93]
Lani Lazzari (Pennsylvania, United States, 2017), founder of the skincare startup Simple Sugars.[96]
Tara Bosch (Canada, 2017), founder of low-sugar candy startup SmartSweets. In 2020, after acquisition by TPG Growth, she became a multimillionaire with a net worth of $200 million while retaining a major stake as the largest individual shareholder and continuing on the board.[97][98]
Iddris Sandu (Ghana, moved to California when young, 2018) – co-founder of Spatial Labs.[99]
Jamie Cox (UK,[103] 2018): founder of green financing startup TreeCard, backed by Valar Ventures.[104]
Robert Habermeier (2018): co-founder of Polkadot (based in Switzerland) and managing partner at Hypersphere Ventures.[105]
Rohit Kalyanpur (California,[106] 2019): founder of solar charging startup Optivolt Labs.[107][108]
Sean Henry (Atlanta,[109] 2019): founder of logistics company Stord.[110][111]
Shane Curran (Dublin, Ireland, 2020), founder of Evervault, which works on quantum-secured encryption.[112]
Blake Resnick (Nevada, United States, 2020): founder of Brinc Drones, which supplies drones to Ukraine. The investors include Sam Altman and the U.S. former acting defense secretary Patrick M. Shanahan. By 2023, Resnick's networth was $100 million.[113] The company also makes drones for emergency situations. In 2025, it signed a partnership with Motorola to create a system of automated emergency response.[114]
Tamara Chayo Romo (Mexico, 2022), founder of MEDU, which designs "sustainable, virus-resistant reusable pieces, including surgical gowns, head coverings and full-body suits" to replace single-wear medical garments.[116][122][123]
Kian Sadeghi (New York, United States,[124] 2023): founder of the genetic testing startup Nucleus Genomics, which garners some controversy due to its development of tools to test IVF embryos for predilection towards certain mental conditions and appearance.[125]
Sara Du (New York, United States,[124] 2023): founder of Alloy Automation, which develops automation tools for eCommerce.[126]
Jake Adler (Florida, United States,[124] 2023): founder of Pilgrim which develops medical devices for defense applications.[127]
Ethan Thornton (Massachusetts, United States,[124]2023) founder of Mach Industries, creating defense applications fuelled by hydrogen, such as the kamikaze drone Viper.[128][129][124]
Robert Wachen (Maryland, United States,[130] 2024): co-founder of Etched, which develops chips for AI.[134][135]
Brendan Foody, Adarsh Hiremath and Surya Midha (California, United States,[130] 2024): founders of the AI recruiting startup Mercor.[136] After a $350 million funding round led by Felicis Ventures in October 2025, the three founders, at age 22, are now the youngest self-made billionaires ever.[137]
Charlie Wu (Virginia, United States,[130] 2024), founder of agriculture automation startup Orchard Robotics.[138][139]
Soren Monroe-Anderson (Alaska, United States,[140] 2025): founder of Neros which produces military drones. The company's supply chain eliminates Chinese components, resulting in it becoming "one of just two U.S. FPV drone makers approved by the Defense Innovation Unit" and being sanctioned by Beijing.[140][141]
Koko Mashita (Japan, 2025): founder of San Francisco-based Aeolus Labs, which develops technology that reduces the scale of cyclones and changes weather systems.[143][144])
Steven Pang (Hongkong,[140] 2025): founder of neurosimulator startup Orbit.[145]
Ferdinand Dabitz (Berlin,[140] Germany, 2025): co-founder of payment fintech startup Ivy. Thiel's Valar Ventures has been an investor since 2023.[146]
Juan Pablo Ebrath (Colombia, 2025): founder of Phase Labs, a research startup that develops technology for "total body regeneration through programmable biology."[147]
Elias Fizesan (Luxembourg, 2025): by 2020, when he was 16, he was working on AI that assesses "the needs and illnesses of plants".[148] Now he works on Canopy Labs, which is "building the foundation models to power digital humans that are indistinguishable from real ones."[147][140]
↑ Farley Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation (December 8, 2014). "e@nu Speaker Series with Peter Thiel: Developing The Developed World". e@nu speaker series. Farley Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation: Northwestern University's McCormick School of Engineering. Event occurs at 30:00.
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