Billionaire venture capitalist Peter Thiel now wants to steer people away from “The Giving Pledge,” a public commitment launched in 2010 by Bill Gates and Warren Buffet for the wealthiest people to give up over half their wealth during their lifetime or after their death. This is a voluntary and unenforceable promise.
The Giving Pledge’s roster includes names like Sam Altman, Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan, and Elon Musk, according to TechCrunch. However, its numbers seem to be on a steady decline. According to the New York Times, in its first five years, 113 families signed the Pledge. Then 72 over the next five, 43 in the five after that, and just four in all of 2024. Thiel says it is a club that’s “really run out of energy.”
“I don’t know if the branding is outright negative, but it feels way less important for people to join,” Thiel told the Times.
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Thiel also told the Times he has privately encouraged around a dozen signers to undo their commitments, and has even gently pushed those already wavering to make their exits official.
“Most of the ones I’ve talked to have at least expressed regret about signing it,” Thiel said, calling the Giving Pledge an “Epstein-adjacent, fake Boomer club.” He encouraged Musk to unenroll, saying his money would otherwise go “to left-wing nonprofits that will be chosen by” Gates. When Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong quietly let his letter disappear from the Pledge website in mid-2024 without a word of public explanation, Thiel sent him a congratulatory note.
Thiel also told the Times that those who stay on the Pledge’s public roster feel “sort of blackmailed” — too exposed to public opinion to formally renounce a non-binding promise to give away vast sums of money.
This comes during a time of widening wealth inequality. Data from the Federal Reserves indicate that the top 10% of households in the U.S. hold more than two-thirds of the nation’s wealth. The majority of the country’s wealth remains in the hands of older generations, and wealth accumulation has hollowed out the middle class over the last few decades, according to The Fortune.
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Peter Thiel, who’s the co-founder of Paypal and Palantir technologies has for long been a controversial figure. Variously described as a “conservative libertarian,” and “democracy-skeptic authoritarian,” Thiel has made substantial donations towards right wing figures and causes.
Recently, Thiel courted controversy for his series of private lectures in Rome on the Antichrist, a figure in Christian teaching who comes to oppose Jesus Christ before the Second Coming. Thiel has previously written and lectured on the subject, arguing that the Antichrist is not necessarily a person but could come as a global government system. It would take control, he has argued, by exploiting people’s fears around artificial intelligence, climate change or nuclear war. Thiel’s appearance on the doorstep of the Vatican raised eyebrows because of the tensions between his thinking and that of Pope Leo XIV. Two Catholic institutions have distanced themselves from the lecture series, which continues through Wednesday.