Peter Thiel Launches Mithril Capital, a New $402M Growth-Stage Investment Firm

PayPal co-founder and influential investor Peter Thiel is reallocating some resources — both people and money — to create a new growth-stage venture capital firm called Mithril Capital Management.

Mithril is aimed at fast-growing companies that “prefer to remain private as they mature.”

Thiel is the largest individual investor in Mithril’s $402 million fund, and he will lead the firm’s investments along with Ajay Royan.

Royan was previously managing director at Clarium Capital, Thiel’s hedge fund, which has had a rocky record. Thiel also runs the early-stage VC firm Founders Fund. And a third Mithril partner is Jim O’Neill, who was previously at Clarium and is also co-founder of the 20 under 20 Thiel Fellowship.

Despite all that overlap — and the fact that Mithril is yet another project named after a term from the J. R. R. Tolkien lexicon (see: Palantir Technologies and lots of others) — Royan emphasized in a phone interview that Mithril is a “completely independent new franchise.”

He said he expects a typical investment for the firm to be around $20 million, or as much as $100 million. Mithril’s intended targets are “the non-fashionable companies,” Royan said. Don’t expect social media or cloud investments, he said.