- Peter Thiel told the Financial Times that SVB held $50 million of his own money when it collapsed.
- Some have blamed Thiel for the bank run on SVB after he told Founders Fund clients to pull deposits.
- On Sunday, US officials announced that all depositors of SVB would be able to access their money.
Despite advising clients to pull their cash from Silicon Valley Bank last week, Peter Thiel, a billionaire tech mogul, said that he had a large sum of his own money tied up in the doomed bank when it collapsed on Friday.
„I had $50 million of my own money stuck in SVB,“ he told the Financial Times.
Thiel, an influential figure in Silicon Valley and a co-founder of both PayPal and Palantir, has been widely blamed for adding momentum to the bank run that triggered Silicon Valley Bank’s implosion; one day before the bank’s failure, Thiel’s venture firm, Founders Fund, advised all clients to pull their deposits out.
However, Thiel told the FT that he did not believe the SVB would fail last week.
Other venture capital firms — including Coatue Management, Union Square Ventures, and Founder Collective — had similarly advised startup clients to transfer money from SVB after the bank revealed a $1.8 billion loss and the bank’s share price collapsed.
These firms have pushed back against accusations that they were spreading panic, saying that they were giving financial advice they believed would be in the best interest of their clients.
In a statement provided to Axios, Neil Ruthven, the CFO of Founders Fund, said that on „Thursday morning it was clear we were in the middle of a bank run, and we reacted in line with our fiduciary duties.“
Thiel told the FT that his account was frozen on Friday when regulators stepped in and took control of the bank. However, it is once again accessible after the US government stepped in earlier this week and shored up all customer deposits in SVB.
