Well-known tech executive turned high-profile investor Peter Thiel, former PayPal CEO and an early backer of Facebook, this morning announced the appointment of the first 24 Thiel Fellows.
These are remarkable young entrepreneurs and creative minds that, as inaugural members of the 20 Under 20 Thiel Fellowship, will pursue “innovative scientific and technical projects, learn entrepreneurship, and begin to build the technology companies of tomorrow”.
During a two-year tenure, each of them will receive $100,000 from the Thiel Foundation as well as mentorship from Peter Thiel’s obviously impressive network of people.
Originally, the organization planned to award only twenty fellowships, but James O’Neill, who heads the Thiel Foundation, says the number of outstanding candidates far exceeded their expectations. Below are the names of the 24 ‘chosen ones’, who were selected from more than four hundred people – all younger than twenty – who applied to be Thiel Fellows.
I’m not including their bios as it would make this post a bit long, but do yourself a favor and check out these extraordinary youngsters here.
BIOTECH: Laura Deming, Darren Zhu and Alexander Kiselev
Join 10k+ tech and VC leaders for growth and connections at Disrupt 2025
Netflix, Box, a16z, ElevenLabs, Wayve, Hugging Face, Elad Gil, Vinod Khosla — just some of the 250+ heavy hitters leading 200+ sessions designed to deliver the insights that fuel startup growth and sharpen your edge. Don’t miss the 20th anniversary of TechCrunch, and a chance to learn from the top voices in tech. Grab your ticket before doors open to save up to $444.
Join 10k+ tech and VC leaders for growth and connections at Disrupt 2025
Netflix, Box, a16z, ElevenLabs, Wayve, Hugging Face, Elad Gil, Vinod Khosla — just some of the 250+ heavy hitters leading 200+ sessions designed to deliver the insights that fuel startup growth and sharpen your edge. Don’t miss a chance to learn from the top voices in tech. Grab your ticket before doors open to save up to $444.
CAREER DEVELOPMENT: Daniel Friedman, Paul Gu, Eric McKay and Dale Stephens
ECONOMICS & FINANCE: Jeffrey Lim and Faheem Zaman
EDUCATION: Nick Cammarata, David Merfield, Andrew Hsu and John Marbach
ENERGY: Tom Currier, Jim Danielson, Eden Full and Sujay Tyle
INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY: James Proud, Christopher Rueth, Ben Yu and Sebastien Zany
MOBILITY: Gary Kurek
ROBOTICS: David (Jiageng) Luan
SPACE: John Burnham
I’d wager they’re all in for a life-changing, two-year experience that will be hard to match.
Or do you think they should go to school instead? Discuss.
