Musk, Thiel and Sacks emerge as power centers in Washington

Everybody keeps asking what the PayPal Mafia is up to, as if these guys ever went quiet. They didn’t.

They just scattered into every corner of tech, politics, finance, crypto, space, and whatever new humanity-ending tech Silicon Valley spits out.

And since we’re all living in this crazy timeline where tech bros seem determined to be in charge of humanity’s future, it feels like the right time to point out that the crew that once fought to keep PayPal alive now sits right in the middle of the world’s power grid.

And yes, as someone who writes about Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, and Dave Sacks, I admit: I watch them the way some people watch sports.

Some might even call it an obsession.

But I mean, these guys turned Silicon Valley into their gym, pushing out companies like LinkedIn, Palantir, SpaceX, Affirm, YouTube, Yelp, Kiva, Glow, Slide, and Yammer.

These guys came from places like Stanford and the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, and they carried that same student-dorm energy into one of the wildest corporate survival fights ever.

Tracking how Thiel, Musk, and their glue Sacks push power

From the very beginning, Peter Thiel was crowned “don” of the PayPal Mafia, and it stuck because Peter just leans into it, since, you know… he’s Peter.

He ran PayPal, seeded Facebook, built Founders Fund, and chairs Palantir, which in 2025 teamed up with DOGE, the new Department of Government Efficiency run by Elon Musk inside the Trump administration, though the real partner was actually the Pentagon, but that’s a different story.

Moving on, Peter also pushed US$15 million into Protect Ohio Values, the fund that helped JD Vance climb into the Senate in 2022. JD has said Peter’s talk at Yale Law was “the most significant moment” of his time there.

Then there’s Elon Musk, the infamously eccentric billionaire who merged X.com with Confinity to create PayPal and then turned himself into a global headline generator. Elon owns SpaceX, runs Neuralink, keeps building The Boring Company, and still [unofficially] leads X after buying Twitter.

As of press time, Elon sits on a $500 billion net worth. He became Trump’s senior advisor, then the head of DOGE, and he personally donated over $250 million to Trump’s return campaign.

Elon and Peter hated each other at PayPal, it is known. That never changed. Back in ‘02, Elon said Peter schemed to push him out, and Peter never denied it.

But then again, Peter never denies accusations of him being awful, or sometimes even downright evil. Even when asked by reporters point-blank, he is known to either shrug it off or just laugh.

Still, somehow Dave Sacks remains close friends with both Elon and Peter, constantly running emotional support behind the scenes in a way that is as confusing as it is fascinating.

Dave was PayPal’s COO, and he now advises Trump on AI and crypto. David founded Geni.com, created Yammer, and built deep ties across the Valley. He’s the only person from the team who can still text both Elon and Peter without starting a civil war.

Tracking everyone else and the empire they built

Meanwhile, Max Levchin left PayPal and started Affirm while co-founding Glow. Scott Banister advised the early team and stayed involved in the Valley’s startup pipeline. Roelof Botha became a giant at Sequoia Capital. Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim left PayPal and invented YouTube, because of course they did.

Reid Hoffman built LinkedIn, invested in Facebook and Aviary, and now sits on Microsoft’s board while funding major Democratic campaigns. Ken Howery worked at Founders Fund and served as ambassador to Sweden under Trump’s earlier administration.

Eric Jackson wrote The PayPal Wars and went on to run WND Books and co-create CapLinked. Dave McClure left PayPal’s marketing side and became a super-angel through 500 Global. Luke Nosek, one of the original founders, later joined Founders Fund as well.

Keith Rabois jumped around LinkedIn, Square, Khosla Ventures, and Founders Fund. Jack Selby co-started Clarium Capital with Peter and now pushes investment across Arizona with AZ-VC. Premal Shah helped set up Kiva.org and sits on the Change.org board.

Russel Simmons and Jeremy Stoppelman created Yelp after leaving PayPal. Yishan Wong went from PayPal to Facebook, became Reddit’s CEO, and then started Terraformation. Yu Pan designed the early PayPal UI, helped build YouTube, and co-founded Kiwi Crate.

This network gets credited with reviving consumer tech after the 2001 dot-com crash. Their rise compares to the engineers who built Fairchild and later Intel back in the 1960s.

Tracking their political split

Peter, David, and Elon leaned right over the years, shaping libertarian and conservative ideas in public and inside Trump’s White House. Reid Hoffman landed on the opposite end, funding top Democratic efforts.

After Trump won in 2024, The Economist wrote that the PayPal Mafia would “take over America’s government.” It wasn’t far off. JD Vance became Vice President. Elon took DOGE. David stepped in as Trump’s crypto and AI advisor. Peter kept shaping the movement from the outside with networks, money, and ideology.

The New York Times recently called Peter “the most influential right-wing intellectual of the last 20 years.” His ideas pushed a generation of political newcomers. JD Vance began echoing Peter long before entering office.

The tension between Elon and Peter is real and old. Peter never apologized. Their teams joke about it. Their friends avoid the topic. But David, somehow, stayed close to both.

And in one of the strangest political side stories of this timeline, JD Vance himself repaired the Trump-Elon relationship after that very messy public breakup.

Yet somehow, after all the betrayals, near-collapses, and takeover attempts, the PayPal Mafia still acts like distant cousins who cannot quit each other.