- Peter Thiel attributed recent Trump support in Silicon Valley, in part, to Elon Musk's efforts.
- Thiel told journalist Bari Weiss that Musk provided "cover" for other tech leaders to support Trump.
- Thiel also said growing frustration with "wokeness" pushed the industry right.
Billionaire Peter Thiel credited Elon Musk, in part, with helping other tech leaders feel comfortable publicly supporting President-elect Donald Trump.
The former PayPal CEO sat for a post-election debrief with journalist Bari Weiss on an episode of her "Honestly" podcast published Thursday.
Thiel, who financially backed Trump in 2016 but said he was stepping away from political donations this year, said Musk's embrace of Trump was key in facilitating Silicon Valley's shift to the right in the 2024 election.
"There was some degree to which it was safer for people to speak out when other people were speaking out," Thiel said on the podcast.
Leading up to the election, several Silicon Valley billionaires and business leaders who had previously shunned Trump or remained publicly apolitical came forward in support of the former president, including Marc Andreessen, David Sacks, and Shaun Maguire, among others.
The apparent industry move toward Trump in the months before the election spurred more than 100 venture capitalists, including Reid Hoffman, Ron Conway, and Mark Cuban, to pledge their support for Vice President Kamala Harris.
And while Silicon Valley, which has long been a progressive stronghold, remained solidly Democrat in November's election, Trump saw a notable bump in support in the three counties that make up America's tech center, BI previously reported.
Weiss asked Thiel if the Tesla CEO was "the critical ingredient" that allowed other business leaders to feel safe endorsing the divisive president.
"I think Elon was incredibly important to it," Thiel said, later adding that Musk "obviously gave people a great deal of cover."
Musk did not immediately respond to Business Insider's request for comment.
Musk poured millions of dollars into helping Trump get elected. This week, Trump announced Musk would have a role in his administration as the co-leader of the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, alongside entrepreneur and fellow billionaire Vivek Ramaswamy.
But Thiel said Silicon Valley's cultural shift had been building for years because of people doubling down on "political correctness and wokeness" inside the companies.
"There's some point where it just got exhausted and a lot of the top tech founders and CEOs felt comfortable telling me this behind closed doors," Thiel said.
Thiel characterized the feeling inside Silicon Valley as one of growing frustration toward "corporate governance" and "how ridiculous it's gotten to manage these ideologically deranged millennial employees."
In 2022, Musk, who Thiel said was once "left of center," described his newfound foray into conservative politics as an effort to stop the "woke mind virus." The business leader moved Tesla headquarters from blue state California to red Texas in 2021 and said earlier this year that he would relocate both SpaceX and X to the conservative state.
"At some point, Elon shifted," Thiel said. "Part of it is this sort of intellectual straitjacket where you're not allowed to have ideas, even if you agree with them 80 percent. It's never enough. you have to be 100 percent."
Thiel suggested Musk's fierce support for Trump before the election was "incredibly dangerous" and "incredibly courageous."
"Maybe all the rest of us can be a little bit more courageous than we otherwise were going to be," Thiel said.