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10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/Blake Masters.md
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@ -15,7 +15,7 @@ summary: "Blake Masters is an American venture capitalist and author who served
born: 1986-08-18
location: "Arizona (political base)"
created: 2026-06-18
updated: 2026-06-18
updated: 2026-09-22
---
Blake Masters (born August 18, 1986) is an American venture capitalist and author who served as chief operating officer of [[Thiel Capital]] and president of the [[Thiel Foundation]] from 2018 to 2022, and who coauthored *Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future* with [[Peter Thiel]] in 2014. Masters was the 2022 Republican nominee for U.S. Senate from [[Arizona]], losing the general election to the incumbent Democrat [[Mark Kelly (politician)|Mark Kelly]] after winning the Republican primary with the financial backing of a Thiel-funded super PAC. His career is the second documented instance, alongside [[JD Vance]], of a Thiel-network operative placed into electoral politics through direct capital deployment.[^1][^2][^3]
@ -42,7 +42,7 @@ Masters won the August 2022 Republican primary, defeating the establishment-back
The Masters and Vance campaigns together were the Thiel network's electoral deployment in the 2022 cycle. Thiel spent approximately fifteen million dollars on the [[Protect Ohio Values PAC|Protect Ohio Values]] super PAC supporting Vance in Ohio and an additional fifteen million dollars on the Saving Arizona PAC super PAC supporting Masters in Arizona, for a total 2022-cycle deployment of approximately thirty-two million dollars. [[CNBC]] reported the combined figure in November 2022. Both candidates came from inside the Thiel commercial orbit: Vance from [[Mithril Capital]] and [[Narya Capital]], Masters from Thiel Capital and the Thiel Foundation. The Vance campaign produced a sitting senator who became vice president in 2025; the Masters campaign lost the November 2022 general election to Mark Kelly by approximately five percentage points.[^5][^6][^7]
The Saving Arizona PAC was funded almost entirely by Thiel, with additional contributions from the cryptocurrency billionaires [[Cameron Winklevoss|Cameron]] and [[Tyler Winklevoss|Tyler Winklevoss]], who joined the effort in June 2022 per [[Forbes]] reporting. Thiel added a reported 1.5 million dollars in July 2022 as the primary approached, and the PAC resumed general-election spending in September 2022 after a period in which Thiel was reported to be hesitant about continued funding. The [[Federal Election Commission]] raised questions about the PAC's disclosure of its spending, documented in the [[Arizona Mirror]] reporting on the FEC inquiry. The Winklevoss cofunding extended the documented donor network beyond Thiel himself into the broader crypto-and-tech-billionaire cohort that overlaps with the [[PayPal Mafia]] and Thiel-network commercial orbit.[^6][^7][^8]
The Saving Arizona PAC was funded almost entirely by Thiel, with additional contributions from the cryptocurrency billionaires [[Cameron Winklevoss|Cameron]] and [[Tyler Winklevoss|Tyler Winklevoss]], who joined the effort in June 2022 per [[Forbes]] reporting. Thiel added a reported 1.5 million dollars in July 2022 as the primary approached, and the PAC resumed general-election spending in September 2022 after a period in which, *CNBC* reported, Thiel had been hesitant about continued funding. The [[Federal Election Commission]] raised questions about the PAC's disclosure of its spending, documented in the [[Arizona Mirror]] reporting on the FEC inquiry. The Winklevoss cofunding extended the documented donor network beyond Thiel himself into the broader crypto-and-tech-billionaire cohort that overlaps with the [[PayPal Mafia]] and Thiel-network commercial orbit.[^6][^7][^8]
The pattern of the deployment, with a single donor capitalizing ideologically aligned operatives placed into Senate primaries, is documented across the Protect Ohio Values and Saving Arizona PAC Federal Election Commission filings and in the contemporaneous [[Politico]] and [[OpenSecrets]] reporting. The two campaigns ran in parallel under the same Thiel strategy: identify operatives inside the commercial orbit, capitalize their primaries through a dedicated super PAC, and convert the commercial-network relationship into an elected-office relationship. Vance won the Senate seat and then the vice presidency, while Masters won his primary but lost the general election in a competitive state.[^5][^6]