At 8am on New Year’s Eve, billionaire tech investor Peter Thiel’s firm issued a brief statement announcing that it had signed a lease for a new office in Miami. The office in the artsy Wynwood neighbourhood would “complement” Thiel Capital’s existing operations in Los Angeles, it said.
A few hours later, a venture capital firm co-founded by billionaire investor David Sacks issued a statement saying it had opened an office in Austin, Texas. The firm noted that Sacks, who lived for years in the Pacific Heights neighbourhood of San Francisco known as “Billionaires’ Row”, had moved to the Austin area in December.
The announcements may have seemed like routine press releases, but in fact they were acts of defiance by two leading lights of the techno-billionaire class.