Chamath Palihapitiya

In January 2022, Palihapitiya said on the podcast All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg to co-host Jason Calacanis that the Uyghur genocide does not concern him:

In March 2021 Palihapitiya sold his personal stake Virgin Galactic for around US$213 million. In February 2022, Palihapitiya stepped down as chairman of Virgin Galactic.

In 2021, Palihapitiya announced he planned to help take SoFi, a financial services platform, and Clover Health, a Medicare insurance company, public through SPACs. This gained Palihapitiya criticism from the Financial Times, which said that he is "shilling risky reverse-mergers to retail investors on a almost bimonthly basis".

In April 2021, John Coates, acting director of the SEC's corporate-finance division, criticized Palihapitiya's views on the benefits of SPACs over traditional IPOs:

In June 2021, Social Capital Survetta filed for four new SPACs which would focus on biotechnology companies, under the stock tickers DNAA through DNAD.

Palihapitiya has donated to the Democratic Party. As of February 2021, he has reportedly donated $1.3 million to the party over the past decade. He donated $7,500 to Republican Ted Cruz in 2011. In March 2020, Palihapitiya told The New York Times that he would like to see Michael Bloomberg at the top of the Democratic ticket in the 2020 Democratic Party presidential primaries, paired with Amy Klobuchar or Elizabeth Warren.

On 25 January 2021, Palihapitiya announced he would challenge incumbent California Governor Gavin Newsom in the event Newsom were recalled. If elected, Palihapitiya said he would cut the state income tax rate from 16 to 0 percent, provide free education vouchers, allow for a two thousand dollar credit for every child born in California, and work to make California the center of climate and technology jobs. He shared a campaign website that was created by a supporter.

In February 2021, however, Palihapitiya declared he would not run for Governor.

In 2021, he donated $7 million to provide clean drinking water to 1,000 families in California's central valley through a partnership with one2one, an American foundation and Source Global, the maker of solar-powered hydropanels that extract potable water from the air.

In 2020, Social Capital Hedosophia took Opendoor, an online real estate marketplace, public through a SPAC. OpenDoor raised $1 billion through the merger, $400 million of which came from the SPAC and an additional $600 million through PIPE investors. Palihapitiya accounted for $100 million of the PIPE.

In December 2019 Palihapitiya stepped down as a member of the board of directors of Slack.

In 2019, Palihapitiya helped take Virgin Galactic public through a SPAC, previously known as IPOA.

In 2018, there was a massive decrease in Social Capital fund's operations and a significant exodus of top management and co-founders. Axios reported that Palihapitiya was spending a significant amount of time with his new girlfriend in Italy and rarely showed up to the office or answered emails from employees. The firm returned investor capital and converted into a family office although continued to manage some external capital on a no-fee basis.

After transitioning to a single GP firm, essentially Palihapitiya's family office, in 2018, Palihapitiya said he wanted to return to first principles and restructure the firm to better align with the long-term interests of entrepreneurs, not just limited partners (LPs).

Palihapitiya has donated consistently to his alma mater, the University of Waterloo, including a $25 million donation towards the engineering department in 2018.

After graduating from college, Palihapitiya followed his future wife, Brigette Lau, to California. They had three children together, and divorced in 2018.

Palihapitiya now lives in California with Nathalie Dompe, an Italian pharmaceutical heiress, model, and CEO of Dompe Holdings, whom he started dating in 2018, and with whom he has one child.

In November 2017, Palihapitiya said that, for ethical reasons, he regretted helping Facebook to become the largest social media platform. He said,

In a December 2017 interview, Palihapitiya said that he keeps his children as far away from technology as possible, except for the occasional movie, explaining "I don't like this co-dependency of 'they need to rely on me, and when they can't, I feed them a device because that becomes a babysitter'."

Palihapitiya's father was frequently unemployed, and his mother did low-paying housekeeping jobs. At age 14, Palihapitiya worked at a Burger King to support his family. His father died on October 2014.

Palihapitiya was listed as one of the "Founders" of the lobbying group FWD.us. The group launched on 11 April 2013, and its goals include immigration reform, improving education, and enabling technological innovation, all in a United States context. An article in The New Republic stated that Palihapitiya received a weekly report about FWD.us and also quoted him as saying, in response to controversy around the FWD.us political lobbying strategy: "The folks that are actually people that run that day to day are sophisticated and understand the nuances of how to affect it ... It's a really gnarly, gnarly thing having to deal with Washington. And to be honest with you, my perspective was, it's a really good investment because it's a good way to pay it forward, and I'm really glad there are other people other than me who are dealing with it who have the patience and resolve to figure it out."

In 2011, he left Facebook and started his own fund, The Social+Capital Partnership, with his then-wife. The firm changed its name to Social Capital in 2015. Through the fund, Palihapitiya invested in a number of companies, including Glooko, Inc, Yammer, SecondMarket, Slack, and Box. As of 2015, the fund had more than $1.1 billion in total assets most of which came from external investors (i.e. LPs).

Palihapitiya has three World Series of Poker (WSOP) and two World Poker Tour (WPT) cashes for a total of $175,801. In 2011, he finished 101st out of 6,865 entries in the World Series of Poker's Main Event.

In 2010, Palihapitiya helped to buy the Golden State Warriors for $450 million; he remains a minority stakeholder and board member of the team. According to the team as of 2022 he was a "limited investor with no day-to-day operating functions". In 2022, Palihapitiya’s 10% stake in the team was worth $520 million - a 2000% return on his $25 million initial investment.

Palihapitiya joined Winamp, which was subsequently acquired by AOL, where he became the company's youngest vice president ever, heading its instant messaging division in 2004. In 2005, he left AOL and joined Mayfield Fund; in 2007 he left Mayfield and joined Facebook, which was then a little more than three years old.

He attended Lisgar Collegiate Institute. After graduating from the University of Waterloo in 1999 with a degree in electrical engineering, Palihapitiya worked for a year as a derivatives trader at the investment bank BMO Nesbitt Burns. He then accepted a job offer at Winamp and moved to California.

Chamath Palihapitiya (born 3 September 1976) is a Sri Lankan-born Canadian and American venture capitalist, engineer, SPAC sponsor, founder and CEO of Social Capital. Palihapitiya was an early senior executive at Facebook, working at the company from 2007 to 2011. Following his departure from Facebook, Palihapitiya started his fund, The Social+Capital Partnership, through which he invested in several companies, including Yammer and Slack. The Social+Capital Partnership changed its name to Social Capital in 2015. He is a co-host of technology podcast All In.

Palihapitiya was born on 3 September 1976 in Sri Lanka. In 1982, Palihapitiya moved with his family to Canada at age five; his father Gamage had been posted to the High Commission of Sri Lanka, Ottawa. Five years later, in 1986, the posting came to an end, and the family applied for refugee status rather than returning home, on the basis that Gamage had been criticized for his views on the violence during the Sri Lankan Civil War.