Peter Thiel out at influential Silicon Valley startup firm

Billionaire venture capitalist Peter Thiel is no longer affiliated with the influential Silicon Valley startup accelerator Y Combinator, according to a company blog post.

“Edit: Peter Thiel is no longer affiliated with Y Combinator,” the top of the post reads.

The exit of Thiel, who has been an adviser to President Trump, was not announced and was not publicly noticed until a tweet from Gab, a Twitter clone with laxer terms of service that far right figures on the internet adopted.

Y Combinator had in March 2015 tweeted a post welcoming Thiel as a partner, but that post has since been edited. The Trump-supporting founder of Gab was kicked out of Y Combinator right after the 2016 election.

Y Combinator president Sam Altman, who has backed progressive political causes, and Thiel have very different political viewpoints, but Altman had previously pledged that he wouldn’t cut ties with Thiel.

“Cutting off opposing viewpoints leads to extremism and will not get us the country we want,” Altman said in a tweet thread from October of 2016 defending his decision to keep Thiel at the organization.

“Diversity of opinion is painful but critical to the health of a democratic society. We can’t start purging people for political support,” he continued.

It’s unclear what motivated the two to part ways. A source told BuzzFeed that the part-time partner program Thiel was a part of at Y Combinator was shutdown sometime last year, meaning that others in the program are also no longer affiliated with the group.

Thiel, who is one of the most influential investors in Silicon Valley, gained prominence in political circles after President Trump won the election. Thiel had supported Trump and advised him during the election and the transition process. But he seems to have soured on Trump since then.

In August, Thiel reportedly called Trump a likely one-term president, and said that “there is a 50% chance this whole thing ends in disaster,” according to BuzzFeed.