Fred Thiel (born 1960) is an American business executive and the current CEO of Thiel Advisors and Marathon Digital Holdings. Thiel is the former CEO of

GameSpy GameSpy was an American provider of online multiplayer and matchmaking middleware for video games founded in 1996 by Mark Surfas. After the release of a multiplayer server browser for the game, QSpy, Surfas licensed the software under the GameS ...

, Local Corporation, and Lantronix. Thiel serves as past chairman of the board of the

Young Presidents' Organization YPO (formerly Young Presidents' Organization) is an American-based worldwide leadership community of chief executives with approximately 29,000 members in more than 130 countries, according to the organization's 2019 YPO international fact sheet. ...

's technology network and is chairman of the Fintech subnetwork. He also serves on the boards of several other companies including Oden Technologies, OptConnect, Gatekeeper Systems, and Sequent Software.

Career

Thiel was vice president and general manager of the business storage unit of CMD Technology in 1997. From 1998 to 2002 Thiel was the CEO of Lantronix, where he doubled the company's revenue growth and led to its initial public offering in 2000. Thiel was the CEO of

from 2003 to 2004 before GameSpy merged with

IGN ''IGN'' (formerly ''Imagine Games Network'') is an American video game and entertainment media website operated by IGN Entertainment Inc., a subsidiary of Ziff Davis, Inc. The company's headquarters is located in San Francisco's SoMa distri ...

. Thiel was the managing partner of the software group at Triton Pacific Capital Partners from 2007 to 2012. Thiel met Heath Clark, founder and CEO of Local Corporation though the

, and joined Local Corporation's board of directors in January 2013. He became the chairman of the board of Local Corporation in January 2014, and CEO in May 2014 following Clark's resignation for health reasons. Thiel was CEO until 2015, and was responsible for Local Corporation's partnership with FraudLogix to prevent advertising fraud. Thiel has headed Thiel Advisors, an advisory firm, since 2013. Through Thiel Advisors, Thiel advises organizations such as

EQT AB EQT AB is a Swedish global investment organization founded in 1994. Its funds invest in private equity, infrastructure, real estate, growth equity, and venture capital in Europe, North America, and Asia Pacific. , EQT's assets under managemen ...

and Graham Partners, their portfolio companies, and various mid-sized companies on value creation strategies. Thiel was appointed to the board of directors of

Marathon Patent Group Marathon Digital Holdings, Inc. is a digital asset technology company, which engages in mining cryptocurrencies, with a focus on the blockchain ecosystem and the generation of digital assets. The company was founded on February 23, 2010 and is he ...

in April 2018 and became CEO of Marathon Digital Holdings in April 2021

Education

Thiel attended classes at the Stockholm School of Economics and executive classes at

Harvard Business School Harvard Business School (HBS) is the graduate business school of Harvard University, a private research university in Boston, Massachusetts. It is consistently ranked among the top business schools in the world and offers a large full-time MBA p ...

. Thiel is also fluent in English, Spanish, Swedish and French. Thiel is a frequent speaker on digital trends, IT, and the transformation of industries by the "

internet of things The Internet of things (IoT) describes physical objects (or groups of such objects) with sensors, processing ability, software and other technologies that connect and exchange data with other devices and systems over the Internet or other comm ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Thiel, Fred American business executives 1960 births Living people