Paypal Co-Founder Peter Thiel on Mission to Cheat Death Through Technology

Co-founder of Paypal and successful Silicon Valley capitalist Peter Thiel, is on a mission to cheat death through technology.

In a conversation with Mick Brown from The Telegraph, Thiel says: "Basically, I'm against it. I think there are probably three main modes of approaching it. You can accept it, you can deny it or you can fight it. I think our society is dominated by people who are into denial or acceptance, and I prefer to fight it."

Thiel is not only one of the most noted Silicon Valley venture capitalists, but he was also the first outside investor in Facebook.

His net worth is estimated at £1.4 billion ($2.2 billion).

He is a man holding the utopian belief that technology holds the power to change the world.

"It is true that you can say that death is natural, but it is also natural to fight death. But if you stand up and say this is a big problem, we should do something about this, that makes people very uncomfortable, because they've made their peace with death. In some ways it's a microcosm of the whole complacency of the Western world. I do think there is this danger that our society has made its peace with decline. I'd like to jolt them out of their complacency a little bit," added Thiel.

Thiel has reportedly enlisted with a company called Alcor Life Extension Foundation to be deep-frozen at the time of his death.

Referring to the admission, Thiel says:

"I would like to live longer, and I would like other people to live longer. In telling you that I've signed up for it [cryogenics], there's always this reaction that it's really crazy, it's disturbing. But my take on it is it's only disturbing because it challenges our complacency."

In 2010, Thiel, along with some of his partners at Founders Fund, invested an estimated £300,000 ($500,000) in a biotech start-up, Halcyon Molecular, whose founder has a "dream to create a world free from cancer and aging."