Łukasz Nosek (born 1975) is a Polish-American billionaire entrepreneur and venture capitalist. He is best known as a co-founder of PayPal, the online payments company, and of Founders Fund, a San Francisco-based venture capital firm. Nosek has also been an early investor in major technology companies, including SpaceX and DeepMind, and has served on their boards. As of June 2026, Forbes estimated his net worth at $2.7 billion, largely attributed to his initial investment in SpaceX in 2008.
Early life and education
Nosek was born in Tarnów, Poland. He emigrated to the United States and earned a Bachelor of Science in Computer Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) in 1996. During his time at UIUC, he became involved with the school's Association for Computing Machinery chapter, where he met fellow students Max Levchin, Scott Banister, and Russel Simmons, who would later become his colleagues in various ventures.
Career beginnings
While still a student in the summer of 1995, Nosek co-founded SponsorNet New Media, Inc. with Max Levchin and Scott Banister. After graduating, he worked at Netscape from 1997 to 1998 as an evangelist, promoting the company's web browser and related technologies.
PayPal and Confinity
In 1998, Nosek co-founded a financial payments company called Fieldlink with Max Levchin, Peter Thiel, Yu Pan, and Ken Howery. The company was later renamed Confinity, and after merging with X.com, it became the PayPal service. At PayPal, Nosek served as vice president of marketing and strategy, where he created the company's "instant transfer" product, a key feature that allowed users to move funds quickly between accounts.
In an early conversation with Peter Thiel, Nosek mentioned that he had registered for cryonic suspension - a process of low-temperature preservation after death in hopes of future revival by medical technology. Thiel later followed Nosek's example. After PayPal went public and was acquired by eBay for $1.5 billion in 2002, Nosek left the company to travel and pursue angel investing.
Founders Fund and Gigafund
In 2005, Nosek co-founded Founders Fund with Peter Thiel and Ken Howery. The San Francisco-based venture capital firm grew to manage over $1 billion in assets. Through Founders Fund, Nosek became the first institutional investor in Elon Musk's SpaceX, a private aerospace manufacturer and space transportation company. He also took a seat on SpaceX's board of directors.
Nosek left Founders Fund in July 2017 to pursue other ventures. That same month, he and Stephen Oskoui, a former venture partner at the firm, launched Gigafund, an investment fund focused on space exploration. The fund aimed to support companies working on space-related technologies and infrastructure.
Other ventures and board roles
Beyond his work in venture capital, Nosek has been involved with several other organizations. He sits on the board of ResearchGate, a social networking site for scientists and researchers. He was also an early investor in DeepMind, the artificial intelligence company, and serves on its board of directors. DeepMind, which focuses on artificial intelligence research, was later acquired by Google and operates as part of Google DeepMind.
Nosek's investment portfolio has also included other technology companies, reflecting his interest in both space exploration and machine learning. His early bet on SpaceX, made in 2008, proved particularly lucrative, contributing the bulk of his estimated net worth by 2026. His career spans multiple domains, from fintech to venture capital to deep tech, making him a notable figure in the technology investment community.
Legacy and impact
Nosek's work has had a lasting influence on the technology sector. As a co-founder of PayPal, he helped build one of the foundational companies of the modern digital payments industry. His subsequent investments in SpaceX and DeepMind have supported advancements in space travel and deep learning, respectively. Through Gigafund, he continues to back entrepreneurs working on ambitious projects in space and other frontier areas. His trajectory from a Polish immigrant to a billionaire investor illustrates the global reach of the technology startup ecosystem.