Tech entrepreneur funding Hulk Hogan’s Gawker lawsuit

Peter Thiel, a high-profile tech entrepreneur and investor, admitted late Wednesday that he’s been funding a lawsuit against Gawker Media that threatens to cripple the company.

Thiel, who founded PayPal and is an investor in Facebook, told The New York Times that he’s spent roughly $10 million to back a lawsuit brought by professional wrestler Terry Bollea — better known by his stage name, Hulk Hogan — against the owner of Gawker and other sites.

{mosads}Thiel told the Times that his animus stemmed from what he viewed as bullying by the company’s blogs. In 2007, Valleywag, an on-again-off-again Silicon Valley offshoot of Gawker, wrote a post about Thiel’s sexual orientation titled “Peter Thiel is totally gay, people.”

“It’s less about revenge and more about specific deterrence,” he told the Times. “I saw Gawker pioneer a unique and incredibly damaging way of getting attention by bullying people even when there was no connection with the public interest.”

Thiel told the newspaper that he has been quietly working against Gawker for years and has financed an effort to find potential plaintiffs against the website.

A jury recently ruled in favor of Hogan’s claim against the company, which published part of a sex tape involving him in 2012. Jurors initially awarded $115 million to the wrestler and later added an additional $25 million to the award.

A judge’s decision on Wednesday to deny Gawker a new hearing is now being appealed to a higher court.

In addition to being a prominent figure in Silicon Valley, Thiel is also known among conservative political circles. He is a delegate in California for Donald Trump, the Republican nominee for president.