Joe Lonsdale is the Founder and Managing Partner of 8VC, a venture capital firm managing over $7 billion in committed capital. In 2003, he founded Palantir Technologies, a global software company known for its work supporting US and its allies’ defense and intelligence. Since then, he has founded over a dozen prominent companies, including Addepar, a wealth management platform helping investors manage nearly $9 trillion, and OpenGov, the leading cloud software provider for local governments which recently sold for $1.8 billion. He continues to create and scale companies through the 8VC Build program including Saronic, Epirus and Resilience. Joe was an early investor in Anduril, Oculus (acq. FB), Cognition, Guardant Health, Oscar, Illumio, Blend, Flexport, Joby Aviation, Orca Bio, Qualia, among many others. Joe and his wife Tayler are active in a variety of philanthropic and institutional pursuits. In 2018, Joe and Tayler founded the non-partisan Cicero Institute, which crafts and advances policies to promote effective and accountable governance, and is now successfully battling special interests with teams in over a dozen states. In 2021, Joe became the founding chairman of the board of the University of Austin (UATX), a new university dedicated to restoring the pursuit of truth in higher education. He also sits on the board of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation & Institute. Joe, Tayler, and their six children live in Austin, Texas, USA.