Five years after Jeff Bezos purchased a 27,000-square-foot Kalorama mansion, the largest home in the District, another tech titan is landing in the city. According to Politico, former Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross has sold his Woodland-Normanstone mansion to Peter Thiel, cofounder of Paypal and Palantir.
The home sold for $13 million back in August, and is reportedly the largest home sale in DC within the past year. The buyer was an LLC, Solana Village Holdings, which happens to share its name with a neighborhood in McLean, where Palantir happens to have had an office. Politico’s Ryan Lizza and Daniel Lippman sniffed out that Thiel was the buyer.
Thiel has owned homes in Maui and Miami, among other locales, and is reportedly building one in New Zealand. It makes sense that he’d add DC to his real-estate portfolio. Like fellow tech billionaire Bezos, Thiel’s company Palantir is a major government contractor. Mingling more with officials in Washington might be a good thing for business. The Trump ally is also currently backing two GOP Senate hopefuls: J.D. Vance of Ohio and Blake Masters of Arizona.
Thiel’s new pad is 10,300 square feet, according to Zillow, with seven bedrooms and ten bathrooms. (Bezos’s Kalorama mansion is a four-minute drive away.)
Post updated to reflect that Ryan Lizza co-reported the Playbook item.
