Chamath Palihapitiya (born 3 September 1976)[1] is a Sri Lankan-born Canadian and American venture capitalist, engineer, SPAC sponsor, and the founder and CEO of Social Capital.

[5][7] Growing up in difficult economic circumstances, Palihapitiya's father struggled with alcoholism and unemployment while his mother worked housekeeping jobs.

[11][12] Palihapitiya joined Winamp, which was subsequently acquired by AOL, where he became the company's youngest vice president, heading its instant messaging division in 2004.

[26][27][28]In 2018, there was a massive decrease in Social Capital fund's operations and a significant exodus of top management and co-founders.

[29][30] [31] Axios reported that Palihapitiya was spending a significant amount of time with his new girlfriend in Europe and rarely showed up to the office or answered emails from employees.

[43] In 2019, Palihapitiya helped take Virgin Galactic public through a Special-purpose acquisition company (SPAC), previously known as IPOA.

[49] In 2021, Palihapitiya announced he planned to help take SoFi, a financial services platform,[50] and Clover Health, a Medicare insurance company, public through SPACs.

[51] This gained Palihapitiya criticism from the Financial Times, which said that he is "shilling risky reverse-mergers to retail investors on a almost bimonthly basis".

[52] Following the Clover Health SPAC merger, Hindenburg Research, a financial analyst and short-selling specialist firm, issued a report about this transaction accusing Palihapitiya of luring investors into a "broken business",[53] arguing that he failed to inform them about an active Department of Justice investigation into Clover's allegedly deceptive business practices.

[59][60][61] During the GameStop short squeeze, Palihapitiya repeatedly attacked Robinhood and its founders for being unethical by selling payment for order flow to HFT firms like Citadel Securities and pushed his fans to switch over to SoFi, which was merging with his SPAC yet failed to mention that SoFi employs the same practice of selling payment for order flow to HFT firms (including to Citadel Securities) and owns a 16% stake in Apex Clearing Corp, a clearing house involved in the controversy.

[66] In June 2021, Social Capital Survetta filed for four new SPACs, focusing on biotechnology companies, under the stock tickers DNAA through DNAD.

[79] The group launched on 11 April 2013, and its goals include immigration reform, improving education, and enabling technological innovation, all in a United States context.

"[82] At Bloomberg's Next Big Thing conference in Sausalito, California, Palihapitiya made remarks critical of San Francisco's then mayor, Ed Lee, and proposed that the city provide subsidized housing to low-income residents funded by an equity tax on startups, with the tax-and-subsidy schemes potentially restricted to particular zones of the city.

[85][86] In a later clarification to TechCrunch, Palihapitiya outlined his vision in more detail and described how his views on inequality and social mobility were shaped by his experience growing up with poor immigrant parents in Canada.

[87] In November 2017, Palihapitiya said that, for ethical reasons, he regretted helping Facebook to become the largest social media platform.

[88] He said, The short-term, dopamine-driven feedback loops that we have created are destroying how society works: no civil discourse, no collaboration, misinformation, mistruth and it's not an American problem.

Much blame has been thrown and guilt felt, but the important thing is what we as an industry do now to ensure that our impact on society continues to be a positive one.

[98][99][100][101] Palihapitiya said he and most Americans care more about domestic economic issues than the human rights abuses of China's Uyghur minority.

[102] In response, the Golden State Warriors issued a statement saying that Palihapitiya "does not speak on behalf of our franchise, and his views certainly don't reflect those of our organization.

[21] In 2010, Palihapitiya helped to buy the Golden State Warriors for $450 million;[104] he remains a minority stakeholder and board member of the team.