[2] Although he was never a founder or executive at the company, he's sometimes described as a part of the "PayPal Mafia" due to his close connections with members of that group, which includes Thiel, Max Levchin, Reid Hoffman, and David O.

[10][9] Palantir received early investment from the CIA via its In-Q-Tel venture fund, and many of its first customers were intelligence agencies.

[11] Since then, Palantir has sold access to its large shared databases and to its analysis and prediction software to government agencies, militaries, police departments, financial firms, healthcare and pharmaceutical companies, and others.

[15] Lonsdale and Zachary Bookman co-founded OpenGov, a company which offers cloud-based software for government budgeting, in 2012.

[17][18] In 2011, Lonsdale, Brian Koo, and Jim Kim co-founded the San Francisco-based venture capital firm Formation 8, which focused on investing in technology companies based in Asia.

[21] Formation 8's portfolio included Color Genomics, Oculus VR, Oscar Health, Plated, RelateIQ, Wish, and Yello Mobile.

[19][24] Koo was angered that Lonsdale had not told him about the sexual assault allegations until the lawsuit, and was concerned about their impact on the reputation of his family, which controls the LG and LS chaebols in South Korea.

Lonsdale had grown concerned about Koo's investments in Asia, including his failed attempt to create a Korean presence for Wish that was ultimately viewed by Wish's CEO to be a competitor.

[23][26] Originally based in San Francisco, Lonsdale relocated the firm's headquarters to Austin, Texas in 2020, shortly after moving there with his family.

Lonsdale posted about these employees on X, saying, "I’m lucky to live in the greatest country in the world, and it will remain as such if we can keep working with the top talent of all backgrounds, including, yes, Chinese and Russians and Israelis et al, without demonizing people for imagined things they didn’t do.

[30][32][33] The group publishes a template for state legislation that includes fines of up to $5,000 for repeatedly violating encampment bans and language to facilitate involuntary psychiatric commitments.

According to Rolling Stone, the Cicero Institute "helped transform homelessness policing from a niche fixation of a segment of Silicon Valley into a rallying cry in the culture war".

[32] In November 2020, Lonsdale announced that he was moving his family, 8VC, and the Cicero Institute from the Bay Area to Austin, Texas.

[26][34] In an opinion editorial published in The Wall Street Journal, he cited California's "bad policies [that] discourage business and innovation", worsening public safety, high taxes, and a deteriorating quality of life as the primary factors in his decision.

[35] In the editorial and subsequent interviews, Lonsdale argued that the "intolerant far left" that ran California's government and were the loudest voices in Silicon Valley companies were the root cause of these problems.

[41][42] According to The New York Times, Lonsdale is among the leaders of the super PAC, and was a major fundraiser for the committee in addition to making his own $1 million contribution.

[43] Julie Bort later wrote in Business Insider that the reporting on the allegations, which largely "vilified" him, had damaged his reputation.

She also wrote that he had been "helped by the press" in the matter, by a longform article by Emily Bazelon for The New York Times "that depicted his ex as an emotionally fragile woman, him as an awkward bro-type, and their relationship as something that wasn't particularly good for either of them.