The fellowship of the Middle Earth-themed startups

Forget stock tokenization—the hottest trend in markets today is stock Tolkienization.

Palantir isn’t just a red-hot defense tech stock, it’s also the name of the “seeing stones” in J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings series, capable of witnessing events of the past, present, and future around Middle Earth. Anduril isn’t just the tech company selling AI to governments, it’s also the name of Aragorn’s sword that was re-forged from the shards of Narsil.

Now we’ve got Erebor, which isn’t just a digital bank serving startups and crypto companies that’s actively raising funds. It’s also the Elven name for the Lonely Mountain, home to the Dwarves of Durin.

So why are all these Tolkien references popping up in markets lately? Turns out, the Venn diagram of finance and Frodo overlaps with one person: Peter Thiel.

The one entrepreneur to rule them all

Thiel—the co-founder of PayPal, an early investor in Facebook, and a prolific venture capitalist—is a self-professed Tolkien superfan, and has a history of naming companies after people, places, and things created by the esteemed British author.

Thiel founded Valar Ventures and Mithril Capital, which are VC firms, and also the names of godlike beings and a super-strong metal, respectively, in Tolkien’s universe. He’s in charge of Lembas LLC and Rivendell One LLC, holding companies for his other investments and also the respective names of Elven bread and an Elven sanctuary. And his Founders Fund is an investor in Erebor, the forthcoming bank being launched by billionaires including the co-founder of…Anduril. Got it?

Clearly, helping start Palantir and investing in both Anduril and Erebor was no happy coincidence. Thiel’s love of all things Lord of the Rings has translated to a naming convention across the years that smacks of early Silicon Valley nerdiness and modern Silicon Valley’s conservatism.

While it seems unlikely that the staunchly anti-war Tolkien (who came to his stance after serving in the trenches in WWI) would endorse the idea of his creation providing the names to defense companies like Palantir and Anduril, considering how successful both have become, the parade of LOTR-inspired names is probably not ending any time soon. At this rate, it’s only a matter of time until there’s a stablecoin called Smaug or a cybersecurity company called Rohan.—MR