Ajay Royan is a founder and managing general partner of Mithril Capital, a multi-billion dollar venture capital firm chaired by Peter Thiel. He founded the firm with Peter Thiel in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Ajay Royan grew up in India, Abu Dhabi, and Canada. He studied at Yale University.

Ajay Royan founded Mithril Capital with Peter Thiel in 2012 with an. Ajay leads the firm as the managing general partner while Peter Thiel chairs the investment committee.

At Mithril, Ajay has led investments with innovative companies located both within Silicon Valley and around the world.

He serves on many of Mithril's portfolio companies’ boards, including C2FO, AppDirect, Adimab, and Auris, helping them successfully navigate high-growth periods by working with founders on Competitive strategy and organizational strategy, as well as macro trends.

Prior to founding Mithril, Ajay was a managing Director and senior investor at Clarium Capital Management, where he led unlevered growth investments and was a member of the core team that grew the firm into a multi-billion dollar fund. Ajay began his career at Braxton Associates, a unit of Deloitte, where he specialized in corporate strategy.

Ajay serves on the Science Advisory Board of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory and was elected to the Presidents’ Circle of the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine.

Ajay advocates for entrepreneurship and innovation at technology and finance events, as well as public forums such as Bloomberg, CNBC, The Financial Times, and The Wall Street Journal.

He has been a guest lecturer on macro investing at Yale University, is a charter member of the C100, and has served as a participant in the Hoover Institution’s Working team Global Markets and as one of the Churchill Club’s Tech Trends Experts.