Ok, but the reason he (kind of) knows a bit about Marxism it is because he's a right-wing accelerationist (more specifically, a neoreactionary), and this needs to be properly said in context before just naively moving on with "he's a billionaire who has actually read Marx and has the caliber able to critique him".
Accelerationists are people who view that capitalism can be a liberating force for humanity, whether it can contradict and end itself to achieve a communisty society (left-wing), or its capitalist systems will supersede humanity itself towards a technological singularity (right-wing). There are also some other kinds such as U/acc (Unconditional accelerationism) and G/acc (Gender accelerationism). But regardless of political position they all acknowledge their influences from Marx (since he's one of the first scholars who have articulated the revolutionary aspect of non-linear capitalist growth, and often hailed as a proto-accelerationist). Though Deleuze/Guattari is perhaps the more important figure here, as (in their book Anti-Oedipus) they map out how capitalism is a deterritorializing force that scrambles away previous territories of tribe, nation, religion, family, and ideology.
To be honest, Thiel's perhaps far more dangerous than any previous right-wing populist such as Trump, since he actually has some capital and connections (and the will) in order to actually achieve his techno-feudalist dream. His dreams of an America as a monarchist society run by a CEO might be really good for the current rich elites in tech, but clearly the most of us are not them, and we would still be getting fucked anyway (previously by a corrupt neoliberal government, now by a fascist-libertarian one!). Even though some of his assessment of the pitfalls of liberal democracy in the US might be agreeable, we really should be able to think a better future society for the majority than anything of Thiel's vision.
Thanks for your comment. I wasn’t familiar with this so I googled Peter Thiel Marxism and found some stuff but it seemed off. Your explanation makes a lot of sense.
