One of the world’s most powerful technology leaders has reportedly warned that regulating artificial intelligence risks hastening the coming of the Antichrist.

Peter Thiel, the conservative billionaire who co-founded Palantir, the data analytics group, and PayPal, the payments operator, is said to have made the comments during a lecture delivered in San Francisco this week.

Thiel, a former donor to Donald Trump and mentor to JD Vance, the vice-president, said that fearing or regulating promising technology and scientific progress, including in AI, risked courting the devil, according to the Wall Street Journal, which cited people who attended the event.

Palantir said last week it would invest up to £1.5 billion in the UK, creating up to 350 jobs, part of a package of announcements from US technology companies which coincided with Trump’s state visit.

The Ministry of Defence is expected to spend up to £750 million on Palantir’s AI technology in return, which could help identify targets on the battlefield in any future war.

The deal has prompted concerns that it could be at the expense of British companies and jobs.

The Times has previously reported on Thiel’s devout Christian views and their mingling with his business interests and how he is among several Silicon Valley figures who have been speaking more openly about their faith.

Peter Thiel meeting Mike Pence, the former vice-president, and Donald Trump in December 2016 after their election victory

DREW ANGERER/GETTY IMAGES

Thiel, an investor in defence and weapons development technology companies, is in the midst of delivering a sold-out series of lectures on the biblical Antichrist.

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The talks have been organised by a collective known as Acts 17 Collective — “Acts” standing for “Acknowledging Christ in Technology and Society”. The nonprofit group was founded last year by Michelle Stephens, a healthcare start-up executive and the wife of Trae Stephens, a partner at Thiel’s Founders Fund, a venture capital firm. Stephens is also co-founder of Anduril Industries, which makes and sells autonomous weapons systems.

The talks were marketed as “off the record” but a guest at the first of four talks published notes of the first lecture on his personal website.

His post, which has since been removed, was picked up by the San Francisco Standard, and had reportedly said that Thiel argued that because we are increasingly concerned about existential threats, the time is ripe for the Antichrist to rise to power, promising peace and safety by strangling technological progress with regulation.

Sir Keir Starmer tours Palantir Technologies headquarters in Washington in February

CARL COURT/AFP

Michelle Stephens is reported to have told Kshitij Kulkarni, the software executive behind the post: “You are in violation of the clear off the record [policy] we implemented and reiterated many times. Your ticket is revoked without refund.”

Thiel has previously warned against the emergence of an individual or system that could exploit fears of global catastrophe driven by AI to enforce a “one-world totalitarian state” that undermines human freedom.

He has previously suggested that Greta Thunberg could be the Antichrist, but her name is not thought to have come up at the talks so far.

Sir Ben Wallace, the former defence secretary, told Times Radio this month that Lord Mandelson, before he was sacked as ambassador to the US, had been “proactive” in ringing up No 10 and telling them to “make sure we buy American equipment to try and placate Trump”.

A report by Francesca Albanese, special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories, to the UN Human Rights Council, criticised the work of corporations including Palantir, with Israel and the Israel Defence Forces. Bloomberg previously reported that the IDF used Palantir’s software to strike targets in Gaza.

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Palantir has said its work “in Israel pre-dates the terror attack, and is in line with our global support of US allies and liberal democracies”.

The business has hit back at what it called “baseless” claims that it was the developer of AI-assisted targeting software allegedly used by the IDF in Gaza, or that it is involved with the “Lavender” database used by the IDF for targeting cross-referencing.

Thiel named the company after the crystal balls used as “seeing stones” in The Lord of the Rings.

Louis Mosley, grandson of Oswald Mosley and nephew of the late Formula 1 boss Max Mosley, is the head of Palantir’s London office.

Its technology was rumoured to have been used to help locate Osama bin Laden, who was shot dead by US special forces at his hideout in Pakistan in 2011.