Twitter has since had the videos wiped, but I'm sure they're still out there somewhere. I've seen other people like Zuckerberg dodge questions, but I've never seen a man with such wealth and power suddenly become so completely terrified.
Allow me to suggest Faust by Goethe!
The usage you are criticizing is the common understanding of the term “Faustian bargaining” but it seems that you have a better understanding and it would be nice to be better informed.
I don't know if Thiel or Andreessen ever made morally questionable decisions, and indeed I can only laugh at the notion that whatever decisions they have made would appear consequential in somebody's eyes. I find this obsession with famous men in commerce—pathetic, and ultimately indicative of a lesser mind. But to bring Goethe here—reduce great art to a tool of envy and true impotence—now, I find that deeply offensive. I say: Don't pollute the beautiful things with your petty personal politics and fixations. If the beautiful is not important to you—doesn't mean it's not important to others.
Otherwise, the Faustian in your mind might cheap-skate into uselessness when it comes to reading/understanding the truly exceptional acts.
Die Tat ist alles, nichts der Ruhm!
So because of the supernatural elements of acquiring the unattainable would you say that it is unusable as a real world metaphor or analogy?
Or is there a real life example that you believe would fall under the category of a Faustian Bargain?
I'm sure you've come across acts and thoughts like that.
If you eliminate the mundane like "power" and moneys, what remains? Well, plenty remains in fact. Imagine a scientist that would try and test dangerous experimental new drugs on themselves—to save their dying daughter—disregarding the established process, in spite of conventional wisdom. There have been cases like that, and sometimes they succeed. Sometimes they don't, but it's not the outcome that makes it interesting but the act itself; this theme is explored in the second act of Faust.
I'm personally fascinated by modern-day AI researchers who have clearly made the deal, and might as well succeed in it someday to build something truly godlike with no actual regard to the contemporary ontologies of human well-being. The poetic quality is beautiful in its simplicity: as long as the irreplaceable is bartered for the divine, the Faustian applies. The distribution of moneys as well as boring ideological presuppositions need not apply.