By: Ye Zhen
If you were to imagine a closed-door gathering of Silicon Valley's top power players, you would most likely think of artificial intelligence, the chip war, robotics, defense technology, or the next generation of the internet.
After all, the people seated in the room include OpenAI founder Sam Altman, defense tech unicorn Anduril founder Palmer Luckey, Figma founder Dylan Field, Signal founder Moxie Marlinspike, and a group of investors directing the flow of hundreds of billions of dollars in capital.
But a recent gathering in San Francisco was nothing like that.
No one discussed AI models, nor did anyone talk about funding rounds and valuations. Instead, this group of Silicon Valley's smartest and most powerful people sat around a circular table and seriously started playing a game of Werewolf.
To be precise, the American version of Werewolf—Mafia.
What's even more interesting is that this was not a private gathering among friends, but a formally filmed and publicly broadcast reality show.
The show is simply called "MAFIA," and the producer is one of Silicon Valley's most legendary and controversial venture capital firms: Founders Fund.
Founders Fund might not be as well-known as Sequoia or Hillhouse, but if you mention the companies it has invested in, its weight becomes immediately apparent: Facebook, SpaceX, Palantir, Stripe, Airbnb, Anduril, and OpenAI have all appeared in its investment portfolio.
This investment firm, founded by Peter Thiel and other members of the "PayPal Mafia," has participated in almost all of Silicon Valley's most important technological waves over the past two decades. And now, it's doing something that seems completely unrelated to investing—making a variety show.
Of course, simply understanding "MAFIA" as a tech circle reality show might underestimate Founders Fund's true intentions.
It resembles more of a public experiment packaged as entertainment.
Why Are These Billionaires Obsessed with Werewolf?
The opening of the show is surreal.
The location is the legendary Tosca Cafe in San Francisco, a place that holds the iconic group photo of the "PayPal Mafia."
(The iconic "PayPal Mafia" group photo refers to a famous team photo in Silicon Valley's tech history, taken during a gathering of PayPal's early core members. It has been repeatedly referenced to symbolize the enormous influence this group had on the subsequent Silicon Valley entrepreneurial ecosystem.)
And this time, seated around the table is the new generation of Silicon Valley's power core:
- Sam Altman (OpenAI Founder & CEO)
- Palmer Luckey (Anduril Industries Founder)
- Dylan Field (Figma Co-founder & CEO)
- Moxie Marlinspike (Signal Co-founder)
- Bryan Johnson ("Don't Die" Project Founder)
- Trae Stephens (Founders Fund Partner)
- Ryan Petersen (Flexport Founder & CEO)
If you simply added up the market value and influence of these individuals' companies, this table could almost be seen as a miniature "global tech economy."
But the first thing they did was: close their eyes, commit a murder, and vote.
In the view of Founders Fund's Head of Marketing, Mike Solana, this seemingly absurd arrangement is actually a deliberate rebellion against the traditional VC content format.
Over the past decade-plus, the most common narrative style in the tech world has been founders telling standardized life stories on podcasts: loving programming, failing at a startup, changing the world.
After hearing enough, everyone started to sound similar.
But Werewolf is different.
It doesn't give you time to prepare, nor does it allow you to package your narrative.
You must judge others' intentions in an extremely short time and make decisions under conditions of severe information asymmetry. The behavioral patterns revealed under this kind of pressure are often closer to true personality than any interview.
Thus, this game essentially becomes a "personality development experiment."
Sam Altman dissects everyone's speech logic like he's analyzing an AI model; Palmer Luckey continues his characteristic banter, becoming a target within minutes of the game starting due to his excessive activity; and Signal founder Moxie Marlinspike delivers the most brilliant moment of the entire show—with just one sentence, he successfully changes everyone's frame of thinking.
Silicon Valley Moguls at the Card Table
The game spiraled out of control from the first night.
After Figma founder Dylan Field was executed by the mafia in the first round, the situation quickly plunged into an information vacuum, forcing everyone to rely on intuition and experience for deduction.
AI policy expert Ryan Beiermeister took the lead, questioning Trae Stephens and Bryan Johnson for overreacting upon hearing the news of the death, while biohacker Josie Zayner defended Bryan by saying he "watches too many Korean dramas."
Just as everyone was talking over each other, Sam Altman spoke up. Relying on extremely calm defense and analytical skills, he began analyzing others' statements and defenses.
When Signal founder Moxie confidently accused biohacker Josie Zayner of being in the mafia, Altman sensed something off:
"It's interesting that Moxie, as an experienced player, would take such a big risk to accuse a newbie... This highly certain way of speaking feels very 'mafia.' Moxie, I think you are the most like mafia."
However, this open-play strategy instantly made him a target. In the third night's vote, Altman was regretfully eliminated.
When the host announced he had been "drawn and quartered" by the townspeople, the room erupted in laughter. Someone even added, "At least this proves he's not a super-intelligent AI."
The Silicon Valley "New Wealth Password" in the Age of Infotainment
After the "MAFIA" reality show premiered on YouTube and X, it quickly drew attention within the tech circle, with the first episode easily surpassing ten thousand views in a short time.
Against the backdrop of traditional media's gradual decline and the cancellation of some talk shows, Silicon Valley's VC giants are ostentatiously taking up the baton of content creation. From a16z's heavy investment in its media matrix earlier, to OpenAI's recent acquisition of the tech talk show TBPN, to Founders Fund now personally producing entertainment variety shows, the underlying business logic is highly consistent.
In modern society, reshaped by social media, the path to power and influence is increasingly paved with "Infotainment."
Whether it's Bryan Johnson gaining traffic by showcasing bizarre anti-aging routines online, or Elon Musk bolstering his business empire through his personal influencer network, Silicon Valley's new generation of elites understand better than anyone—in the internet age, controlling traffic, crafting narratives, and even performing skillfully in public are becoming the most crucial forms of business capital.
Although the venture capital moguls were playing a game at this long table, the precise defense, logical deconstruction, highly persuasive eloquence, and decisive actions they demonstrated in the face of insufficient information are precisely the underlying genes that have made them successful in the real business world.
