The Enhanced Video games, a brand new sporting competitors explicitly designed to permit performance-enhancing medication, appears like a publicity stunt for the techno-macho period: Olympic athletes on steroids competing for million-dollar bounties in Las Vegas. However co-founder Aron D’Souza has a 90% gross margin telehealth enterprise in thoughts, and a pitch to governments battling getting older populations.
Launching in Might 2026 with Peter Thiel’s backing, the Video games promise $1 million bounties for breaking world information. Former Olympic athletes like sprinter Fred Kerley and swimmer Kristian Gkolomeev have already signed as much as compete. The aim isn’t simply to smash world information whereas followers cheer. It’s to construct a advertising engine for a long life business that D’Souza believes might be value trillions.
“We use sports marketing to sell a human enhancement product,” D’Souza stated on a latest episode of Fairness. “It’s a telehealth service like Hims or Roman, except we [will] have evidence that the best and fastest athletes in the world use our protocols.”
The enterprise mannequin is borrowed from Crimson Bull — excessive sports activities as commercial for the product — however the product isn’t an power drink. It’s testosterone, development hormone, or no matter else can hold people aggressive with machines and productive into their 70s and past.
Whereas the Video games are seen as controversial, D’Souza is betting the ick issue fades as soon as folks see athletes of their 30s and 40s smash world information. He and billionaire co-founder Christian Angermayer have raised “double-digit millions” on this concept and poached executives from the U.S. Olympic Committee, Crimson Bull, and FIFA to construct what D’Souza calls a mission to “upgrade all of humanity.”
“I believe that when Fred [Kerley] breaks [Usain Bolt’s] 100-meter world record in Vegas next year, it will be a watershed moment to show that enhanced humans are better than ordinary humans,” he stated.
Put one other approach: If Sputnik launched the area age and ChatGPT launched the AI growth, D’Souza thinks a juiced dash might launch the human enhancement period — and unlock the identical flood of funding.
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Longevity startups raised $8.5 billion in 2024 as curiosity in lifespan extension moved from fringe obsession to mainstream funding thesis. The attraction spans from billionaires funding anti-aging analysis to on a regular basis People turning to direct-to-consumer well being monitoring when conventional healthcare fails them.
However D’Souza believes longevity isn’t only a nice-to-have; it’s changing into a need-to-have within the face of ever-aging populations and ever-smarter machines.
In lots of components of the world, falling start charges have put main international economies on the trail towards inhabitants collapse. A latest McKinsey examine discovered fertility charges are declining beneath the substitute fee just about all over the place besides sub-Saharan Africa. Many nations have used immigration to handle the challenges of an getting older inhabitants, since immigrants normally arrive at a youthful working age, fill in crucial labor gaps, and have a tendency to have extra youngsters.
However mass migration has triggered a political backlash in Europe and the U.S., the place right-wing events have gained floor by stoking fears about immigration and nationwide identification. Immigration has been a central challenge of Donald Trump’s presidency, and D’Souza reckons the problem might push far-right leaders in nations like Germany, France, and the U.Okay. into energy.
“If you’re against mass immigration, you end up with this demographic model that looks like Japan,” D’Souza stated, including that Japan’s common age (49.8 years outdated) makes it one of many oldest populations on the earth.
“So how do you reconcile the desire for economic growth with an anti-immigration modality?” he continued. “Well, the solution has to be longevity and human enhancement, because there’s no other way. We need a young, working, tax-paying population, and that doesn’t stack up with low birth rates.”
It’s a stark pitch: Slightly than embrace immigration or increase social security nets which may encourage larger start charges, simply improve people to work longer. D’Souza dismissed the coverage options — Europe already tried supporting households, he says, and it did not carry start charges up.
Given this backdrop, The Enhanced Video games has some predictable backers, together with Thiel and Donald Trump Jr., by way of his VC agency 1789 Ventures. D’Souza describes each as “obsessive about the demographics of the nation.” Thiel has poured cash into longevity startups together with Retro Biosciences, Unity Biotechnology, and NewLimit, which he co-founded with Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong in 2021.
In fact, most of the Video games’ identical traders are additionally betting billions that synthetic basic intelligence (AGI) — primarily, AI that may carry out any mental job {that a} human can — will quickly do most jobs higher than people can. Which raises the query: If AGI is coming, why trouble extending our working years in any respect?
“We have the Sam [Altman] view of the world, which is that AGI will come, it will replace all the humans, and then the humans are basically a second-class species because there will be a superior species in the machines,” D’Souza stated. “And I think the inevitable consequence of that, which Sam won’t admit, is that humans [become] irrelevant.”
The alternate paradigm D’Souza is proposing? A contest between people and machines.
“The machines are getting better in real time, and because of outdated regulations, particularly by the International Olympic Committee and the World Anti Doping Agency… human enhancement is stifled, and so we aren’t able to upgrade fast enough to compete with the machines,” he continued. “Now, my goal is to ensure that humans can remain competitive with the machines.”
The issue with this species-level framing, although, is that not all people will essentially get the improve.
D’Souza says “technology diffusion” will result in a type of trickle-down enhancement, the place what’s appropriate for champion athletes turns into remedy for individuals who do issues like CrossFit, after which turns into extra appropriate for extra non-athletes. However the enterprise mannequin — premium telehealth providers marketed by way of elite athletes — factors towards a possible actuality the place the rich get enhanced, and everybody else will get older.
Once I recommended that enhancement applied sciences would doubtless attain the wealthiest first — and that elites would possibly hoard entry to those capabilities — D’Souza didn’t push again.
“I think that is a potentially pernicious consequence of human enhancement,” he stated.
