The Enhanced Video games, a brand new sporting competitors explicitly designed to permit performance-enhancing medicine, seems like a publicity stunt for the techno-macho era: 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 ageing populations.
Launching in Could 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 objective isn’t simply to smash world information whereas followers cheer. It’s to construct a advertising and marketing engine for a long life business that D’Souza believes shall be price trillions.
“We use sports activities advertising and marketing to promote a human enhancement product,” D’Souza stated on a latest episode of Fairness. “It’s a telehealth service like Hims or Roman, besides we [will] have proof that the most effective and quickest athletes on the planet 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, progress hormone, or no matter else can preserve 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 tens of millions” on this idea and poached executives from the U.S. Olympic Committee, Crimson Bull, and FIFA to construct what D’Souza calls a mission to “improve all of humanity.”
“I imagine that when Fred [Kerley] breaks [Usain Bolt’s] 100-meter world document in Vegas subsequent yr, it will likely be a watershed second to point out that enhanced people are higher than bizarre people,” he stated.
Put one other approach: If Sputnik launched the area age and ChatGPT launched the AI increase, D’Souza thinks a juiced dash may 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 Individuals 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 elements of the world, falling beginning charges have put main world economies on the trail towards inhabitants collapse. A latest McKinsey study discovered fertility charges are declining beneath the substitute charge just about all over the place besides sub-Saharan Africa. Many nations have used immigration to handle the challenges of an ageing inhabitants, since immigrants often arrive at a youthful working age, fill in vital 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 id. Immigration has been a central situation of Donald Trump’s presidency, and D’Souza reckons the problem may push far-right leaders in nations like Germany, France, and the U.Okay. into energy.
“For those who’re in opposition to mass immigration, you find yourself with this demographic mannequin that appears like Japan,” D’Souza stated, including that Japan’s common age (49.8 years old) makes it one of many oldest populations on the planet.
“So how do you reconcile the will for financial progress with an anti-immigration modality?” he continued. “Nicely, the answer must be longevity and human enhancement, as a result of there’s no different approach. We want a younger, working, tax-paying inhabitants, and that doesn’t stack up with low beginning charges.”
It’s a stark pitch: Reasonably than embrace immigration or develop social security nets that may encourage increased beginning charges, simply improve people to work longer. D’Souza dismissed the coverage alternate options — Europe already tried supporting households, he says, and it did not carry beginning 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 concerning 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.
After all, most of the Video games’ similar buyers are additionally betting billions that synthetic basic intelligence (AGI) — basically, AI that may carry out any mental activity {that a} human can — will quickly do most jobs higher than people can. Which raises the query: If AGI is coming, why hassle extending our working years in any respect?
“We have now the Sam [Altman] view of the world, which is that AGI will come, it’s going to substitute all of the people, after which the people are principally a second-class species as a result of there shall be a superior species within the machines,” D’Souza stated. “And I feel the inevitable consequence of that, which Sam gained’t admit, is that people [become] irrelevant.”
The alternate paradigm D’Souza is proposing? A contest between people and machines.
“The machines are getting higher in actual time, and due to outdated rules, notably by the Worldwide Olympic Committee and the World Anti Doping Company… human enhancement is stifled, and so we aren’t in a position to improve quick sufficient to compete with the machines,” he continued. “Now, my objective is to make sure that people can stay aggressive with the machines.”
The issue with this species-level framing, although, is that not all people will essentially get the improve.
D’Souza says “expertise diffusion” will result in a kind 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 companies 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 advised that enhancement applied sciences would possible attain the wealthiest first — and that elites would possibly hoard entry to those capabilities — D’Souza didn’t push again.
“I feel that could be a probably pernicious consequence of human enhancement,” he stated.