Written by: Ye Zhen

If you were to imagine a closed-door gathering of top power figures from Silicon Valley, you would likely think of artificial intelligence, chip wars, robotics, defense technology, or the next generation of the internet.

After all, sitting in the room are OpenAI founder Sam Altman, military unicorn Anduril founder Palmer Luckey, Figma founder Dylan Field, Signal founder Moxie Marlinspike, and a group of investors controlling 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, and no one talked about funding and valuations. Instead, this group of Silicon Valley's smartest and most powerful people sat around a round table and earnestly played a game of Werewolf.

To be precise, it was the American version of Werewolf—Mafia.

Interestingly, this was not a private gathering among friends, but a reality TV show being officially filmed and publicly broadcast.

The show is called "MAFIA," and the producer is one of Silicon Valley's most legendary and controversial venture capital institutions, Founders Fund.

Founders Fund may not be as well-known as Sequoia or Hillhouse, but if you mention the companies it has invested in, people will immediately recognize its weight: Facebook, SpaceX, Palantir, Stripe, Airbnb, Anduril, and OpenAI have all appeared on its investment map.

This investment firm, founded by Peter Thiel and other members of the "PayPal Mafia," has been involved in almost every major technological wave in Silicon Valley over the past two decades. And now, it has done something that seems completely unrelated to investing—producing a variety show.

Of course, understanding "MAFIA" simply as a reality show in the tech circle might underestimate Founders Fund's true intentions.

It resembles an open experiment packaged as an entertainment program.

Why are a group of billionaires obsessed with Werewolf?

The opening of the show is quite magical.

The location is the legendary bar Tosca Cafe in San Francisco, which has seen the classic photo of the "PayPal Mafia."

(The classic photo of the "PayPal Mafia" refers to a very famous team photo in the history of Silicon Valley technology, taken during a gathering of the early core members of PayPal. It has been repeatedly referenced to symbolize the massive impact these individuals had on the subsequent entrepreneurial ecosystem in Silicon Valley.)

And this time, sitting at the table are the new generation of Silicon Valley power core:

• Sam Altman (Founder and CEO of OpenAI)
• Palmer Luckey (Founder of Anduril Industries)
• Dylan Field (Co-founder and CEO of Figma)
• Moxie Marlinspike (Co-founder of Signal)
• Bryan Johnson (Founder of the "Don’t Die" project)
• Trae Stephens (Partner at Founders Fund)
• Ryan Petersen (Founder and CEO of Flexport)

If you simply sum up the market capitalization 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, kill, and vote.

In the eyes of Founders Fund market manager Mike Solana, this seemingly absurd arrangement is actually a deliberate rebellion against the traditional VC content form.

For the past decade or so, the most common narrative style in the tech circle has been founders telling standardized life stories on podcasts: a love for programming, failed startups, changing the world.

After hearing it so many times, everyone starts to sound the same.

But Werewolf is different.

It doesn't give you preparation time and doesn't allow you to package your narrative.

You must judge others' intentions in a very short time and make decisions under conditions of severely asymmetric information, and the behavior patterns presented under this pressure often come closer to true personality than any interview.

Thus, this game essentially becomes a "personality revealing experiment."

Sam Altman dissects everyone's speaking logic as if analyzing an AI model; Palmer Luckey continues his usual teasing style, quickly becoming the target of everyone's accusations just minutes after the game starts due to his overly active participation; and Signal founder Moxie Marlinspike delivers the most spectacular moment of the entire show—with just one sentence, he successfully alters everyone's thought framework.

Silicon Valley big shots at the card table

The game spiraled out of control from the first night.

After Figma founder Dylan Field was the first to be "executed" by the Mafia, the entire situation quickly fell into an information vacuum, and everyone began relying on intuition and experience for reasoning.

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 had "watched too many Korean dramas."

As everyone was speaking over each other, Sam Altman spoke up. With his extremely calm defense and analysis ability, he began to analyze the statements and defenses of others.

When Signal founder Moxie confidently accused biohacker Josie Zayner of being in the Mafia, Altman noticed something unusual:

"Moxie, as an old player, is taking a significant risk to accuse a newcomer; this is interesting... This extremely certain way of speaking feels very 'Mafia.' Moxie, I think you resemble the Mafia the most."

However, this straightforward strategy made him an immediate target. In the voting on the third night, Altman regretfully exited the game.

When the host announced that he was "dismembered by the townsfolk," laughter erupted in the room. Someone even added a comment: "At least that proves he is not a superintelligent AI."

Silicon Valley's "new wealth code" in the infotainment era

After the "MAFIA" reality show launched on YouTube and X platforms, it quickly attracted attention in the tech circle, with the first episode's view count easily surpassing ten thousand in a short time.

In the context of traditional media gradually declining and some talk shows being canceled, Silicon Valley's venture capital giants are boldly taking on the baton of content creation. From early a16z's hefty investments in media matrices to OpenAI's recent acquisition of tech talk show TBPN, and now Founders Fund personally stepping in to shoot entertainment variety shows, the underlying business logic remains highly consistent.

In this modern society reshaped by social media, the path to power and influence is increasingly paved with "infotainment."

Whether it's Bryan Johnson gaining traffic through showcasing bizarre anti-aging routines online or Elon Musk leveraging his personal influencer matrix to boost his business empire, Silicon Valley's new elite understand better than anyone else— in the internet age, controlling traffic, creating narratives, and even performing smartly in public are becoming the most core forms of commercial capital.

Although the venture capital bigwigs at this long table are playing games, the intricate defenses they exhibit, the logical disassemblies, the highly provocative eloquence, and the decisive decisions made quickly in the absence of sufficient information are precisely the underlying genetic traits that have led to their success in the real business world.

免责声明：本文章仅代表作者个人观点，不代表本平台的立场和观点。本文章仅供信息分享，不构成对任何人的任何投资建议。用户与作者之间的任何争议，与本平台无关。如网页中刊载的文章或图片涉及侵权，请提供相关的权利证明和身份证明发送邮件到support@aicoin.com，本平台相关工作人员将会进行核查。