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Side by side photos of Sam Altman, Palmer Luckey, and Bryan Johnson

Mike Coppola/Getty Images; Kyle Grillot/Bloomberg via Getty Images; Kyle Grillot/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Twelve "tech legends" walk into a bar and start getting picked off one by one — who would you trust to suss out the killer?

You can get a glimpse into that scenario thanks to a new show that gathered a group of Silicon Valley elite — including OpenAI founder Sam Altman, Anduril founder Palmer Luckey, and biohacker Bryan Johnson — to play Mafia, a murder-mystery game of deception.

The show, which launched Thursday on YouTube and X, is from Founders Fund, the San Francisco-based venture capital firm co-founded by Peter Thiel.

For viewers unfamiliar with Mafia, the purpose of the game is "to deceive and to detect deception," the show explains, adding, "For years, everyone in Silicon Valley has played."

The game involves each player being randomly assigned a role, one of which is mafia. The mafia's goal is to kill off the rest of the players, while everyone else is trying to identify and kill off the mafia.

The first episode was filmed at Tosca Cafe, an iconic San Francisco bar and restaurant that served as the location of the famous PayPal Mafia photo published in Fortune in 2007.

The group of 12 players included: Altman; Luckey; Johnson; biohacker Josie Zayner; Wait But Why writer Tim Urban; professional poker player Liv Boeree; AI policy expert Ryan Beiermeister; Figma founder Dylan Field; Signal founder Moxie Marlinspike; angel investor Cyan Banister; Flexport founder Ryan Petersen; and Founders Fund partner Trae Stephens.

We won't give any spoilers, but the game played out over a 33-minute episode in which accusations were thrown left and right.

Luckey was quick to make jokes during the game, which made him a target to some. Some players joked about how others' real-world jobs could influence their role in the game.

"Whatever Bryan says we should go with because he can't die," Stephens said of Johnson, who founded the app Don't Die and is famous for his quest to conquer aging.

There were also some accusations thrown around between Altman and Beiermeister, who, according to The Wall Street Journal, was fired from OpenAI in January.

Mike Solana, the CMO of Founders Fund and host of the game, said in an X post that the next two episodes of the show will be released on Thursdays over the next couple of weeks.

The show is the latest example of Silicon Valley embracing new media ventures, with one of the most prominent being OpenAI's acquisition of the tech talk show TBPN.

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Kelsey is a senior reporter for Business Insider, where she covers business and tech news as well as stories about travel, luxury, and consulting.Her feature story "Disaster at 18,200 feet" received awards from the New York Press Club and the North American Travel Journalists Association, as well as honorable mention from the Society of American Travel Writers. It was also included on Longreads' and Pocket's best of 2022 lists. She has also received an American Journalism Online Award for her coverage on missing and murdered Indigenous people in Wyoming.She's appeared on CBS, NPR, NBC, and other outlets to discuss her work. She previously worked on the world news desk at the BBC in London and received a master's in journalism from Northwestern University.She can be reached by email at kvlamis@businessinsider.com or via the encrypted-messaging app Signal @kelseyv.21.Popular storiesDisaster on Denali: Inside a 1,000-foot fall on America's highest peakThrifting is more popular than ever. It's also never been worse.Rolex wouldn't service the vintage watch my mom inherited. Watchmakers say it happens all the time.A tiny, invasive bug and the climate crisis are changing how guitars are made, and shifting the course of music historyThe tourism free-for-all is overGovernment-run boarding schools were founded to 'civilize' Native Americans. Hundreds of dead children remain buried in the schoolyard graves.Meet the Texas minister who helps fly dozens of women to New Mexico every month to get abortionsPeople are flocking to Colorado for the great outdoors, but the air pollution is so bad, it's forcing many to stay insideInside Kabul: An aid worker reveals the devastating chaos that erupted during the US exit from Afghanistan

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