Can steroids combat population collapse? The Enhanced Games wants to find out.

The Enhanced Games, a new sports competition designed to explicitly allow performance-enhancing drugs, looks like a publicity stunt The techno-macho era: Olympic athletes on steroids compete for million-dollar prize in Las Vegas But co-founder Aaron D’Souza has a 90% gross margin telehealth business in mind and a pitch for governments struggling with an aging population.

The games, which begin in May 2026 and are backed by Peter Thiel, promise $1 million in prizes for breaking world records. Former Olympic athletes such as sprinter Fred Kerley and swimmer Kristian Gokolomiev have already signed up to compete. The goal is not just to make fans cheer when breaking world records. It’s creating a marketing engine for a longevity industry that D’Souza believes will be worth trillions

“We use sports marketing to sell a human enhancement product,” D’Souza said in a recent episode of Equity. “It’s a telehealth service like Himes or Roman, without us [will] There is evidence that the best and fastest athletes in the world use our protocol.”

The business model is borrowed from Red Bull — extreme sports as product advertising — but the product is not an energy drink It’s testosterone, growth hormone or whatever else can keep humans competitive with machines and keep them productive into their 70s and beyond.

Where games are seen ControversialD’Souza is betting the ick factor will fade as people watch athletes in their 30s and 40s break world records. He and billionaire co-founder Christian Angermeyer raised “double digit millions” on the theory and hounded the US Olympic Committee, Red Bull and FIFA executives to create what D’Souza called a mission to “upgrade all humanity.”

“I believe that when Fred [Kerley] pause [Usain Bolt’s] The 100m world record in Vegas next year, it will be a watershed moment to show that advanced people are better than normal people,” he said.

Put another way: If Sputnik launched the space age and ChatGPT launched the AI ​​boom, D’Souza thinks a juiced sprint could usher in the human enhancement era — and unlock the same flood of investment.

Longevity raised startups $8.5 billion In 2024 interest in extending life expectancy has moved from fringe obsession to mainstream investment thesis. They range from funding anti-aging research from billionaires to turning to direct-to-consumer health tracking of everyday Americans when traditional health care fails them.

But D’Souza believes that longevity is not just a beautiful thing; It’s becoming a must-have experience in the face of a growing population and ever-smarter machines.

In many parts of the world, declining rates have put major economies worldwide on the path to population decline. A recent one McKinsey study Fertility rates are falling below replacement rates everywhere except in sub-Saharan Africa. Many countries have used immigration to address the challenges of aging populations, as immigrants typically arrive at a younger working age, filling critical labor gaps and having more children.

But mass immigration has sparked a political backlash in Europe and the United States, where right-wing parties have gained ground by raising fears about immigration and national identity. Immigration has been a central issue of Donald Trump’s presidency, and D’Souza thinks the issue could push right-wing leaders to power in countries like Germany, France and the UK.

“If you’re against mass immigration, you end up with this population model that looks like Japan,” D’Souza said, noting that Japan’s median age (49.8 years old) making it one of the oldest populations in the world.

“So how do you reconcile an anti-immigration approach with a desire for economic growth?” He continued. “Well, the solution has to be longevity and human improvement, because there’s no other way. We need a young, working, tax-paying population, and that’s not going to be combined with a low birth rate.”

It’s a brilliant pitch: Instead of embracing immigration or expanding social safety nets that might encourage higher birth rates, simply encourage people to work longer. D’Souza dismisses the policy options — Europe has already tried to support families, he says, and it has failed to raise the birth rate.

Against this background, The Enhanced Games has some predictable backers, including Thiel and Donald Trump Jr., through his VC firm 1789 Ventures. D’Souza described both as “obsessed about the nation’s demographics”. Longevity has poured money into startups, including Thiel Retro BioscienceUnity Biotechnology, and NewLimit, which he co-founded in 2021 with Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong.

Of course, many of the same investors in games are betting billions that artificial general intelligence (AGI)—basically, AI that can perform any intellectual task that a human can—will soon be able to do most tasks better than humans. Which raises the question: If AGI is coming, why bother extending our working years?

“We have Sam [Altman] The view of the world, that AGI will come, is that it will replace all humans and then humans are essentially a second-class species because machines will be a superior species,” D’Souza said. “And I think the inevitable consequence of that, which Sam won’t admit, is humans. [become] Irrelevant.”

What alternative paradigm is D’Souza proposing? A competition between man and machine.

“Machines are getting better in real time, and because of antiquated rules, especially the International Olympic Committee and the World Anti-Doping Agency… human enhancement has stopped, and so we can’t upgrade fast enough to compete with the machines,” he continued. “Now, my goal is to ensure that humans can compete with machines.”

The problem with this species-level framing, however, is that not all humans will necessarily get the upgrade.

D’Souza says “technological proliferation” will lead to a kind of trickle-down enhancement, where what’s appropriate for champion athletes becomes therapy for people who do things like CrossFit, and then becomes more appropriate for non-athletes. But the business model — premium telehealth services marketed through elite athletes — points to a possible reality in which the rich prosper and everyone else ages.

When I suggested that enhancement technologies would likely reach only the wealthiest—and that elites could hoard access to these powers—D’Souza didn’t back down.

“I think it’s a potentially harmful consequence of human development,” he said.