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Jul 7

Ripple’s ties to Ashton Kutcher, Ron Burkle, Opus Dei, PayPal mafia and Jeffrey Epstein’s elite network

This thread summarizes the intricate web of connections between Ripple, a blockchain company, and influential figures in finance, technology, and controversial networks, including Ashton Kutcher, Ron Burkle, the PayPal Mafia, Opus Dei, and Jeffrey Epstein’s circle. Through A-Grade Investments and Sound Ventures, Kutcher and Burkle invested in Ripple and related ventures like Mintable and BitGo, alongside PayPal Mafia members such as Peter Thiel and Reid Hoffman, who also backed Ripple-affiliated firms like OpenAI and ConsenSys. These investments intersect with Epstein’s network through Brock Pierce, Tether’s co-founder and Epstein’s crypto advisor, who attended his 2011 Mindshift event, and figures like Bill Clinton, listed in Epstein’s “black book” and a Ripple Swell conference speaker. Epstein’s ties extend to tech through funding OpenCog and connections to MIT Media Lab, while Opus Dei’s influence appears via investments in Ripple’s early partner Banco Santander and Burkle’s Yucaipa Companies, linked to Vatican-associated fraud with Raffaello Follieri. The connections highlight a convergence of cryptocurrency innovation, venture capital, and elite social networks, raising questions about transparency, influence, and potential conflicts of interest in Ripple’s rise. These ties suggest Ripple’s growth leveraged not only technological innovation but also strategic alliances within powerful financial and tech ecosystems, some tainted by Epstein’s shadow. The point of these connections is to illustrate how Ripple’s network spans legitimate business, controversial figures, and opaque financial dealings, potentially amplifying its influence while inviting scrutiny.

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1/ 6

Ron Burkle, Ashton Kutcher, Guy Oseary and A-Grade Investments, Part I

Ron Burkle is an American billionaire businessman. His net worth is estimated at around $2-3 billion, built through grocery chain mergers and investments in tech startups and sports, including part ownership of the Pittsburgh Penguins.

Burkle, Ashton Kutcher, and Guy Oseary co-founded A-Grade Investments in 2010, a venture capital fund focused on tech startups, turning the $30 million fund into $250 million. In 2012, they raised additional capital from billionaires like David Geffen and Mark Cuban. David Geffen co-founded Digital Entertainement Network with Brock Pierce, founder of Blockchain Capital, co-founder of Tether, and Jeffrey Epstein’s personal crypto adviser who attended his Mindshift event on Little St. James Island in 2011.

A-Grade Investments investments:

Vicarious, an AI company founded in 2010 by D. Scott Phoenix and Dileep George, was based in San Francisco, focused on developing artificial general intelligence (AGI) for robots, using brain-inspired computational principles. Its technology aimed to automate complex tasks like kitting, palletizing, and packaging, with applications in manufacturing and e-commerce. Vicarious raised $250 million over eight funding rounds, with its latest Series D round in 2017 for $50 million. Investors included high-profile names like Mark Zuckerberg, Dustin Moskovitz, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Marc Benioff, Peter Thiel, Vinod Khosla, and A-Grade Investments (Ron Burkle, Ashton Kutcher and Guy Oseary’s fund). The company was acquired by Alphabet’s Intrinsic in April 2022 for an undisclosed amount. Alphabet is the parent company of Google, a seed investor of Ripple and focused on AI advancement, including DeepSeek and Gemini. Marc Benioff and Ashton Kutcher both funded Mintable, an NFT platform backed by Ripple’s Creator Fund. Other investors of Mintable include Animoca Brands, which also funded Polysign, a Ripple subsidiary (now defunct) and RIT (Rothschilds venture capital). RIT and George Soro’s Soros Fund Management are invested in Animoca Brands and Polysign as well. (More on these connections later).

Coincidentally, Sam Altman, Jeff Bezos, Peter Thiel, Mark Zuckerberg and Dustin Moskovitz, all funders in Vicarious, have their own ties to DARPA and the CIA:

Sam Altman held a position at DARPA before co-founding OpenAI, the leading AI company for LLM that has grown in the tens of billions of dollars, going from a “non-profit” to “for-profit” company. Reid Hoffman of PayPal mafia is a board member, and Elon Musk and Peter Thiel are co-founders and investors in OpenAI, amongst others. Jeff Bezos grandfather, Lawrence Preston Gise, was a founding member of the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), later renamed DARPA, where he worked on space technology and missile defense systems. DARPA, under Gise’s early influence, laid the groundwork for innovations like the internet (ARPAnet), voice recognition, and high-speed networking. Gise retired in 1968 to his Texas ranch, where he mentored a young Jeff Bezos. Peter Thiel’s Palantir company was funded by the CIA’s investment branch, In-Q-Tel and recieved many US government contracts since thier founding in 2003. Just one year prior to Palantir’s founding, a DARPA project called TIA (Total Information Awareness). Admiral, John Poindexter led TIA aimed at developing advanced data collection and analysis technologies to enhance national security by detecting and preventing terrorist threats. TIA sought to integrate vast datasets—financial transactions, travel records, communications, and more—using AI and data mining to identify patterns of potential terrorist activity. The program included tools like predictive modeling, biometric recognition, and real-time surveillance to create a comprehensive intelligence network. Public and congressional concerns over privacy violations and potential abuse led to significant backlash. Critics feared TIA’s broad surveillance capabilities could infringe on civil liberties, creating a "Big Brother" system. In 2003, Congress defunded TIA, effectively halting the program, though some components reportedly continued under classified projects or were redistributed to other agencies like the NSA. Coincidentally, Palantir was founded immediately after TIA was defunded. Peter Thiel also was the first outside funder and board member of Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook. Facebook was founded the exact same day (February 2, 2004) as the day DARPA’s LifeLog was defunded. DARPA's LifeLog project, launched in 2003, aimed to create a system for collecting and analyzing an individual's daily activities, communications, and experiences to build a comprehensive digital record. The goal was to use AI to process data from emails, phone calls, locations, and other personal interactions to identify patterns, predict behaviors, and enhance decision-making, primarily for military applications like improving soldier performance or intelligence analysis. The project raised privacy concerns due to its potential for mass surveillance. LifeLog faced public and congressional scrutiny similar to the TIA program. Dustin Moskovitz, funder of Vicarious along with Thiel, Zuckerberg and Bezos, was a co-founder of Facebook with Mark Zuckerberg.

Like the above technocracts, Ashton Kutcher is likely a CIA asset/ agent. Ashton Kutcher has made several jokes (or hidden in plain sight truthful remarks) over the years about him being in the CIA. He has tweeted “Spent the afternoon picking the brain of a former CIA guy. It really makes you wonder if anything you come in contact w/ isn not manipulated.” He also posted an image on twitter drinking out of a coffee mug with the CIA logo on it and the caption”Just sending out a morning shout to the men and woman of the intelligence community that keep us safe and protect our country.” Kutcher has also been known to wear hats with the CIA logo and Freemason’s square and compass symbol. Kutcher has also testified in court that he, with the help of the CIA and FBI, helped save thousands of kids from human trafficking via his Thorn foundation. His foundation, Thorn, works closely with Palantir, a CIA (In-Q-Tel) funded AI congolmerate. Kutcher also has ties to many people in hollywood who were close with Bill Clinton and Jeffrey Epstein. Epstein was a known intelligence asset for both CIA and Israel’s Mossad. He may have been tapped as an agent or planted in Hollywood by the CIA.

Dustin Moskovitz is a lead funder of Open Philanthropy Project. Two Open-AI employees, Helen Toner and Holden Karnofsky, are members of Open Philanthropy Project. Also, MIRI (Machine Intelligence Research Group) gave a large donation to the project. MIRI members and largest donors include Elon Musk and Jed McCaleb, Ripple’s co-founder. MIRI also founded OpenCog, an open source AI platform that was funded by Jeffrey Epstein through his Jeffrey Epstein VI Foundation. Gino Yu and Ben Goertzel were leaders of OpenCog who received Epstein’s funding. Gino Yu also founded Dbrain, a company backed by Sam Altman through his Y Combinator.

Airbnb is one of the start-ups that A-Grade Investments made that boosted their fund’s value considerably. Airbnb was also backed by Sam Altman through his Y Combinator, Kevin Hartz, Jeff Bezos, and several PayPal mafia members such as Keith Rabois, Peter Thiel and Reid Hoffman. Silver Lake and Tiger Global are also investors. Ripple’s CEO Brad Garlinghouse is an advisor at Silver Lake and Tiger Global is a funder of Ripple. Silver Lake also invested in Skype, a company with funding from Ashton Kutcher. Marc Andreessen of Andreessen Horowtiz and Netscape encouraged Ashton Kutcher to invest in Skype early on, leading to one of his first and most successful startup investments.

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2/ 6

Ron Burkle, Ashton Kutcher, Guy Oseary and A-Grade Investments, Part II

To continue from the last post, A-Grade Investments helped fund BitGo, an institutional digital asset financial services company that provides clients with security, custody, and liquidity solutions. BitGo supports over 200 coins and tokens and has over $2 billion in assets in its wallet. The company's customer base includes cryptocurrency exchanges and spans more than 50 countries. In 2018, the companyintroduced BitGo Custody and launched BitGo Trust Company, a qualified custodian purpose-built for storing digital assets.

BitGo was founded by Ben Davenport, Mike Belshe and Will O'Brien. Ben Davenport has been a close friend and collegue of Brock Pierce, co-founder of Tether and Blockchain Capital. Davenport worked at Blockchain Capital for over 3 years until 2022. He also worked at Facebook from 2011-2014. Davenport investmented in ZipZap, an online money transfer provider. ZipZap was also funded by Brock Pierce and Scott Banister of the PayPal Mafia, a close and longtime friend of Peter Thiel. ZipZap’s former CEO, Alan Safahi was also a board member for Ripple for many years. He was charged and convicted of bank fraud, wire fraud and money laundering in 2023. These people invested in ZipZap all have investments and/ or worked with Ripple, including Pierce, Thiel and Safahi. Blockchain Capital also was an early investor in Kraken, an early crypto exchange that was founded by Jesse Powell, a seed fund investor in Ripple going back to 2012. Mentioend earlier, Mintable, the NFT platform backed by Ripple’s Creator Fund, was funded by RIT as well. RIT (Rothschild’s venture capital fund) is also an investor in Kraken.

BitGo has many investors, including Peter Thiel and Scott Banister of Founders Fund. Another PayPal mafia member, David Sacks, who is now Donald Trump’s crypto and AI czar in the White House, is also an investor of BitGo through his Craft Venture VC. Elon Musk, former PayPal CEO and mafia member, has been given funding for several of his companies, including Tesla, Neuralink and SpaceX, from Antonio Gracias through his Valor Equity Partners. Valor is another funder of BitGo as well. Finally, Ron Burkle, Ashton Kutcher and Guy Oseary, through their co-founded A-Grade Investments, are also investors of Ben Davenport’s BitGo.

A-Grade Investments also has an early investment in the heavily celebrity funded company, Casper. Some celebrities who are funded in Casperinclude: Kevin Spacey, Nas, Scooter Braun, Ashton Kutcher, 50 Cent (Curits Jackson) and Adam Levine. Nas (Nasir Jones) is also invested in, through his QueensBridge Venture Partners VC, Altered State Machine, a company that was quickly aquired by Futureverse, a metaverse startup funded by Ripple. Nas is also invested in Prism Skylabs, a company backed by Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse.

Scooter Braun met with Ripple and Brad Garlinghouse in 2024. He also has a close relationship with the Kushners and Eric Adams, former Mayor of New York. Eric Adam’s former Chief Counsil was Lisa Zornberg, a Ripple attorney for the infamous SEC lawsuit. Brock Pierce, a Ripple investor, is also an advisor of Eric Adams on “all things crypto”. Much like how Pierce was Epstein’s advisor on crypto and AI. One of Eric Adam’s attorneys was Alex Spiro, who also defended Elon Musk and JAY-Z. Alex Spiro also worked with Jared Kushner’s friend, Adam Neumann, an Israeli-American billionaire businessman and investor. Alex Spiro’s good friend Marc Shimmel was boyfriend of Madonna and well-known Kabbalah devotee. In 2018, Ripple partnered with Madonna to raise funds for her Raising Malawi foundation, matching all public donation. Madonna’s agent and longtime friend is Guy Oseary through his Maverick Management company. Guy Oseary, the Israeli investor and businessman who works closely with Ashton Kutcher and co-founded Sound Ventures and A-Grade Investments with Ron Burkle. In May 2018, Ashton Kutcher and Guy Oseary surprised Ellen DeGeneres on her show with a $4 million donation in Ripple's XRP cryptocurrency to The Ellen DeGeneres Wildlife Fund, facilitated through their Sound Ventures fund, which had invested in Ripple, to support gorilla conservation in Rwanda. Kutcher demonstrated XRP’s instant transfer capability by sending the funds live via a phone app live on-air.

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3/ 6

Ashton Kutcher, Guy Oseary and Sound Ventures

In 2015, Kutcher and Oseary launched Sound Ventures with $100 million from Liberty Media, moving away from Burkle’s active involvement, though he remained on good terms with them, with their teams continuing to explore deals together. Sound Ventures allowed Kutcher and Oseary to invest in later-stage startups and new sectors like AI, with Burkle no longer holding a general partner role.

Katherine Keating is the daughter of former Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating. A socialite and self-described venture capitalist, she has worked in media and philanthropy, notably as chief sustainability and strategy officer at Maverick Management, Guy Oseary’s talent agency. Keating was listed as part of the Sound Ventures team, a venture capital firm founded by Ashton Kutcher and Guy Oseary. In August 2019, Keating was identified as the "mystery brunette" in a 2010 video leaving Jeffrey Epstein’s Manhattan townhouse, waving goodbye to Prince Andrew. The footage, taken shortly after Epstein’s release from prison for child sex charges, sparked global media attention. Keating met Epstein through her then-boyfriend, hotelier Andre Balazs, an Epstein associate listed in his "black book". She also developed a friendship with Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s former girlfriend, and interviewed her for The Huffington Post in 2014, promoting Maxwell’s TerraMar Project without disclosing her Epstein connection. Keating attended Maxwell’s cocktail parties and mingled with Epstein’s elite social circle.

In May 2018, Ashton Kutcher and Guy Oseary appeared on The Ellen DeGeneres Show to surprise Ellen DeGeneres with a $4 million donation in Ripple's XRP cryptocurrency to her Wildlife Fund, aimed at protecting endangered gorillas in Rwanda. The donation, made on behalf of Ripple, was facilitated through Sound Ventures, their investment fund, which had invested in the cryptocurrency company.

Ashton Kutcher’s and Guy Oseary’s Sound Venture funded Mintable, an NFT platform backed by Ripple’s Creator Fund. Other investors of Mintable include Marc Benioff of Salesforce, Animoca Brands, which also funded Polysign, a Ripple subsidiary (now defunct) and RIT (Rothschilds venture capital). RIT and George Soro’s Soros Fund Management are invested in Animoca Brands and Polysign as well. Stanley Druckenmiller of Soros Fund Management is an investor in Palantir and a company called Relationship Science, founded by Ashton Kutcher’s business partner, Ron Burkle. Relationship Science also has funding from RIT, Joe Lonsdale of Palantir and 8VC, Strive Equity Group, Peter Thiel, Stephen Luczo, and Ken Langone. Stephen Luczo is former CEO of Seagate, a multi-series funder of Ripple. Thiel invested in OpenCoin (Ripple’s previous name) and funded Strive Equity Group. Ken Langone, Stanley Druckenmiller and Ripple are all members of Harlem Children’s Zone a non-profit, community-based organization that works to enhance the quality of life for children and families.

Sound Ventures funds several other successful tech companies, including Affirm, OpenGov, 0x, OpenAI and ConsenSys to name a few.

Affirm was founded by Max Levchin, a PayPal mafia leader that befreinded Peter Thiel shortly after moving to Silicon Valley from Chicago. Affirm also has funding from Joshua Kushner and Jared Kushner’s Thrive Capital, Andreessen Horowitz (Marc Andreessen and Balaji Srinivasan specifically) and fellow PayPal mafia leaders like Keith Rabois and David Sachs through his Craft Ventures VC.

OpenGov is a GovTech company providing cloud-based software for public sector budgeting, financial management, and citizen services, serving over 1,900 government entities. It was co-founded by Zac Bookman (CEO), Joe Lonsdale, Dakin Sloss, and Nate Levine. Similar to Affirm, OpenGov was founded by Marc Andreessen and Balaji Srinivasan through Andreessen Horowitz, as well as Ashton Kutcher and Guy Oseary through their Sound Ventures. Other investors include the Kushner’s Thrive Capital, and Joe Lonsdale, a co-founder of OpenGov. Both Lonsdale and Andreessen are Chairman and board member, respectively.

Joe Lonsdale is an investor in Thorn. Thorn, founded in 2009 by Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore as DNA Foundation, is a nonprofit focused on developing technology to combat child sexual abuse and trafficking. Thorn's tools, like Spotlight and Safer, use AI and data analytics to identify victims and assist law enforcement, partnering with tech giants like Facebook, Google, and Microsoft. Joe Lonsdale, a co-founder of Palantir and venture capitalist at 8VC, served as a board member and advisor to Thorn. He contributed technological expertise and financial support, notably during a 2014 anti-child-sex-trafficking hackathon with Kutcher, leveraging his experience from Palantir to enhance Thorn’s data-driven solutions. Palantir, a data analytics company co-founded by Lonsdale, is a technology partner of Thorn, providing machine learning and data integration capabilities to help detect patterns of child exploitation. Palantir’s pro bono work with Thorn and organizations like NCMEC focuses on anti-trafficking efforts, though its involvement has raised privacy concerns due to its surveillance capabilities.

0x is a that develops open-source infrastructure for decentralized peer-to-peer exchange of tokenized assets on blockchains like Ethereum, with its APIs powering over $125 billion in trading volume for apps like Coinbase Wallet and MetaMask. It raised $85 million across three funding rounds from investors including Sound Ventures, Greylock, Pantera Capital, and Jared Leto, but faced regulatory challenges, with the CFTC shutting down its protocol in 2023 for operating as an unregistered exchange, fining it $200,000. Other noteable investors include James Sowers, Reid Hoffman of PayPal mafia, Coinbase, Brevan Howard Asset Management, and Atlas Benjelloun. James Sowers has funded many crypto companies including Ripple, Cardano, Circle, Terra, Polkadot and BitPay. Atlas Benjelloun worked with Stripe for many years, including when Stripe helped fund Stellar in 2014. He is also a board member of Stripe and Coinbase. Atlas also invested in OpenAI shortly after Stellar. OpenAI’s Sam Altman and PayPal mafia fellow Keith Rabois are advisors for Stellar. Both Reid Hoffman and Microsoft are investors in OpenAI.

Like OpenAI, Microsoft is invested in Joseph Lubin’s ConsenSys, a blockchain software company based in Fort Worth, Texas, developing Web3 tools like MetaMask and Infura for decentralized applications on Ethereum, with a valuation of $7 billion as of 2022. It has raised $725 million over six rounds from 57 investors, including Microsoft, SoftBank Vision Fund 2, Coinbase Ventures, HSBC, J.P. Morgan, Mastercard, and Sound Ventures (Ashton Kutcher and Guy Oseary’s fund). ConsenSys has their own investments, including one in Coin Center. Mentioned earlier, Balaji Srinivasan, a fellow investor in Affirm and OpenGov alongside Sound Ventures, is founder of Coin Center. Coin Center has lead funding from Ripple. ConsenSys works closely with JPM, an investor of theirs, and Ethereum blockchain. Ethereum’s founder, Vitalik Buterin, formely worked with Ripple as an intern in the early years of the company, shortly before he moved on to create Ethereum. Another investor of ConsenSys is Colleen Sullivan, who works at Brevan Howard and CMT Capital. Brevan Howard was an investor of Polysign, the subsidiary of Ripple mentioned earleir with co-funding from Soros Fund Management and RIT (Rothschilds VC). Colleen Sullivan, through CMT Capital, funded Silvergate Bank along with Soros Fund Management, another overlapping investmern of theirs. Silvergate Bank was a crypto-focused bank that grew rapidly by serving cryptocurrency clients, with deposits peaking at $14.3 billion in 2021. It closed in March 2023 due to a massive $8.1 billion deposit run triggered by the FTX collapse, regulatory scrutiny over lax anti-money laundering controls, and a January 2023 regulatory shift that pressured crypto-heavy banks, forcing Silvergate to liquidate assets at a $1 billion loss and voluntarily wind down operations. Silvergate Bank and Soros Fund Management funded Michael Saylor’s famous crypto firm, Microstrategy (now simply name Strategy).

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@XX_1133_1221_11

Jul 5

Thread: Big Tech’s ‘Dot-Com’ Evolution into today’s Technocracy

Over the past four decades, a deeply interconnected network of Silicon Valley pioneers, tech companies, venture capitalists, and government entities has propelled the futurist technocracy movement, harnessing cryptocurrency, AI, and modern technologies to transform the global landscape. Sun Microsystems, founded in 1982 with ties to DARPA and In-Q-Tel, set the stage for Silicon Valley’s rise, later merging into Oracle, whose founder Larry Ellison maintained CIA connections, exemplifying the fusion of tech and government interests. Netscape, a browser trailblazer backed by Kleiner Perkins, evolved into Mozilla via AOL, fostering cypherpunk ideals of privacy and decentralization that influenced cryptocurrency’s ethos. Google, built with Sun alumni like Eric Schmidt and investments in Ripple, alongside Microsoft’s acquisition of Powerset—linked to NASA’s Barney Pell and Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund—advanced AI and search technologies while intertwining with crypto ventures. DigiCash, founded by David Chaum, pioneered digital currency concepts that inspired Bitcoin, with later projects like the xx network funded by Ripple’s Chris Larsen, bridging cryptography’s past and present. Singularity University, co-founded by Ray Kurzweil and Peter Diamandis with Google and XPRIZE support, champions exponential technologies, reflecting a transhumanist vision shared by Thiel and others. This web of relationships—spanning Ripple, Stellar, venture capital from Khosla Ventures and Founders Fund, and government contracts—has not only shaped the tech ecosystem but also driven a technocratic agenda where AI, cryptocurrency, and innovation converge to redefine humanity’s future.

Sun Microsystems
Oracle
Netscape
AOL
Mozilla
Google
Powerset
Microsoft
Infospace
DigiCash
Singularity
XPRIZE

Ripple
Stellar
Bitcoin

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1/ 7

Sun Microsystems, Part I

Sun Microsystems was founded in 1982 by Andy Bechtolsheim, Vinod Khosla, Bill Joy, and Scott McNealy, focusing on workstations and servers powered by the UNIX operating system. The company grew rapidly, becoming a key player in enterprise computing with its SPARC processors and Solaris OS. Sun had connections with U.S. government agencies, including DARPA, which funded early research, and In-Q-Tel, the CIA’s venture arm, which invested in Sun-related technologies for intelligence applications.

Andreas Bechtolsheim was charged with insider trading by the SEC for the 2019 Cisco acquisition of Acacia Communications. Andreas has funding in Diamond Foundry. Mark Pincus of Zynga is another invesotr in Diamond Foundry. Zynga has funding from Google, specifically John Doerr who was also a director at Sun Microsystems. Doerr, aside from working with Google, Sun Microsystems, Amazon, and Zynga, was also an advisory council member for the Jeffrey Epstein funded MIT Hamilton Project, aka “OpenCBDC”. Diamond Foundry also had investments from Wendi Murdoch, a close friend of the Kushner brothers and ex-wife of Rupert Murdoch. Vast Ventures is another important funder of Diamond Foundry, which is a VC founded by Ripple co-founders Jed McCaleb and Chris Larsen. Scott Banister of PayPal mafia and long time affiliate of Peter Thiel is another funder of Diamond Foundry.

Andreas made an early $1.1M seed and pre-seed investment of Google, making a small fortune from their success. He was a very early investor and worked with Eric Schmidt at Sun Microsystems. Eric Schmidt joined Sun Microsystems in 1983, he went on to be long time board member, director and even CEO of Google, as well as Alphabet, Google’s parent company. Schmidt also was CEO of Novell from 1997 to 2001 after leaving Sun Microsystems. Novell employed cypherpunk Chris Toshok of Netscape. Eric Schmidt also worked at Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), where Barney Pell of Powerset and Microsoft (Bing!) worked while at Stanford. Many of the largest and most recognized big tech companies came out of PARC and Stanford throughout the late 20th century through the dot com era. PARC has ties to the US government, specifically DAPRA, for funding and research.

Google (Google Ventures), along with Peter Thiel, were early investors in Ripple, formely named OpenCoin at the time of their seed funding rounds. David Schwartz, Ripple’s CTO, worked as a contractor for the National Security Agency (NSA) during his tenure at WebMaster Incorporated, a Santa Clara-based software developer. He developed encrypted cloud storage and enterprise messaging systems for high-profile organizations, including the NSA, leveraging his expertise in cryptography and secure computing. Additionally, in 1988, Schwartz filed a patent for a distributed computer system, closely resembling early blockchain concepts.

Three other executive level employees of Sun Microsystems, Bill Coleman,Edward Zander, and Michael Marquardt, all work (or worked) for Seagate Technology, a company that has funded several rounds for Ripple totaling almost $100 million going back to 2015.

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2/ 7

Sun Microsystems, Part II

Vinod Khosla, a co-founder of Sun Microsystems in 1982, transitioned into one of Silicon Valley’s most influential venture capitalists by founding Khosla Ventures in 2004. His firm has invested in over 1,000 startups, with notable successes including: Worldcoin, Oscar Health, Stripe, OpenDoor, Lattice, Cadre, Chain and Affirm. He has shaped silicon valley startup success through his billions in funding and affiliations with government-funded initiatives through DARPA and In-Q-Tel connections from his Sun Microsystems days. Vinod has close ties to the PayPal mafia, including Peter Thiel, Elon Musk and Keith Rabois, who joined Vinod’s Khosla Ventures in 2013. Rabois left in 2019 to join Founders Fund, Peter Thiel’s VC, but rejoined Khosla Ventures in 2024 as a managing director. Several of Vinod’s largest investments (and most successful) were in companies founded by PayPal mafia members.

Vinod Khosla, through his firm Khosla Ventures, has been a significant investor in Deep Genomics, a Toronto-based company leveraging AI for drug discovery and development, particularly in genomics. In 2017, Khosla Ventures led a $16 million funding round for Deep Genomics and served as an advisor. Elon Musk’s longtime friend and major investor, Steve Jurvetson, is also an advisor for Deep Genomics. Jurvetson has invested in Elon Musk’s: Tesla, Neuralink, SpaceX and is a member of the Edge Foundation.

Vinod is a member of John Brockman’s Edge Foundation. The Edge Foundation, founded in 1988, is a nonprofit organization that fosters intellectual dialogue among leading scientists, technologists, and thinkers. It hosts annual questions, events, and "billionaires’ dinners" to explore cutting-edge ideas, but faced controversy for receiving $638,000 from Jeffrey Epstein’s foundations between 2001 and 2015, raising questions about its ties to elite networks. Some noteable people who are members include: Ray Kurzweil, Steve Jurvetson, George Church, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Eric Weinstein (Thiel Capital), Bill Gates, Paul Allen, Joichu Ito (MIT Media Lab) and Vinod Khosla.

Vinod’s wife, Neera Khosla, works with Joichi Ito’s sister, Mimi Ito, at Wikimedia Foundation, backed by George Soro’s Open Society. George Soro’s investment company, Soros Fund Management, was a lead investor in Ripple CTO Davdi Schwartz’s co-founded Polysign. Vinod also backed Cadre, Jared Kushner’s real estate startup, and served on the board. George Soros and Peter Thiel led funding on Cadre. Joichu Ito was director of MIT Media Labs where Epstein donated millions to fund crypto and AI related projects and Joichu Ito was a good friend of Epstein. Ito also ran Digital Garage where he and Epstein used to funded crypto and biotech startups. Furthermore, Mimi’s husband, and Joichu Ito’s brother in-law, Scott Fisher, worked with Barney Pell at NASA for a short while, and was Nicholas Negroponte’s advisee at MIT. Nicholas Negroponte is founder of MIT Media Labs with his own ties to Jeffrey Epstein. Barney Pell will be mentioned later in this thread in more detail.

Jack Dorsey co-founded Square, a company Vinod Khosla funded and was a board member of since 2015. After Dorsey left twitter, he renamed Square to ‘Block’. He wanted to focus more on crypto within the company. He is a huge proponet and long time supporter of Bitcoin and cryptocurrency.

Olivier Janssens worked at Sun Microsystems in 1999-2001. He also was a Bitcoin investor since at least 2010 and worked with the Bitcoin Foundation as a board member with several cypherpunks that will be mentioned throughout this thread with ties to early Bitcoin companies and US governement organizations. Olivier Janssens is married into the family of the last King of Italy, King Umberto II.

Peter Todd is another Cypherpunk and Bitcoin advocate who worked at Bitcoin Foundation and has ties to the very early days of Bitcoin and Satoshi Nakamoto (likely NSA). He is good friends with Bryce "Zooko" Wilcox, founder of ZCash and Bolt. Bolt was funded by Ripple’s grant/ investment branch ‘Xpring’. ZCash was funded by Pantera, a VC where Jed McCaleb, co-founder of Ripple and Stellar, was a partner.

Steve Waterhouse, Director and team leader of Sun Microsystems, was also: Partner at Pantera with Jed McCaleb, CEO and founder of Orchid Labs with Paul Veradittakit, former Fortress Investment Group managing director, board member of Bitstamp and Change Coin. While at Pantera with Jed McCaleb, Steve invested in Chain, a company that would merge with Stellar’s Lightyear to form ‘Inter/stellar’. Several years later, Chain reverted back into Chain. Stellar allegedly retained all intellectual property from the partnership.

Steve Waterhouse, as managing director at Fortress Investment Group, was part of the Theranos founding, along with Oracle founder Larry Ellison (parent company of Sun Microsystems) mentioned earlier. Fortress Investment Group also bought Epstein’s and his partner Daniel Zwirn’s assets in 2009 after illegal activity with moving money between international funds was brought to the attention of the SEC by Zwirn himself.

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3/ 7

Sun Microsystems, Part III

Sun Microsystems was acquired by Oracle in early 2010 for $7 Billion. Oracle was founded by Larry Ellison, who at the time was still CEO. Larry Ellison was a on the board of directors for Tesla, Elon Musk’s electric car company, and an investor in Theranos, the fraudulent biotech company founded by convicted CEO Elizabeth Holmes. Wendi Murdoch’s then husband, Rupert Murdoch, was also an investor in Theranos. Mentioned earlier, Sun Microsystem’s co-founder Andy Bechtolsheim was co-invested in Diamond Foundry with Wendi Murdoch. Larry Ellison is a huge donor and supporter of Israel and IDF (Israel Defense Forces). He has personal relations with their Prime Minters, President and high ranking military and intelligence leaders, including Mossad. Oracle was founded in 1977 by Ellison. The company’s first project was a $50,000 contract to build a relational database for the CIA, codenamed "Project Oracle.” Similar to Palantir (now their partner), Oracle has longstanding ties and contracts with the CIA. Both Oracle and Palantir also work closely with the IDF and Israel government. Larry, like Vinod Khosla, had relations with Jeffrey Epstein through several channels, including Israel Prime Minister Ehud Barak, Benjamin Netanyahu, Larry Summers, Marc Benioff, Steve Jobs, Elon Musk and several others who had indirect or direct relations with Jeffrey Epstein. Dave DeWalt has ties to Sun Microsystems and worked with Oracle at executive positions as a board member of IDF created ‘TEAM8.’ Dave DeWalt is a senior member of the advisory board for Silver Lake, a company that Brad Garlinghouse of Ripple is an advisor for as well.
Andreas Bechtolsheim co-founded Arista Networks to deliver software driven cloud networking solutions for large data center and computing environments. Charles Giancarlo, managing director at Silver Lake, is a member of the board of directors at Bechtolsheim’s Arista Networks. Charles Giancarlo is former CTO of Cisco, the company Andreas Bechtolsheim was charged with insider trading by the SEC for in 2019 in regards to his Cisco acquisition of Acacia Communications. Giancarlo also is head of and co-founder of the Digital Dollar Foundation, a nonprofit that created the Digital Dollar Project to explore and promote research on a U.S. central bank digital currency (CBDC) aiming to modernize the U.S. dollar. Ripple is a partner of the Digital Dollar Foundation and participant in the Project’s research. Brad Garlinghouse, Ripple’s CEO, personally invested in Pure Storage, a Charles Giancarlo founded company.

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Jun 29

Kushner Connections

Kushner brothers, VC's/ big tech, Israel, UAE, Saudi Arabia and more

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Kushner, Israel and Saudi Arabia/ UAE Connections

Jared Kushner and Joshua Kushner are brothers from a prominent real estate family, sons of Charles Kushner. Charles Kushner is an American real estate developer and the founder of Kushner Companies, a private real estate firm based in New York City. He was convicted in 2005 on charges of tax evasion, witness tampering, and illegal campaign contributions, serving a two-year prison sentence. He was pardoned by President Donald Trump in 2020. The Kushner family (and now the Trump family) has been a close friend of Israel Prime Minster, Benjamin Netanyahu. Charles Kushner is his longtime friend who let Netanyahu stay at his New Jersey home on several occasions, Jared even offered Netanyahu his own bedroom for a weekend.

Jared Kushner served as a senior advisor to President Donald Trump from 2017 to 2021. Kushner was a key architect of the Abraham Accords, normalizing relations between Israel and several Arab states (UAE, Bahrain, Sudan, and Morocco) in 2020. He spearheaded the "Peace to Prosperity" plan, a 2020 proposal for Israeli-Palestinian peace, emphasizing economic development but criticized for favoring Israel and bypassing Palestinian input. He also facilitated U.S.-brokered deals to strengthen regional alliances against Iran. Kushner’s role drew scrutiny for his lack of diplomatic experience, security clearance issues, and potential conflicts of interest tied to his business dealings, notably with Saudi Arabia’s investments post-tenure.

Andrew Farkas is an American real estate developer and the founder of Island Capital Group, known for managing billions in real estate investments. He had many business dealings involving Kushner Companies, the real estate firm led by Jared Kushner and his father, Charles Kushner. In 2011, Farkas’s company provided financial backing for Kushner Companies’ $102 million purchase of two apartment buildings in Hackensack, New Jersey. He also previously collaborated with Donald Trump on a planned but ultimately stalled real estate project in Dubai. Farkas attended Trump’s 2017 inaugural ball alongside Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem, a business partner and CEO of Dubai-based DP World. Bin Sulayem was named as owner in the paperwork of Farkas’ Great St. Jim, LLC which is the LLC Jeffrey Epstein (a Mossad asset) used to purchase his Little and Great St. James Islands. Farkas and Epstein each own 50% shares of American Yacht Harbor located in the Virgin islands on the east side of St. Thomas. Andrew’s Father, Jonathan Farkas, was good friends with Ghislaine Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein. Both Andrew and Jonathan Farkas were close friends of Jeffrey Epstein from at least 2007 until his death in 2019. Farkas used his Island Capital Group LLC, through IGY Marinas, to purchase his 50% stake and split with Epstein for American Yacht HArbor. Farkas also owned Yacht Haven in the Virgin Islands. Jared Kushner, along with his wife Ivanka Trump and Melania Trump are in Epstein’s Black book and are placed on his St. James Island at least once.

Jared Kushner has been a good friend of Saudi Prince Mohammad bin Salman. Jared Kushner played a leading role inside the Trump administration defending Crown Prince Mohammed after U.S. intelligence agencies concluded that he had approved the 2018 killing and dismemberment of Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi columnist for The Washington Post and resident of Virginia who had criticized the kingdom’s rulers. Donald Trump once purchased a yacht (Trump renamed the ‘Trump Princess’) from Jamal Khashoggi’s Uncle, Adnan Khashoggi, a known Saudi arms dealer and fixer. It was found that Pegasus spyware was used by Saudi Arabia in the assassination. A spyware created by NSO Group with origins tied to Israel’s Mossad and connections to Saudi Arabia, Michael Flynn, Erik Prince, Joel Zamel, George Nader, Russian Oligarchs, Cambridge Analytica, Black Cube, Blackwater. Jared created a close relationship while in the White House with bin Salman, and even landed a $2,000,000,000 deal with Salman and the Saudi Arabia Public Investment Fund to fund his new investing firm, Affinity Partners. Jared met with bin Salman’s closest intermediary, George Nader, on several occasions. George Nader is a multi-convicted “lifelong pedophile”. Nader was also an “informal foreign policy advisor” for Donald Trump from 2016. George Nader, Erik Prince (Co-workers at Blackwater) and Joel Zamel (founder of Psy-Group, a psy-op specialization company) all met with Trump to create a social media manipulation campaign. Kushner and Don Jr. were also present at this meeting. Psy-Group is likely responsible for the “Qanon” psyop.

Jared Kushner, George Nader and Erik Prince also have another friend in common aside from bin Salman, Kirill Dmitriev. Kirill Dmitriev is CEO, Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF), a $10 billion sovereign wealth fund created by the Russian government; board member, Mobile TeleSystems. Close relations with the Kremlin and Vladimir Putin. Kirill may have been involved with or partially funded the Pegasus Spyware of NSO Group in Israel, which did have ties to several known and unknown Russian oligarchs working with Israel and Saudi Arabia.

Mohammed bin Salman’s cousin, Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Ad Saud, has had relations with the Trump family since the early 90’s, with ownership in the Plaza Hotel once owned by Donald Trump. When Trump and Alwaleed owned the Plaza, Epstein and Maxwell had a memorial for Ghislaines father, Robert Maxwell, a once affiliate of Donald Trump and former Mossad and Russian agent. Prince Alwaleed has been a close friend and business partner of George Soros, who a major financial backer of Jared Kushner’s Cadre, which also has funding from previously mentioned Epstein friend and business partner Andrew Farkas, who has deep ties to elite Saudi Arabian family and princes. George Soros also helped Kushner out of a debt he owed for his 666 Fifth Ave, NY property (now 660 Fifth Ave).

Brookfield Asset Managemet bailed out Kushner Companies when they purchased a $1.1 billion 99-year lease on 666 Fifth Ave, preventing Kushner Companies from filing bankruptcy. Brookfield Asset Management was a key benefactor in the IP3 International nuclear power scandal involved in the first Trump administration. The IP3 scandal also involved Jared Kushner, Michael Flynn, Thomas Barak, Erik Prince and several others. The plan aimed to build nuclear reactors in Saudi Arabia, with U.S. involvement to counter Russian and Chinese influence. Concerns arose due to potential conflicts of interest and lax oversight. Brookfield’s connection stems from its 2018 acquisition of Westinghouse Electric, a nuclear power company, for $4.6 billion. Westinghouse stood to benefit from the IP3 plan, as it could secure contracts for nuclear reactor construction. The deal, partly funded by QIA (a 9% stakeholder in Brookfield Property Partners), raised suspicions of foreign influence, especially since Kushner was involved in Middle East diplomacy, including U.S. policy toward Qatar and Saudi Arabia. Critics, including Senator Ron Wyden, probed whether Kushner’s financial ties to Brookfield and QIA influenced U.S. policy, particularly regarding the Qatar blockade and Saudi nuclear deals. Brookfield’s Westinghouse acquisition was under review by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) during this period, adding to concerns about Kushner’s potential conflicts of interest.

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Kushner and Cadre

Cadre (RealCadre LLC) is a real estate technology platform founded in 2014 by Jared Kushner, JoshuaKushner, and Ryan Williams. It connects high-net-worth investors with real estate investment opportunities,focusing on commercial properties. The company uses data-driven tools to streamline investments and hasfacilitated billions in transactions. Co-founder and former board member, Jared held a significant stake in Cadre (valued at $25–50 million in 2020) through his company BFPS Ventures LLC. He stepped back from active management during his Trump administration role (2017–2021) to avoid conflicts of interest, assigning voting rights to others, and sold his stake in 2020, leveraging a federal tax deferral program. Co-founder and active leader through his venture capital firm, Thrive Capital, which incubated Cadre. Joshua remains a key figure in Cadre’s operations, guiding its strategic direction alongside CEO Ryan Williams.

Cadre has the backing of Peter Thiel through his Founders Fund VC, George Soros who provided Cadre with a $250 million line of credit in 2015 through his Soros Fund Management, Goldman Sachs, General Catalyst, Andreessen Horowitz, Khosla Ventures, and SoftBank.

Peter Thiel worked with Jared Kushner during their time with the Trump administration, starting in later 2016 at the first “tech” meeting at Trump Tower, where both Peter Thiel and Trae Stephens of Founders Fund and Palantir were given important roles, such as adivor to the President and advisor on Department of Defense, respectively. Thiel also financially backed the Kushner VC Thrive Capital Mangement.

Both Peter Thiel and George Soros are members of CATO Institute, a libertarian think tank that intends to promote individual liberty, limited government, free markets, and peace. Its purpose is to conduct research and advocate for policies rooted in libertarian principles, influencing public policy debates through publications, events, and outreach.

SoftBank, one of the financial backers of Kushner’s Cadre company, is closely tied to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. SoftBank has investments in several Elon Musk companies. SoftBank also owns Fortress Investment Group LLC, which is was owner in VICE Media, a company owned mostly by George Soros. Fortress Investment Group LLC worked with Epstein’s Estate management in regards to Epstein’s last will and trust, the 1953 Trust.

Fortress Investment Group LLC was a part owner of Theranos, a health technology company founded in 2003 by Elizabeth Holmes, claiming to revolutionize blood testing with a device that could perform comprehensive diagnostics from a single drop of blood. It shut down in 2018 after investigations revealed its technology was fraudulent, unable to deliver accurate results, leading to lawsuits, regulatory bans, and criminal charges against Holmes and COO Ramesh "Sunny" Balwani for misleading investors and patients. Wendie Murdoch, a close friend of Joshua and Jared Kushner, as well as Ivanka Trump, was married to Rupert Murdoch for several years. Rupert Murdoch was another investor of Theranos. Wendi is invested in Cadre. She has several overlapping investments with Kushner-backed and founded companies, such as: Artsy, Oscar Health, ByteDance (TikTok parent company) and Diamond Foundry to name a few. Wendi was accused by media of being a chinese spy, getting close with many Trump family members and friends, and infiltrating politicans and media moguls, including her former husband Rupert Murdoch, a long time Trump friend and supporter.

Other Cadre investors, including General Catalyst, Khosla Ventures, and Founders Fund, also have many overlapping investments with the Kushner-founded VC, Thrive Capital Mangement. These overlapping investments include: OpenAI, Stripe, Artsy, Anduril Industries, Chain, Oscar Health, Diamond Foundry, OpenDoor, OpenGov, Robinhood, Affirm, and more.

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Kushner, Oscar Health and Theranos

Oscar Health, Inc. is a technology-driven health insurance company founded in 2012 by Joshua Kushner, Mario Schlosser, and Kevin Nazemi, headquartered in New York City. It focuses on simplifying healthcare through telemedicine, transparent pricing, and a user-friendly digital platform, offering individual, family, and small group plans, with approximately 2 million members as of March 2025. Joshua Kushner, via Thrive Capital, played a key role in its inception, while Jared Kushner, his brother, co-owned the parent company, Thrive Partners III.

Thrive Capital led Series A funding, but Peter Thiel, through his Founders Fund, joined Series A funding wirth a $30 million backing. Other investors include Google Ventures, General Catalyst, Khosla Ventures, Wendi Murdoch, Stanley Druckenmiller, 8VC and several others. 8VC is a VC founded by Peter Thiel’s co-founder of Palantir, Joe Lonsdale. Lonsdale’s 8VC overlaps several Kushner investments.

One of Oscar Health’s leading business partners is Cleveland Clinic, which was scrutinized for working with Theranos, the Elizabeth Holmes company that was closed after she was convicted on several accounts of fraud, embezzlement and money laundering. Theranos has ties to Kushner’s friend Wendi Murdoch as her husband was a lead investor of Theranos. Wendi is also invested in Oscar Health. Henry Kissinger was another investor of Theranos, who was a longtime friend of Jared Kushner, often offering Kushner support and financial advice.

Artsy is a New York City-based online art brokerage platform, founded in 2011 to help users discover and buy art from galleries and auction houses. Key figures include Joshua Kushner (investor via Thrive Capital), Jeffrey Yin (CEO since June 2024), and investors like Peter Thiel, Eric Schmidt, Wendi Deng Murdoch, Jack Dorsey and Chris Dixon. These people all have common investments, including in Cadre, Diamond Foundry, and several other companies.

Demi Moore, Ashton Kutcher’s ex-wife, invested in Artsy. Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher co-founded an anti-trafficking foundation called Thorn. Thorn partnered with AI companies Clearview AI and Palantir, both funded and co-founded by Peter Thiel. Ashton Kutcher also co-founded a ventrue capital company called A-Grade Investments alongside his friends Guy Oseary and Ron Burkle.

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Jun 27

Israeli Technocracy

Israel intelligence connections to Oracle, Palantir, NSO Group, Carbyne, Black Cube, Cambrdige Analytica, Psy-Group, Microsoft and OpenAI

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Larry Ellison and Oracle connections to Israeli Intelligence

Larry Ellison, co-founder and chairman of Oracle Corporation, has significant personal and professional connections to Israel, particularly its military and intelligence sectors. He has donated over $26 million to the Friends of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), including a $16.6 million pledge in 2017 to build a training facility for IDF soldiers, expressing strong support for Israel's security. Some former IDF members have worked for and with Oracle.

Safra Catz, born in Holon, Israel, is the CEO of Oracle Corporation, a position she has held since 2014, becoming sole CEO in 2019 after Mark Hurd’s resignation. Catz has expressed deep commitment to Israel, stating, “Larry [Ellison] and I are deeply committed to Israel.” In 2021, Oracle opened a highly secure underground data center in Jerusalem, followed by plans for a second in 2024, designed to withstand security threats and support cloud and AI operations (Now in collaberation with Palantir).

Following Trump’s 2016 election, Catz joined his transition team’s executive committee and hired Ezra Cohen-Watnik, Donald Trump’s former Chair and Member of the Public Interset Declassification Board (PIDB), and the Senior Director for Intelligence Programs for the United States National Security Council (NSC). Ezra Cohen-Watnik is Jewish. After Michael Flynn was removed as Trump’s national-security advisor, all but one person was removed who was appointed by Flynn, Ezra Cohen-Watnik. At the behest of Jared Kushner and Steve Bannon, Trump refused General McMaster to remove Cohen-Watnik like the many other Flynn-appointed men in his cabinet. Flynn, along with Stanley McChrystal, were the strongest proponets of pushing the US government to adopt Palantir technology, specifically for the US Army and intelligence.

Oracle and Palantir announced a partnership in April 2024 to deliver integrated cloud and AI solutions, combining Oracle’s distributed cloud infrastructure with Palantir’s AI and decision-making platforms like Gotham, Foundry, and AIP.

Oracle and Palantir were both used for COVID-19 AI Database technologies in 2020. Palantir was a leading partner for Trump’s “Operation Warp-speed”. Larry Ellison was also one of the first tech leaders Trump reached out to in regards to the coronavirus pandemic.

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Palantir connections to Israel intelligence

Palantir has deep ties to Israel’s military and intelligence apparatus. Since opening a Tel Aviv office in 2015, Palantir has worked closely with the Israeli Defense Ministry, particularly since the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack. In January 2024, Palantir announced a strategic partnership with the Israeli Defense Ministry to supply AI-driven targeting and surveillance technologies for Israel’s war efforts. CEO Alex Karp has publicly affirmed Palantir’s support for Israel, noting high demand for its tools, including those used for predictive policing and targeting. Reports suggest Palantir’s technologies, potentially including its AI platform (AIP), support Israel’s Unit 8200 in generating “kill lists” via systems like “Lavender,” raising concerns about civilian casualties in Gaza. Palantir’s ties to Unit 8200 are further strengthened by alumni like Hamutal Meridor, a former Verint executive with Unit 8200 connections, who leads Palantir Israel.

Palantir was funded in part by the CIA’s investment branch, In-Q-Tel. In-Q-Tel, originally named Peleus, was founded in 1999 by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) under the leadership of then-Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet, a close friend of Alex Karp, the current CEO of Palantir. Alvin "Buzzy" Krongard was also an advisor for George Tenet and worked with the CIA for many years, and worked with Alex Brown & Sons, which has ties to 8200 Unit of Israel through Orckit Communications, the first publiclly traded company based in Israel on the NYSE. In-Q-Tel was established to invest in startups developing technologies critical to national security, such as cybersecurity, data analytics, and AI, with the CIA providing initial funding and oversight, like Palantir.

Michael Flynn and Stanley McChrystal were the most agressive advocates pushing the US government to adopt Palantir technology, specifically for the US Army and intelligence. Michael Flynn was also an advisor for Israel intelligence-tied NSO Group, the creators of Pegasus spyware and Israeli cyber-intelligence firm. On July 2, 2010, McChrystal’s deputy of intelligence, Michael Flynn, put in an urgent request to purchase Palantir for McChrystal’s troops after two Palantir representatives visited him, although by June 23, McChrystal had resigned from the military. Five days after his resignation, Tiger Global Fund invested into Facebook. Peter Thiel was the lead investor of Facebook and co-founder of Palantir.

In 2013 Facebook and Palantir joined forces at Cambridge Analytica following Eric Schmidt's daughter's suggestion (Sophie Schmidt). Eric Schmidt is a member of Benjamin Netanyahu’s AI Advisory Board. At the suggestion of a Palantir employee, Alfredas Chmieliauskas, suspected Russian spies Aleksander Kogan and Joseph Chancellor hacked Facebook and sold the data to Cambridge Analytica with Steve Bannon’s approval (then Vice Present of Cambridge Analytica). Palantir employees later worked on that data. All the while, Facebook and Google were also tied to the Cambridge Analytica’s operation. At some point in 2015-2016, Michael Flynn became an advisor to Cambridge Analytica.

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NSO Group, Pegasus Spyware, and Boldend connections to Israeli intelligence

A retired U.S. Army Lieutenant General, Michael Flynn served as National Security Advisor to President Donald Trump in 2017. His ties to Israel are primarily through his consulting work with NSO Group, an Israeli cyber-intelligence firm.

NSO Group develops Pegasus, a military-grade spyware capable of zero-click smartphone surveillance, extracting data like messages, photos, and location. Classified as a weapon by Israel, Pegasus sales require approval from the Israeli Ministry of Defense, aligning NSO with Israel’s national security strategy. The company employs many Unit 8200 alumni, Israel’s elite cyber intelligence unit, known for its cyber warfare expertise.

Between 2015 and 2016, Flynn was paid approximately $40,000-$100,000 as an advisory board member for OSY Technologies, an NSO Group affiliate based in Luxembourg, and consulted for Francisco Partners, NSO’s then-owner. This occurred while he advised Trump’s campaign, raising ethical concerns about a U.S. intelligence official working with a foreign cyberweapons firm. Flynn’s role was to leverage his Washington connections to expand NSO’s U.S. market. Flynn is good friends with Michael S. Rogers, a retired U.S. Navy four-star admiral and former Director of the National Security Agency (NSA) and Commander of U.S. Cyber Command, who has significant connections to Team8, an Israeli venture capital and cybersecurity firm founded by former members of Israel’s elite military intelligence Unit 8200. Rogers joined Team8 as a senior advisor in October 2018, shortly after retiring from the U.S. Navy in June 2018 and later became an operating partner at Team8. Team8 was co-founded in 2014 by Nadav Zafrir (former Unit 8200 commander). Michael Flynn was also a Member, Public Sector Advisory Council of Palo Alto Networks and recieved over $40,000. Palo Alto Networks is 100% owned by Talon Cyber Security which is backed entirely by TEAM8 Capital, an investment arm of TEAM8.

Pegasus has been used by governments in countries like Saudi Arabia, Mexico, and the UAE to target journalists, activists, and dissidents, including associates of Jamal Khashoggi before his 2018 murder. These abuses led to global condemnation and NSO’s 2021 blacklisting by the U.S. Commerce Department for enabling transnational repression.

WhatsApp sued NSO Group in 2019, alleging Pegasus targeted 1,400 users, resulting in a 2024 court order for NSO to disclose code and a $167 million penalty. Israel intervened in 2020 to seize NSO documents, fearing diplomatic damage from disclosures.

The FBI secretly purchased Pegasus in 2019 for testing, and the CIA acquired it for Djibouti’s counterterrorism efforts in 2018, despite U.S. concerns about its misuse. A 2021 secret contract with an NSO front company gave the U.S. access to a geolocation tool, violating Biden’s 2023 executive order against commercial spyware. Side note, Peter Thiel is a registered FBI informant.

Founders Fund, Thiel’s investment vehicle, secretly backed Boldend with over $10 million in its early years, a fact undisclosed until the Raytheon presentation. This investment positioned Boldend as a competitor to NSO Group and Paragon, focusing on breaking encrypted apps like WhatsApp, Signal, and Telegram. Thiel’s funding of Boldend, a company targeting a Facebook-owned platform (WhatsApp), is notable given his early investment in Facebook.

Ehud Barak, former Prime Minister of Israel, long time Jeffrey Epstein friend and investing partner, is a co-founder and board member of Paragon. Ehud Barak also co-founded Toka, a “one-stop hacking shop for governments set up by a group of ex-Israeli military experts.” Andreessen Horowitz, a Silicon Valley investming conglomerate venture capital firm co-founded by technocrat Marc Andreessen, is a major backer and funder of Toka. Both Ehud Barak and Jeffrey Epstein, along with Peter Thiel and several former and current Israel intelligence officers from 8200 Unit and IDF funded a surveillence AI company called Carbyne.

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Jun 25

Intelligence Agencies & Technocracies (Thread and Map breakdown)

US, Israel, China, Russia and UAE

Connections around intelligence assets and agencies, big tech companies, politics and more.

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CIA/ In-Q-Tel
Palantir
Blackwater
Frontier Research Group/ R2
Carbyne
DST
Tiger Global
Meta
Black Cube
Psy Group
Cambridge Analytica/ Emerdata Ltd.
NSO Group
8200 Unit/ IDF
Apollo Global Management
COVAXX
2016 Election & Cabinet
Sueprpower Nuclear Deals
+

Donald Trump
Erik Prince
Peter Thiel
Jeffrey Epstein
Michael Flynn
Buzzy Krongard
George Tenet
George Nader
Joel Zamel
Stanley McChrystal
Michael Cohen
Steve Bannon
Vincent Tchenguiz
Thomas Barrack
Leon Black
Ehud Barak
Elliott Broidy
+

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The Blackwater & CIA Connection

The CIA had planned to expand the role of private contractors since the 1990’s. Enter Erik Prince. In 1990 at 21 years old he secured an internship in the White House under George H.W. Bush. After college at 23 years old, Prince was commissioned as an officer in the USA Navy via Officer Candidate School. He went on to become a Navy SEAL and was deployed with SEAL Team 8 to Haiti, the Middle East, and the Balkans. Erik Prince’s father’s engineering company, Prince Corporation, was sold to Johnson Controls in 1996 for $1.35 billion. That same year Erik Prince founded Blackwater. Prince purchased approximately 7,000 acres to create the largest private training facility in the country.

Blackwater has had about 12 different names over the course of the company’s history, including: ACADEMI, Xe, US Training Center, Paravant, Greystone, XPG LLC, EP Investments.

Buzzy Krongard ‘secretly’ worked for The CIA for decades before ‘officially’ working for them, going back to his early days at Alex Brown (Alex, Brown & Sons). There are more connections between Alex, Brown & Sons investments, and National Security. For instance, Sun Microsystems’ First software manager was Eric E. Schmidt, executive chairman at Google from 2011-2017, and Pentagon advisor since at least 2016.

In September 1997, following the takeover of Alex Brown Incorporated by Bankers Trust, Buzzy Krongard became Deputy Chairman of the Board of Directors of Bankers Trust, Alex, Brown & Sons and remained in that position until he joined the CIA publicly in February 1998 as a “consigliere” to CIA’s director, George Tenet

While working at the CIA, Buzzy created a subdivision called Information Technologies that spawned In-Q-Tel, a CIA-backed venture capital firm seeking to invest in the rapidly advancing tech industry. Buzzy currently sits on its board of Trustees. In 2005, In-Q-Tel invested into Palantir, an AI company founded by Peter Thiel.

George Tenet is an In-Q-Tel Trustee and longtime Palantir advisor, going back to the hunt for Osama bin Laden. Tenet requested the help of Palantir technology from friend Alex Karp in the mid 2000’s.

Buzzy Krongard, former long term CIA executive office (Once COO) and advisor to the director of the CIA, attained Blackwater’s first contract with the US military, giving rise to Erik Prince’s secret military company.

Buzzy would later go on to join the board of Blackwater in 2006, only to step down after being embroiled in a scandal the following year. Blackwater forces have been accused of using excessive force and killing civilians. Prince and many of his close advisors and employees are known as “Christian crusaders” looking to bring about destruction to the Muslim region. The Iraqi Government revoked Blackwater’s license to operate in Iraq on September 17, 2007, after a massacre in Baghdad in which 17 Iraqi civilians were killed. In 2007, Congressional Hearings began on Blackwater’s actions. A string of frightening Blackwater revelation became public. In August 2010, the company agreed to pay a $42 million fine to settle allegations that it unlawfully provided armaments and military equipment overseas concluding a U.S. State Department investigation that began in 2007.

On December 22, 2020, President Trump pardoned four former Blackwater contractors serving long prison terms for the 2007 killing of 17 innocent civilians.

In 2007, Buzzy Krongard was forced to resign from the Blackwater advisory board he had just joined after his brother, Howard Joel Krongard, then the State Department inspector general recused himself from the Congressional Hearings on Blackwater Activities. Howard Krongard had been accused by members of Congress of going easy on Blackwater because of his brother’s connections with the company. Howard Krongard, as Inspector General at the State Department, had blocked investigations of massive fraud by military contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan. At Congressional hearings, Howard feigned ignorance that his brother was a director of Blackwater, one of the key contracts being examined.

Alex, Brown & Sons (Buzzy’s former firm with deep ties to Israel and The CIA) was the underwriter of the first Israeli company to go public in the US NASDAQ, Orckit Communications. Orckit was established in 1990 by Israeli Military Intelligence electronic Unit 8200 graduate, Eric Paneth.

One of the first In-Q-Tel investments and the most well known by far is Palantir, which was funded mostly from Peter Thiel and In-Q-Tel. The connections of Palantir with another one of Thiel’s Surveillance Data Integration companies, Israeli Carbyne, with Israel’s 8200 group, and with worldwide illegal operations of surveillance of dissident groups and minorities have been explored elsewhere. (More on Carbyne and Thiel in thread)

Apollo Global Management (AGM) bought Prince’s Blackwater through Constellis shortly after the fallout of the many outed scandals. Then in 2017 Tiger Fund invested into AGM while Erik Prince lobbied Donald Trump to provide the CIA with a private network of intelligence contractors.

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The Palantir, DST & Tiger Global Connection

In 2009, Palantir hired Stanley McChrystal’s top CDR, Douglas Philippone, who commanded multiple JSOC outstations in Afghanistan that Prince had worked with. On July 2, 2010, McChrystal’s deputy of intelligence, Michael Flynn, put in an urgent request to purchase Palantir for McChrystal’s troops after two Palantir representatives visited him, although by June 23, McChrystal had resigned from the military. Five days after his resignation, Tiger Global Fund invested into Facebook. Peter Thiel was the lead investor of Facebook.

McChrystal talked about his resignation during a private event in Aspen. Julian Robertson was in attendance. As late as March 2015, Michael Flynn and Stanley McChrystal continued to work together to push Palantir, but with Palantir’s biggest endorser resigned from the military, Palantir needed another push.

In 2010 Palantir hired two lobbyist, Trent Lott and at Patton Boggs.

Patton Boggs and Erik Prince played a central roll in the Trump-Russia scandal, including Patton Boggs lawyer Don McGahn working on Trump’s campaign and Patton Boggs working with Trump’s personal lawyer, Michael Cohen

In 2011, Erik Prince’s R2 company hired Patton Boggs, and from 2011-2012 Dick DeVos’s (Erik Prince’s brother-in-law) Spectrum Health hired Patton-Boggs as well.

By the time Palantir hired Lott and Breaux, Lott already had his own Russian connection. In 2006, the same year Tiger Fund was investing in a Russian tech company tied to Gazprom, Gazprom’s subsidiary, Gazprombank hired the lobbying firm Ketchum. On April 25, 2007 Ketchum emailed Trent Lott’s National Security Advisor Mitch Waldman about Russia. By 2014, Trent Lott and John Breaux would add Gazprombank as a client.

Julian Robertson has strong ties with Trent Lott and Dick DeVos, Erik Prince’s brother-in-law. All three sit on the Children’s Scholarship Fund board and Robertson donates to Betsy DeVos’s American Federation for Children Action Fund. Trent Lott, along with Newt Gingrich, slipped in a last minute tax break for Dick DeVos’ Amway into a contentious tax compromise bill. Four months later DeVos and his wife together donated $1 million to the GOP. Amway is a MLM company once ran by the DeVos family. regulators have labeled Amway's business model a "pyramid fraud" and its’ product offerings a "masquerade”.

Betsy DeVos, Erik Prince’s sister, was a funder of Theranos. Theranos was a biotech startup founded by Elizabeth Holmes in 2003, claiming to revolutionize blood testing with a device that could run hundreds of tests from a single drop of blood. It raised billions but was exposed for fraudulent claims about its technology, which didn’t work as promised. Inaccurate test results and deceptive practices led to investigations, lawsuits, and regulatory bans. The company shut down in 2018 after criminal charges against Holmes and others for fraud. Holme’s father, Christian Holmes, was VP at Enron. Enron was an energy company that collapsed in 2001 due to a massive accounting fraud scandal. Executives used off-balance-sheet entities and manipulated financial statements to hide debt and inflate profits, misleading investors and regulators. When the fraud was exposed, Enron's stock plummeted, leading to bankruptcy. The scandal resulted in criminal charges and the company dissolved in 2007.

In 2006, a Julian Robertson-seeded hedge fund run by Chase Coleman (Tiger Global Fund) invested in DST. In 2008, Tiger Fund invested into Palantir. By the end of 2009 DST would own 10% of Facebook, financed by the Russian-state-owned Gazprom, as revealed by the Paradise Papers. DST also has investments in several Thiel and Kushner funded companies.

Yuri Milner is a Russian-born billionaire investor and entrepreneur known for his tech investments. He founded DST and made early investments in companies like Facebook, Twitter, Airbnb, and Spotify. A former physicist, he’s also known for his philanthropy, including the Breakthrough Prize for scientific advancements. Yuri invested in Kushner’s Cadre company, along with George Soro’s Soros Fund Management. He also invested in 23andMe, a company with close ties to Jeffrey Epstein and with funding through his genetisit, George Church. Anne Wojcicki is also invested in 23andMe and was a friend of Jeffrey Epstein as well. Milner’s Breakthrough Prize honors important achievements in the categories of fundamental physics. It is sponsored by Sergey Brin and Anne Wojcicki, Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan, Yuri and Julia Milner, and Jack Ma and Cathy Zhang.

Andrew Farka, a close family friend of the Kushner’s and Trumps, founded IGY Marinas which worked close with (if not a subsidiary for) American Yatch Harbor, a club in the Virgin Islands where both Epstein and the Trump family were members of.

A Moscow source said: "DST has the backing of the big boys at the top in the Kremlin, which is why it will go from strength to strength"

In 2014, when Lott and Breaux added Gazprombank as a client, Flynn was fired from his military position. Soon enough Flynn founded Flynn Intel Group registered at the same address at McChrystal’s home. (Remember, earlier in thread it was said that Erik Prince’s R2 company based in UAE listed McChrystal’s home address). December 2015, Michael Flynn visited Sergey Kislyak at Kislyak's home and dined with Putin in Moscow. In September 2016, Rohrabacher met with Flynn at Flynn Intel Group, a meeting probed by Mueller during his investigation under the new Trump administration in 2017.

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Jun 23

Technocrats and Biotech (Part 2): Futurist Foundations, Institutes and Cryptography

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Satoshi Nakamoto and early Bitcoin connections to the NSA and cypherpunks

Adam Back, a British cryptographer and cypherpunk, invented Hashcash in 1997, a proof-of-work system to combat email spam, which inspired Bitcoin’s mining mechanism and was cited in Satoshi Nakamoto’s 2008 Bitcoin whitepaper. He was one of the first to receive emails from Nakamoto in August 2008, discussing Hashcash’s reference and Bitcoin’s draft

Adam Back’s Hashcash originally used SHA-1 cryptographic hash function. The NSA created SHA-256 as part of the SHA-2 family of cryptographic hash functions. Published in 2001 by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), SHA-256 was designed by the NSA to provide secure, collision-resistant hashing for digital signatures and data integrity. Its development built on earlier algorithms like SHA-1, addressing vulnerabilities to ensure stronger cryptographic security. Back implemented SHA-256 shortly thereafter.

The US NSA and/or CIA is very likely behind the creation of Bitcoin, although it is unconfirmed whether Adam Back was directly invovled or used as a sort of proxy character with the early Satoshi Nakamoto emails.

Nick Szabo is an American computer scientist and cryptographer who developed "Bit Gold," a precursor to Bitcoin, in 1998. He’s been speculated to be Satoshi Nakamoto due to his work on decentralized currency and similarities in writing style, but he has consistently denied it. While Szabo corresponded with cypherpunks like Hal Finney and Wei Dai, no direct emails between him and Satoshi Nakamoto have been confirmed, though Satoshi cited Szabo’s Bit Gold in the Bitcoin whitepaper after learning of it via Adam Back in August 2008.

Hal Finney was a pioneering cryptographer and early Bitcoin contributor who received the first Bitcoin transaction from Satoshi Nakamoto on January 12, 2009. He exchanged emails with Satoshi in November 2008 and January 2009, focusing on Bitcoin software bugs and network issues, which were later published by the Wall Street Journal in 2014. Finney, who denied being Satoshi, was a key figure in Bitcoin’s early development but faced speculation due to his proximity to Dorian Satoshi Nakamoto and his cryptographic expertise.

Both Hal Finney and Nick Szabo were members of Extropy Foundation, a transumanist non-profit that will be discussed further in this thread.

Satoshi Nakamoto mentions a Bitcoin address starting with “NS,” sparking speculation about Szabo (whose initials are NS) or a Japanese name order for Nakamoto (NS). No direct Szabo-Satoshi emails exist, but both were part of the cypherpunk community, and Satoshi’s reference to Szabo’s work suggests familiarity, possibly through intermediaries like Back or Dai.

NS also coincidentally initializes “National Security” (Agency). Satoshi Nakamoto translation: Satoshi = Intelligent origin; Nakamoto = Central origin. Combined Satoshi Nakamoto literally translates to Central intelligence (Agency?) [CIA].

Adam Back co-founded a crypto company called Blockstream in 2014. Blockstream has funding from Brock Pierce, an early Bitcoin futurist who co-founded Tether, as well as Blockchain Capital and many other crypto related companies.

Brock Pierce also attended “Mindshift” and was Jeffrey Epstein’s intial advisor on all things crypto. The Mindshift Conference, hosted by Jeffrey Epstein and organized by Al Seckel, took place in early January 2011 on Epstein’s private island, Little Saint James, and in Saint Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands. It covered topics including artificial intelligence, complexity theory, new trends in theoretical physics, evolutionary biology, cognitive neuroscience, minimally invasive surgery, encryption and decryption, new financial systems, and emerging technologies like crypto currency and quantum computing.

Jeffrey Epstein used his good friend Joichu Ito’s Digital Garage firm to help fund crypto, AI and biotech startups including Adam Back’s Blockstream. Joichu Ito was the director of MIT Media Labs, responsible for incubating many crypto related projects with connections to futurist proonents like Reid Hoffman. The NSA and CIA have a history of recruiting assets from MIT and Stanford, where most of these people are alumni. Hoffman was a funder of Adam Back’s Blockstream and board member, as well as being a board member at: MIT Media Labs, Microsoft, OpenAI, and Mozilla. He was VP at PayPal and a PayPal mafia member, and founded LinkedIn.

Coincidentally or not, Satoshi Nakamoto was “born” one day after the founding date of Microsoft. Microsoft has longstanding ties to the US governemnt, including the NSA and DARPA.

2/ 5

Extropy Institute, Lifeboat Foundation and Edge Foundation

The Extropy Institute, co-founded by Max More and Tom Bell in 1991, was a non-profit organization promoting extropianism, a transhumanist philosophy advocating for indefinite life extension through science and technology, uniting thinkers in AI, nanotechnology, and cryonics, before closing in 2006, declaring its mission "essentially completed.

Important members of Extropy included: Hal Finney, Nick Szabo, Max More, Eliezer Yudkowsky, Jaron Lanier, Nick Bostrom, Marvin Minsky, Ray Kurzweil, Steve Jurvetson, Ralph Merkle, Todd Huffman, Greg Burch and Julian Assange.

Many of the transhuman proponents making major waves in today’s AI age were members of Extropy, as well as being members of Lifeboat Foundation and Edge Foundation.

The Lifeboat Foundation, founded in 2002 by Eric Klien, is a nonprofit based in Gardnerville, Nevada, focused on mitigating global catastrophic risks from technologies like AI, nanotechnology, and genetic engineering.

Notable members of Lifeboat Foundation include: Jeffrey Epstein, Tammy Camp (Stronghold co-founder), Stuart Hoegner (Tether/ Bitfinex lawyer), J.R. Willet (Tether co-founder), Vitalik Buterin (Ethereum), Charles Hoskinson (Cardano), Bobby and Charlie Lee (Litecoin/ Bitcoin Foundation/ BTCC), and Stanislav Shalunov (BitTorrent)

The Edge Foundation, founded by John Brockman in 1998, is an intellectual salon hosting discussions among scientists, technologists, and thinkers to explore cutting-edge ideas, primarily through its website, Edge.org, and annual events like the Billionaires’ Dinner. It received significant funding from Jeffrey Epstein, who donated $638,000 of $857,000 total from 2001 to 2017, often as the sole donor in some years, with Epstein’s financial ties to Brockman dating back to 1995. Notable members include evolutionary psychologist John Tooby, physicist Freeman Dyson, cognitive scientist Steven Pinker, and tech entrepreneurs like Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk, with Peter Thiel also linked through board membership and event attendance.

Other members of Edge besides Epstein, Musk, Thiel and Bezos includes: Nick Bostrom, Marvin Minsky, Ray Kurzweil, Steve Jurvetson (who helps fund all of Elon Musk’s companies), Vinod Khosla, George Church (Epstein funded futurist scientist), Larry Page and Sergey Brin of Google, Paul Allen and Bill Gates of Microsoft, Jeffrey Epstein’s good friend Joichu Ito, and Yuval Noah Harari.

Many of the people listed above in these three foundations are members in at least two or all of these foundations, considering they all have similar themes (transhumanism and futurism). Coincidentally, all three foundations have funding and membership from Jeffrey Epstein.

Several of the people listed who are members of either one or more of these futurist foundations are also cypherpunks. Cypherpunks are a group of activists and cryptographers, formed in the early 1990s through an email list, advocating for privacy and individual freedom through strong cryptography and decentralized technologies. their ideas influenced Bitcoin and projects like WikiLeaks. They focused on tools like PGP encryption and anonymous remailers to counter government surveillance.

Some of those cypherpunks include: Julian Assange, Adam Back, Hal Finney, Nick Szabo, and Todd Huffman. (There are many more but these have overlapping memberships of these foundations, as well as other companies and foundations to be mentioned later in this thread).

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Alcor Life Extension, Humanity+, Methuselah Foundation

The Alcor Life Extension Foundation, founded in 1972 by Fred and Linda Chamberlain in Scottsdale, Arizona, is a nonprofit pioneering cryonics, preserving human bodies or brains in liquid nitrogen after legal death, hoping future technology can revive them. As of October 2023, it has 1,927 members and 222 cryopreserved patients, though cryonics remains controversial and scientifically unproven. Notable members include Peter Thiel, who is signed up for cryopreservation. Peter Thiel has a strong interest in life extension, funding anti-aging research through his Thiel Foundation, including $7 million to the Methuselah Foundation and investments in Unity Biotechnology. He has explored controversial methods like parabiosis, linked to Ambrosia, a startup offering young blood transfusions for $8,000.

Marvin Minsky, a longtime AI and transhuman enthusiast is also a member of Alcor. Other people mentioned earlier in this thread who are also members of Alcor, as well as Lifeboat Foundation, Edge Foundation or Extropy Institute include: Jeffrey Epstein, Max More, Hal Finney, Ray Kurzweil and Todd Huffman.

Humanity+, formerly the World Transhumanist Association, is a nonprofit founded in 1998 by Nick Bostrom and David Pearce to advocate for ethical use of technology to enhance human capabilities, focusing on longevity, AI, and genetic engineering. Jeffrey Epstein donated at least $120,000 to Humanity+, the largest amount they recieved from a single donor, with other donors giving much smaller amounts.

Noteable members include: Nick Bostrom, Ben Goertzel (who received direct funding from Epstein through the Jeffrey Epstein VI Fund for OpenCog), Todd Huffman, Max More, Patri Friedman, Aubrey De Grey and Wei Sun. Patri Friedman is the founder of Pronomos Capital which was funded by Peter Thiel.

The Methuselah Foundation, co-founded by David Gobel and Aubrey de Grey in 2001 in Springfield, Virginia, is a nonprofit dedicated to extending healthy human lifespan through regenerative medicine and tissue engineering, with a mission to "make 90 the new 50 by 2030." It funds research, incubates startups via its Methuselah Fund, and sponsors prizes like the Methuselah Mouse Prize to advance longevity science. Notable supporters include Peter Thiel, who pledged $3.5 million in 2006, and Vitalik Buterin, who donated 43% of Dogelon Mars cryptocurrency to the foundation.

Members of The Methuselah Foundation include: Todd Huffman, Aubrey De Grey. Both men are memvers of Humanity+ as well. The foundation’s scientific advisory board includes Judith Campisi, a biochemist, and George Church, the geneticist with heavy funding from Jeffrey Epstein.

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