The hottest party game in Silicon Valley started with a casual rallying cry: “Let’s go kill some people.”

Dramatic deaths ensued—figuratively, of course—around a large circular table.

Figma Chief Executive Dylan Field was found riddled with bullets in his basement. Anduril Industries founder Palmer Luckey was stoned to death. Open AI CEO Sam Altman was drawn and quartered.

In the midst of an artificial-intelligence boom that promises to unleash world-changing technology and create a new wave of Silicon Valley millionaires and billionaires, one of the most powerful names in venture capital hopes to bring founders down to earth—by gathering them around the Mafia table.

“Mafia the Game,” a new game-show style video series launched earlier this month by Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund, documents Silicon Valley’s most powerful billionaires as they try to outsmart each other at the classic “social deduction” game.

The game pits a secret minority known as the “mafia” against a group of “townspeople.” Through deception and debate, the townspeople try to expose the mafia before the mafia kills them one by one.

The show could help humanize tech titans, even those known for revolutionizing AI and defense tech, said Mike Solana , Founders Fund’s chief marketing officer, who hosts and narrates the game. There have been two episodes so far, with another coming this week.

It is a different kind of media venture for Silicon Valley elites, who have thus far focused mainly on backing news and interview-style programs. VC firms and startups have lately shown an interest in tech-focused talk shows, including TBPN, which was recently acquired by OpenAI. Andreessen Horowitz recently backed a new media company called MTS, short for “Monitoring the Situation.”

Solana, who is also the founder of digital publication Pirate Wires, said having players compete in a filmed version of the game could give more insight than a straight interview.

“I think the way you learn about someone is watching them under pressure, with limited information, trying to figure out what’s going on,” Solana said.

Long the domain of house parties, the game itself is having a cultural moment of its own. “The Traitors,” one of the most popular shows on the streaming platform Peacock, is essentially a high-production version of the game. Its most recent season—featuring NFL mom Donna Kelce , actor Michael Rappaport , and Olympic figure skaters Tara Lipinski and Johnny Weir —drew more than 3 billion viewing minutes, according to Nielsen streaming data.

The new series’ first episode starts with the players chatting over drinks at San Francisco’s Tosca Cafe, where members of the “PayPal Mafia,” a cohort of tech titans including Thiel and Reid Hoffman , posed as mobsters for a 2007 Fortune magazine cover shoot.

The game proceeds with a largely lighthearted tone, with players quipping about each other’s strategy and businesses.

At one point, Founders Fund partner and Anduril co-founder and executive chairman Trae Stephens —who ultimately won the game as a member of the mafia—took a jab at opponent Bryan Johnson , the tech entrepreneur known for his extensive longevity regimen.

“We should listen to what Bryan says because he can’t die,” Stephens said, to laughs around the table.

Mafia has long been prevalent in Silicon Valley. Solana first encountered the game in college, while living in what he called a “nerd frat” where strategy games such as StarCraft and Magic: The Gathering were staples. He taught Mafia to his friends when he first moved to Silicon Valley more than a decade ago, and it has since spread.

“Even the smartest people in the world have a very difficult time with this game, and I find that to be fascinating to watch,” he said.

Douglas Bernheim , a Stanford professor of game theory and behavioral economics, is unsure that the show will give viewers the genuine insight Solana is hoping for.

“As you play these games, and especially when you play them in front of an audience, you are constantly signaling something about your sophistication and decision-making,” Bernheim said.

Altman was eliminated relatively early in the game, after a back-and-forth with former OpenAI executive Ryan Beiermeister about who was mafia in the game.

Beiermeister was fired from the company earlier this year after she voiced opposition to the controversial rollout of AI erotica in ChatGPT. OpenAI said the dismissal was based on allegations of sexual discrimination. At the time, she called the allegation “absolutely false.”

“If I get killed, I would be heavily suspicious of Ryan B,” Altman said, to laughs from fellow players. Beiermeister responded by saying that if she got killed, she would be heavily suspicious of Sam A.

Solana hopes the experiment expands to gather leaders of other industries around the Mafia table.

“When I get a politician at that table, sitting next to a Real Housewife and across from, like, Jeff Bezos, people are going to want to see that,” he said.