Biotech founder sliced open his own legs on camera to prove his product is safe for US troops



Jake Adler, founder of the medical startup Pilgrim, was willing to bleed to show investors he was serious about his product.

At just age 21, the biotech entrepreneur is so convinced his product has legs that he wounded his own.

In a video sent to investors, Adler sterilized his thighs before reminding viewers that his product is intended to undergo proper and rigorous clinical investigations. But that didn't stop him from testing it on himself first.

'I'm allowed to do anything to my own body.'

Adler reportedly numbed his legs with lidocaine before using a medical device, a punch biopsy tool, to create two "scientifically precise wounds."

Adler then applied his product, called Kingsfoil, to one of the open wounds. The other wound was left undressed as a control subject.

Kingsfoil is a clay-based hemostatic dressing that turns into a gel-like matter when it touches the skin. It is designed to help close wounds and aid in healing.

The product seemingly stalled the bleeding on the wound it was applied to, according to Business Insider, which reviewed the video.

"I was very cautious," he told the outlet.

"When I looked through the laws, there was nothing that inherently said I couldn't do a test on myself."

Adler added, "In the same way you can get a tattoo, I'm allowed to do anything to my own body."

With a warning not to try this at home, Adler showed he was willing to go to any length to get his product to market. A few huge investments later, the young entrepreneur is pushing toward what he has been primed to do for years.

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Photo by Ezra Acayan/Getty Images

Adler got a head start in 2023, acquiring a Thiel Fellowship just a year after graduating high school. The fellowship, backed by billionaire Peter Thiel, funds young people who "want to build new things instead of sitting in a classroom."

"Two years. $200,000. Some ideas can't wait," the website reads.

By March 2025, Pilgrim had acquired $3.25 million in investments, capital that has since ballooned to $4.3 million in seed funding at the time of this writing.

Now, Adler openly recognizes how his fellowship was able to eat up some of the initial costs that cause so many startups to stumble out of the gate. Adler says that while it can take most companies many more months to gain approval, Kingsfoil is able to accelerate its timeline thanks to partnerships with the Department of Defense.

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Adler named Kingsfoil after the healing herb in "The Lord of the Rings."

The tech space is rife with these types of references to the J.R.R. Tolkien corpus; Alex Karp's Palantir is named after a seeing stone, Palmer Luckey's tech company Anduril refers to a sword, and Luckey's cryptobank startup Erebor is a mountain in the same lore.

While Adler admits that most of his ideas can be credited to works of fantasy, the unofficial banner under which these startups are named immediately evokes the expectation of an elevated standard. When a startup in this orbit uses one of these fantasy-themed monikers, it is expected to be both serious and promising.

Photo by Chung Sung-Jun/Getty Images

Adler explained in a March interview that his aspirations are focused on helping U.S. armed forces increase their readiness when it comes to defense, not weaponry.

For example, in addition to Kingsfoil, he has looked into the possibilities of controlling "sleep architecture" so that soldiers can feel as if they have slept for five hours when they have only slept for three. Adler does not want soldiers to rely on pharmaceuticals for rest or alertness.

The biotech entrepreneur also said he wants to build soldier readiness when it comes to chemical threats and create a system that can detect airborne pathogens or poisons. According to Business Insider, that system, dubbed ARGUS, would be coupled with Voyager, an inhaled mist to help the body neutralize chemicals (such as nerve agents) before they reach the bloodstream.

Pilgrim is just a five-person team, however, and these products are still prototypes or in the research and development stages.

As for Kingsfoil, its only current known side effect is minor skin irritation.

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Robo-billionaire Palmer Luckey brings the 'hype' train to American manufacturing



The American hype train is real, according to Anduril founder and billionaire Palmer Luckey.

Appearing at the Reindustrialize Summit, Luckey seemingly proved the power of positivity makes nearly anything possible, and not in a cringey, motivational speaker sort of way, either. Rather, it is in the create robots, video games, and military warfighter technology kind of way.

In fact, Luckey found a way to corroborate his belief at the summit and showed it off in such a manner that was far more interesting than the movie "Real Steel."

'Hype is what allows you to get investment in these problems.'

With a Hawaiian shirt, khaki shorts, and an unsightly wig, Luckey delivered a 20-minute speech on the conference stage by remotely controlling a robot using virtual reality.

While the bot seemed a bit primitive by today's expectations, basic movements were controlled by the billionaire from afar using just VR goggles.

"I finally pulled off my long-standing goal of speaking at a conference via VR telerobotics!" Luckey wrote on X. "Thousands of miles of travel saved, and no chance of Luigi."

While the robot's ability to shake a hand was suspect, Luckey's message was not as static. The entrepreneur emphasized his goal of making a "Star Trek" future and said a lot of the ability to make that happen comes from "hype."

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I finally pulled off my long-standing goal of speaking at a conference via VR telerobotics! Thousands of miles of travel saved, and no chance of Luigi. https://t.co/9WqZAxOFEW
— Palmer Luckey (@PalmerLuckey) July 17, 2025

A lot of hype is "bad if you really let it break your thinking," Luckey told author Ashlee Vance on stage.

While the billionaire explained that over-hyping a project and forgetting prime directives can result in "really playing yourself," he clarified, "hype is what allows you to get investment in these problems."

"Investors don't want to hear, 'It's going to be a 20-year slog, and it's probably not going to work out for us, it's probably our other companies that are going to win,'" Luckey continued.

To that end, the Anduril boss said the "enormous power" of optimism can help drive innovation forward and produce real results. The example he provided was exactly the technology Luckey was showing off.

"I think the hype around virtual reality and augmented reality in the early 20-teens led to tens of billions of dollars in research and development. It would not have happened if people had been ... a little less on the hype train."

Luckey has indeed ventured into AR military equipment with this mindset and recently revealed his first project would be a military helmet called Eagle Eye, which gives Army soldiers access to advanced augmented reality systems that make them "superhuman."

Luckey added at the conference, that while some will downplay the hype, he finds it hard to "get too upset" about hype happening "in a space like American manufacturing."

RELATED: 'Insane radical leftists' are gone: Zuckerberg and Palmer Luckey reunite for US military project

- YouTube

As for Luckey's robotic stand-in, look no further than the Phantom robot from company Foundation.

Founder Sankaet Pathak said on X in early 2025 that his company has no issue with being at the forefront of the weaponization of robotics.

"Unlike most humanoid robot companies in the U.S., which have committed to non-weaponization, we believe it's essential for our robots to master these tasks to support human expansion," Pathak said, per MikeKalil.com.

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Palmer Luckey-led crypto bank promises startups a capital hoard safe from scheming feds



Billionaire Palmer Luckey is dipping his toe into the financial sector with a banking venture focused on helping tech entrepreneurs.

The company is known as Erebor, yet another entry in Luckey's portfolio that follows the Thiel-world pattern of referencing lore from the tales of J.R.R. Tolkien. Just as Anduril is a reference to a character's sword, and Palantir to a magical seeing stone, Erebor refers to the mountain in "The Hobbit" where the dragon Smaug hoards his gold away from would-be slayers and thieves.

While the moniker is not final, according to the New York Post, the venture is serious in its ability to reshape banking forever.

Deliberate federal interference in the nascent crypto banking market provoked the very crisis the feds purported to solve.

Luckey is partnering with Joe Lonsdale, a venture capitalist who co-founded Palantir Technologies and other software companies. Together, they will help tech startups build their businesses instead of maximizing returns like a traditional bank, insiders told the Post.

The key difference is that Erebor will work with stablecoins, a type of cryptocurrency tied to relatively stable assets like the U.S. dollar or gold. This is done to limit the volatility of a coin without sacrificing its benefits, creating investment opportunities far in excess of simply purchasing and holding, say, Bitcoin.

Even the president is working with stablecoins, particularly USD1, which is attached to the U.S. dollar.

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Joe Lonsdale, at the Montgomery Summit in Santa Monica, California, on Wednesday, March 8, 2017. Patrick T. Fallon/Bloomberg via Getty Images

The Post reported that Erebor was born out of the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank in 2023, caused by a slew of management errors, "investment missteps, market volatility, and regulatory changes," according to Investopedia. The Biden administration ended up guaranteeing all deposits into SVB, despite the bank's ruin.

But as Castle Island founding partner Nic Carter explained last year, deliberate federal interference in the nascent crypto banking market provoked the very crisis the feds purported to solve. "Biden bank regulators made it impossible for banks serving a particular legal industry to operate," Carter wrote. "And in doing so, they actively caused the collapse of certain banks, namely Silvergate and Signature. These banks did not die by suicide but by murder. This remains a gigantic scandal, and no one has ever faced any responsibility for it."

It is unknown who else is involved with the launch of Erebor; it is still in its early stages and has no public start date. Luckey's representative did not immediately respond to Blaze News' request for information regarding founders or key development points.

In that regard, Lonsdale's venture firm 8VC has led a $225 million fundraising round, which will reportedly be used to meet federal regulatory requirements that are necessary for starting a bank, not for backing deposits.

Luckey is not expected to hold an executive role or be involved in day-to-day operations, but he would be adding "bank operator" to his laundry list of titles, which include defense contractor and handheld-gaming manufacturer.

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The tech titan has increasingly been involved in larger-than-life projects, including advanced technologies for U.S. military equipment. His open-to-debate style has caused him to become a darling of the Silicon Valley class, and his prominent criticisms of Facebook/Meta (he has since buried the hatchet with Mark Zuckerberg) have helped his image as a palatable billionaire, a dynamic with echoes of Mr. Burns and his one-time rival Arthur Fortune.

"Cryptocurrency is so powerful and investable because it's the most advanced tech ordinary Americans can use right now amongst themselves to create and grow wealth," said James Poulos, Blaze Media's editor at large.

"But it's still not clear how exactly to transition the U.S. from a dollar backed by American global, economic, and military dominance to one backed by computational power," he added. "While stablecoins weaken the ability of regular people to use Bitcoin free from government pressure and control, they strengthen the ability of Washington and Silicon Valley to transition the dollar stably away from the unsustainable 'money printer' model toward a dollar backed by energy itself, in the form of watts used to power compute. That's why a bank like Erebor is basically inevitable."

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'Insane radical leftists' are gone: Zuckerberg and Palmer Luckey reunite for US military project



Billionaire entrepreneur Palmer Luckey says Meta is a very different company than it used to be, and he's ready to work with Mark Zuckerberg again after being fired from Facebook in 2017.

Luckey, the creator of virtual reality goggles called Oculus Rift, was fired by Facebook allegedly for donating $10,000 to a pro-Donald Trump group. Almost 10 years later as founder of Anduril, a military tech company, Luckey announced on X that he was ready to reunite with Zuckerberg to create VR and augmented reality systems for the U.S. military.

'The people who conspired to oust me, they're not even there anymore.'

"Anduril and Meta have teamed up to make the world's best AR and VR systems for the United States Military," Luckey wrote on X, alongside a photo with Zuckerberg. "Leveraging Meta's massive investments in XR technology for our troops will save countless lives and dollars."

Luckey revealed the first project would be a military helmet called Eagle Eye, equipment that would give Army soldiers access to advanced augmented reality systems that makes them "superhuman."

"My mission has long been to turn warfighters into technomancers, and the products we are building with Meta do just that," Luckey said in a press release.

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Mark Zuckerberg is seen at UFC 298 at Honda Center on February 17, 2024, in Anaheim, California. Photo by Sean M. Haffey/Getty Images

On the podcast "Core Memory," Luckey explained what was long thought to be the real reason behind his exodus from Facebook: an impending revolt from an army of tech-leftists ideologically opposed to his political donations.

"Meta is a very different company than it was nine years ago when they fired me," Luckey told the host. "I don't mean in tenor or tone. I mean it's literally different people."

Luckey claimed that while Zuckerberg still likely approved of his firing, it was more so his subordinates who orchestrated his removal.

"When your people that you task with making decisions come up and say, 'This is what we've decided we have to do. There's no other way out of this huge PR and internal problem. Our employees are insane radical leftists who are going to quit en masse if we don't get rid of Palmer,' like, what are you really gonna do?"

"The people who conspired to oust me, they're not even there anymore," Luckey added.

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Return's James Poulos asked if America is actually ready for the advanced "techomancers" Luckey speaks of.

"It may be too late to ask. The specter of China’s immense production capabilities and verve for systematization presents America with a much different threat profile than its two great Axis enemies," Poulos stated.

“It would be a harsh lesson indeed to discover that the only way to compete militarily with China is to lose our own identity here at home. That’s a problem no tech alone can solve," he added.

Luckey seemingly found solace in the reconciliation with Meta and its now apparently right-wing CEO Zuckerberg. Almost talking himself into it, the Anduril boss said it was likely more productive for him to accept that he "won the persuasion argument" and should be happy he received apologies from Meta's top brass.

"If people end up coming to your side, you shouldn't shove them back and say 'Hey, f**k off. You had different beliefs 10 years ago.' You should say, 'Come on in, the tent's big, and I'm happy to have you.'"

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Oculus Rift creator debuts VR headset that blows users' brains out if they die in game



Palmer Luckey, the billionaire founder of Oculus and military technology company Anduril, has invented a new VR headset. The device is not novel on account of better graphics or an improved frame rate, but rather because it is capable of blowing a smoking hole through the user's noggin. Should the device ever make it to market, it may be enough to prompt some gamers to reconsider playing on hard mode.

More than a headache

In a Sunday blog post, Luckey described the new device, which he has called "NerveGear."

NerveGear is a virtual reality headset that looks like a transmogrified Oculus Rift, only this time the black goggles have three protuberances that jut out above the eyes, which together are "capable of killing the user."

"The idea of tying your real life to your virtual avatar has always fascinated me," Luckey wrote. "You instantly raise the stakes to the maximum level and force people to fundamentally rethink how they interact with the virtual world and the players inside it."

\u201c"This might be a game, but it is not something you play."\n\nTo commemorate the Sword Art Online Incident of November 6th 2022, I made the OQPNVG, the first virtual reality device capable of killing the user - if you die in the game, you die in real life.\n\nhttps://t.co/F3nkP5EU61\u201d
— Palmer Luckey (@Palmer Luckey) 1667775396

The inspiration for the suicide headset came from the Japanese novel series entitled "Sword Art Online" by Reki Kawahara, which originally ran from 2002 to 2008 and was adapted into a television series in 2012.

In the show, set in 2022, thousands of people become trapped in a virtual massively multiplayer online role-playing game on Nov. 6, 2022. The protagonist, Kirito, tries ardently to escape.

Luckey noted that if the trapped and mentally dislocated gamers' "hit points dropped to zero, their brain would be bombarded by extraordinarily powerful microwaves, supposedly killing the user."

In lieu of powerful microwaves, Luckey elected to use three explosive charge modules, each tied "to a narrow-band photosensor that can detect when the screen flashes red at a specific frequency, making game-over integration on the part of the developer very easy."

"When an appropriate game-over screen is displayed, the charges fire, instantly destroying the brain of the user," he added, noting that he has "not worked up the balls to actually use it [himself]."

Luckey stated that the "good news is that we are halfway to making a true NerveGear. The bad news is that so far, I have only figured out the half that kills you. The perfect-VR half of the equation is still many years out."

Until it is completed, the NerveGear "is just a piece of office art, a thought-provoking reminder of unexplored avenues in game design."

Escapism and bombs

Luckey, a dropout from California State University, sold Oculus to Facebook for nearly $2 billion. The 30-year-old entrepreneur reportedly netted nearly $600 million of the sale. Facebook fired Luckey three years later.

The Wall Street Journal reported that Luckey's firing came after his colleagues raged about the VR wizard's $10,000 donation to anti-Hillary Clinton group Nimble America during the 2016 presidential election.

Although Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg testified to Congress that Luckey's departure had nothing to do with politics, it later turned out that the Oculus inventor's support for former President Donald Trump was a major factor behind his exit.

After his firing, which resulted in Luckey securing a payout of at least $100 million, he fundraised for Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and then founded the defense contractor Anduril.

CNBC reported that Anduril is behind the Anvil quadcopter drone, which can fly 100 miles per hour and was purchased by the U.S. military for use by special forces soldiers.

Luckey's company also makes the Ghost, which can weigh up to 55 pounds and hit speeds of 85 miles per hour.

Last month, the Verge detailed the company's first weapon system, a loitering munition called the ALTIUS (Agile-Launched Tactically-Integrated Unmanned System) that hovers in a designated area ahead of striking either ground or airborne targets.

According to Anduril, ALTIUS drones are able to "accomodate multiple seeker and warhead options."

The company has contracts with the Department of Defense, Department of Homeland Security, and the U.K. Royal Marines.

While NerveGear may not be braining anyone any time soon, Luckey's other inventions certainly will.