SAN FRANCISCO, CA — Maxwell Forge, the 38-year-old tech entrepreneur, government efficiency advisor, and self-described “full-stack civilization optimist” who Forbes has ranked as the fourth-wealthiest person on Earth and most of his employees have ranked as “unreachable by email,” announced the launch of his 18th company this month on Tuesday morning in a post that received 2.1 million likes and was written, sources close to Forge confirm, by an AI he owns.
TerraForge Quantum Solutions LLC — described in its press release as “a vertically integrated planetary intelligence platform at the intersection of quantum computing, sustainable agriculture, neural interface technology, and premium bottled water” — will be headquartered in Austin, Texas, employ an initial team of 120, and begin disrupting “the fundamental assumptions of how humans interact with the concept of food, thought, and hydration,” according to a pitch deck that venture capitalists say is “simultaneously the most ambitious and least specific document we have ever been asked to fund.”
They funded it.
The Portfolio Problem
TerraForge Quantum Solutions joins a portfolio that now includes, among other entities: a rocket company, an electric vehicle startup, a social media platform, two AI companies, a brain chip manufacturer, a private space station project, a tunnel-boring operation, a proposed Mars colony, a cryptocurrency exchange, a news aggregator, a premium tequila brand, a satellite internet service, a humanoid robot company, a supercomputer firm, a flamethrower retailer, and ForgeBank, a financial services startup whose regulatory filing status a spokesperson described as “dynamic.”
At 2,200 cumulative employees across all 18 active ventures, Forge is one of the largest individual employers in the tech sector — a fact that takes on a somewhat different character when you consider that he is simultaneously serving as CEO of eight of these companies, co-CEO of four, interim CEO of two others following the departure of CEOs he appointed and then publicly criticized on social media, and advisory board chair of the remaining four, a title that several board members note he has never exercised in any observable way.
“I sent Maxwell a Slack message in September,” said one employee at BrainForge, Forge’s neural interface startup, who asked to remain anonymous because their NDA covers the topic of “executive communication patterns.” “He reacted to it with a rocket ship emoji. That was the last communication I have received from company leadership. We are still making payroll, so I think we’re fine? I think?”
The Employees Speak (Anonymously, Under NDA)
Supposedly News spoke with twelve current or former employees at various Forge-controlled entities, all of whom agreed to speak only on the condition of anonymity. Their assessments ranged from “cautiously uncertain” to “actively alarmed” with stops at “philosophically resigned” and one memorable description of the Mars colony project as “a PowerPoint with a launch date and a question mark where the landing site should be.”
Several noted that Forge’s public social media presence — where he posts approximately 47 times per day about civilization-scale ambitions, the superiority of his own judgment relative to conventional wisdom, and pictures of his dog — creates a meaningful disconnect from operational realities at the ground level.
“He posted yesterday about how traditional HR departments are a sign of civilizational weakness,” said a former HR director at one of the Forge companies who was laid off in a reorganization Forge described on social media as “removing the barriers between visionaries and their vision.” “Our HR department was three people. One of them was pregnant. The timing was, let’s say, suboptimal.”
The Billionaire’s Response
Forge addressed concerns about portfolio management in a 23-tweet thread posted at 2:17 a.m. Tuesday, in which he described critics as “low-energy thinkers,” compared his management style to “conducting seventeen orchestras simultaneously while also building the concert hall,” and announced that he was launching a nineteenth company — ForgeAudit — specifically designed to audit his other companies and determine which ones needed more attention.
ForgeAudit will be led by an AI system, report directly to Forge, and begin operations as soon as Forge has time to think about it, which he estimates will be “Q3, maybe Q4, depends on how the Mars thing goes.”
Shares of four publicly traded Forge entities rose on the news. Two others fell. The remaining two could not be reached for confirmation of their stock prices, as their investor relations departments had been consolidated into a shared voicemail box that appears to be full.
Supposedly News attempted to reach Maxwell Forge for comment. He reacted to our inquiry with a rocket ship emoji.