[PATREON PREVIEW] Inside America's First Venture Backed Bot Farm

August 17, 2026

AI Summary

5 min read

In October of last year, a 21-year-old entrepreneur named Zuhair Lakani announced his new startup, Double Speed, calling it "the only venture capital backed bot farm in America." The claim was deliberately provocative. Lakani knew he would get death threats as a result, and he was reportedly pleased when they came. "That means my plan worked," he told himself. He wanted that kind of reaction. Double Speed is a company that runs a phone farm—rooms full of smartphones operating thousands of AI-generated social media accounts. These accounts are designed to look like ordinary users, but they are actually an industrial-scale system for manufacturing popularity and selling products. Lakani raised millions from Andreessen Horowitz, one of the most prominent venture capital firms in Silicon Valley, through its "speed run" startup incubator program. The company represents a new class of internet manipulation startups that are seeking to professionalize bot farming and sell it to brands as a legitimate service.

Rebecca Jennings, a journalist at New York magazine, recently profiled Lakani for an article. On Taylor Lorenz's podcast Power User, the two walked through the reporting and what it reveals about the current state of the internet.

A childhood spent gaming the system

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What you'll learn

1 Power User: Inside America's First Venture Backed Bot Farm
2 Timestamped Outline
3 (00:26) **Episode Introduction: The Rise of AI-Powered Manipulation** - Rebecca Jennings sets up the story of a new class of startups designed to manufacture popularity online
4 (03:15) **Introducing Double Speed and Its Founder Zuhair Lakani** - The venture-backed bot farm that aims to create an army of AI influencers
5 (04:07) **Zuhair's Origin Story: From Sneaker Botting to Manufacturing Hype** - How a teenager learned to manipulate online systems for profit
6 (06:35) **The Mechanics of Virality: A Pattern of Exploitation** - Zuhair represents a class of people who understand how to manufacture hype online
7 (07:02) **Double Speed's Business Model: The Only VC-Backed Bot Farm** - How the company professionalizes and legitimizes bot farming for brands

+ Full timestamped outline available in the app

Show Notes

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What happens when startups straight up stop hiring human creators and start leveraging industrial-scale bot farms powered by AI? In this bonus episode of Power User, I sit down with New York Magazine's Rebecca Jennings to discuss her investigation into Doublespeed, a massively viral new venture-backed startup founded by 21-year-old entrepreneur Zuhair Lakhani that aims to replace human influencers with an army of AI-generated personas. They've already raised over $1 million from Andreessen Horowitz.

From sneaker botting and manufactured restaurant waitlists to operating thousands of cold Android phones from a desktop computer, Rebecca and I unpack the dark mechanics and patterns behind these bot armies running on phone farms in LA. We also discuss the total atrophy of the internet as we know it.

We break down how AI bot farms work, why brands are turning to AI instead of human influencers, and how Silicon Valley is turning manufactured virality into a business. We also discuss the explosion of AI slop, the future of the influencer industry, the death of online authenticity, AI advertising, political manipulation, human verification and what happens when bots become indistinguishable from real people.