Have you ever looked at your buddy across the couch and thought, “Gee, I wonder if his semen is faster than mine?”
Eric Zhu, 18, turned that strange curiosity into an actual sports and entertainment business, one that investors are valuing at $75 million after pouring $10 million into a “seed round” (get it?) for Zhu’s nine-month-old company, Sperm Racing. The startup has rapidly garnered hordes of fans and lavish media attention for its rowdy in-person events, in which young men compete to see who’s got the fastest and hardiest sperm.
Last weekend, Zhu flew to YouTuber David Dobrik’s slick white Los Angeles mansion, collected the sperm of three influencers, and injected it onto a small race track as a crowd gathered in the living room. The competitors — Harry Jowsey, Jason Nash, and Ilya Fedorovich — watched a video of their swimmers, overlaid with animated tadpoles, zoom to the finish line.
Imagine an F-1 race crossed with a humiliation ritual: The boys, donning racing jackets, cried out as Fedorovich’s sperm finished in two minutes, while Nash’s trudged a whole seven minutes behind. “It was really bad,” Zhu laughed.
It’s easy to write off Sperm Racing as manosphere content-mill runoff. But Zhu insists he has a deeper, more profitable mission: to gamify health and build an empire around male fertility. That vision has convinced a number of backers, including DJ 3lau, Pudgy Penguins founder Luca Netz, and Figment Capital. James Parillo, partner at Figment Capital, called sperm racing the perfect blend of “entertainment and health,” pointing out many people have Oura rings and track their biometrics anyway — so why not compete? “It seems kind of crazy right now,” he said. “I think in five years, it won’t sound as crazy.”
Zhu, who launched his first startup, Aviato, from a bathroom stall in his Indiana high school, tells Sperm Racing’s founding story like a fable: A nameless billionaire flew him out to New York City, asked him to name his wildest dream, then encouraged him to make semen competitions a reality. As Zhu and his cofounder, Nick Small, who previously ran a crypto company, floated the idea to investors, money poured in.
“At one point, we were saying this is, like, irresponsible, right? Like, we shouldn’t raise more than $500,000,” he said. “Then someone fucking wired us $300,000 without signing anything.”
Silicon Valley’s enthusiasm is not surprising. Male fertility has become a flashpoint for techies, fueled by biohacker extraordinaire Bryan Johnson, who publicly tracks his sperm health as a biomarker, and Andrew Huberman, the Stanford neuroscientist turned influencer who has talked at length about how to improve sperm health.
“It turns out a lot of people that are over 30 have problems making babies, and their sperm quality and stuff like that is really, really bad,” Zhu said.
Scientists are divided as to whether there is a real crisis with male fertility. An influential 2017 study found that sperm counts in Western countries had dropped as much as 60% over several decades; follow-up research attributed the decline to everything from environmental toxins to obesity. However, other scientists have since stepped forward to say there has been no significant drop.
Crisis or not, there has been a surprisingly strong market for sperm racing. In April, Zhu went viral for his first sperm race, in Los Angeles, where hundreds of drunken onlookers watched as winners took home $10,000 and losers got slimed in white goop. The event cost Zhu $1.5 million to produce. He says he didn’t make a dollar, but videos from the event were viewed 450 million times.
However, soon after, the “live” races came under scrutiny: the Free Press reported that the races were prerecorded and the winners predetermined. This was especially damning since anyone could bet on the results of the races on Polymarket.
Zhu said that for the first race, the team whipped up a crude, CGI-based racing mechanism in 25 days. The competitors — college students — gave sperm samples (the original venue booted them upon learning that guys would be masturbating backstage), and the team analyzed the speed and distance of the fastest spermatozoon. About 10 minutes after reviewing the samples, the Sperm Race team made an animated race using the analysis, so technically, they knew the winners before the audience did.
Four months ago, Zhu said, the team didn’t have much background in biology. But they’ve since hired a 15-person team and revamped the race mechanism. Now, sperm from each contestant are put into a pipette and injected onto a tiny race track; Zhu says the video the audience is viewing is a real-time feed with enhanced graphics, making the microscopic sperm look like large, neon tadpoles.
Sperm racing is just the beginning. Zhu envisions a MrBeast-like empire, with sperm-themed merchandise and a gummy vitamin supplement called “Sperm Worms” that promises “to help you load up and lock in.”
Next, he’s taking the races across the country, partnering with the tailgating company Total Frat Move to run sperm races at colleges. Beyond producing virality and hype, he hopes that the races inspire men to take better care of themselves.
“To lose a sperm race is crazy — once you lose, you really want to be healthier,” he said. “I lost a couple, and now I’m actually waking up early, going to the gym, eating well.”