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• Tech companies and venture capital firms are hosting private screenings of the Elizabeth Holmes doc.
• I went to one hosted by the AI startup Extend.
• Attendees I talked to said they looked at Holmes more as a joke than a product of their industry.

Elizabeth Holmes is a black mark on Silicon Valley's reputation. And yet its residents are lining up for the documentary about her.

Tech companies across the US are hosting screenings of "You Can See Everything," the documentary from Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim about Holmes and her fiancé, Billy Evans. Venture capital funds are bringing their founders to the movie. There are Luma events upon Luma events.

The irony, of course, is that Holmes makes tech look bad. She sold big dreams with her medical testing company, Theranos, which eventually came crashing down. Holmes was convicted of defrauding investors of hundreds of millions of dollars. (She has long said that she is innocent.)

Holmes is the exemplar of Silicon Valley's hucksterism. She's who much of America points to when they call founders liars or scammers.

So, what's with all the tech love? I went to a Thursday screening of the documentary hosted by Extend, an AI documentation startup, to find out.

Inside the Extend screening

A swarm of techies crowded outside theater nine at New York's AMC Lincoln Square.

The screening was set to start at 7. By 6:40, a crowd had formed to talk shop and admire Extend's custom stickers. Outside the theater door, I met Bo Lau, the event's organizer who works in developer relations for Extend.

Lau recently moved to New York and said she didn't want to watch the documentary alone. So, she posted about it on X — and it helped that she already had a following on so-called "Tech Twitter."

"I was like, 'What if I just turn this into a work event so I can expense it?'" Lau said.

The event got 1,400 RSVPs for about 120 seats, she said, and she's flying to San Francisco soon to host another screening. The tickets were given out free, so Extend got no benefit other than brand awareness, she said.

Why was it so popular? Lau said that Holmes was a source of fascination within Silicon Valley, and that Fielder's "awkward humor" matched the awkwardness of tech.

Filing into the theater, I heard my seatmates chat about AI and which tech companies let you work from home. On a brief social media scroll before my three-hour Do Not Disturb, I spotted Lau's recent project: a simulator of Holmes' desk.

Holmes' X account responded: "Impressive project."

Laugh lines, reflection time

This was my second time watching the documentary; the first was at New York Film Festival. The reactions among the techier crowd were mostly the same. There were lots of laughs, both at Fielder's discomfort and Holmes' oddities.

The crowd didn't react strongly to (mild spoiler alert) the big, AI version of Holmes that her fiancé creates after she goes to jail. That struck me as curious; maybe the tech crowd is already used to AI replicas.

There was also a much stronger gasp at the reveal of who's running Holmes' X account. That wasn't shocking; the attendees found out about this screening through X, after all.

We walked to a local wine bar, sipping cocktails while debriefing the film. Two techies that I talked to were split. One came away feeling bad for Holmes, then feeling bad that he felt bad for her. Another thought the film certified that Holmes was a true and utter psychopath.

I asked: Why is tech so comfortable laughing at Holmes? Her boastful visions don't sound too different from those of the current crop of young AI founders.

Maybe it was because the crowd was mostly in their 20s, not yet working in startups when Holmes' reckoning came.

Or Holmes has been detached from her Silicon Valley roots. The techies seemed to view her as more a product of the media — the books, the tabloid stories, the Hulu show — than of their own industry.

One attendee put it to me bluntly: she's turned into a meme.

Portugal é o quinto melhor destino do mundo para viver entre 63 destinos avaliados pelo novo Nomad Capitalist Lifestyle Index, com 70,09 pontos em 100. O país destaca-se sobretudo pelas condições de residência e acesso, mas a fiscalidade e o clima ficam aquém dos resultados obtidos noutras áreas, segundo a classificação feita pela consultora Nomad Capitalist.

O índice avalia cinco dimensões, com uma ponderação igual de 20% cada: natureza e clima, fiscalidade, residência e acesso, segurança e liberdade, e qualidade de vida e infraestruturas. A classificação pretende medir as condições para viver noutro país tendo em conta, em simultâneo, o enquadramento fiscal, as possibilidades de residência, a segurança e as condições do quotidiano.

“Portugal é o único destino entre os cinco primeiros cuja força é distribuída em vez de concentrada: nenhum pilar acima de 78,9 e nenhum abaixo de 47,8″, pode ler-se no site da empresa.

O Mónaco lidera o índice, com 73,89 pontos, seguido de Andorra, com 73,68, e dos Emirados Árabes Unidos, com 73,15. A diferença entre os três primeiros é inferior a 0,74 pontos.

“Três quartos de ponto separam o Mónaco, Andorra e os Emirados Árabes Unidos. Isto é uma lista restrita, não um pódio”, afirma Khatia Gelbakhiani, responsável de produto da Nomad Capitalist, citada em comunicado. A responsável salienta que cada destino tem vantagens diferentes: o Mónaco destaca-se pela qualidade de vida, Andorra pela segurança e liberdade e os Emirados Árabes Unidos pela fiscalidade.

Na avaliação de residência e acesso, Portugal obteve 78,9 pontos, o quinto melhor resultado neste indicador. O índice contabiliza cinco vias de residência: programas para nómadas digitais ou trabalhadores remotos, regimes para pensionistas, vistos de residência por investimento, criação de empresas e residência com base em rendimentos passivos.

Na dimensão de segurança e liberdade, Portugal alcançou 86,1 pontos. A avaliação combina indicadores de segurança, paz e liberdade individual e económica. A consultora destaca esta dimensão entre os pontos fortes do país.

A fiscalidade vale 78 pontos, enquanto a qualidade de vida e as infraestruturas somam 59,6 pontos. O indicador mais fraco é o de natureza e clima, com 47,8 pontos, que considera fatores como a qualidade do ar, a exposição a riscos climáticos, a disponibilidade de energia solar e a vitalidade dos ecossistemas.