Multimillionaire anti-aging fanatic Bryan Johnson used nondisclosure agreements to silence workers about his bizarre behavior — such as walking around naked around the office and discussing his “sexual activities, including erections,” according to a bombshell report.
Johnson spends a whopping $2 million annually on his over-the-top regimen – including 54 daily pills and supplements, a nighttime erection tracker, shock therapy and blood transfusions from his then-17-year-old son – making the audacious claim that it has reversed his age by 5.1 years.
His unorthodox health obsession has gained a following for his “Don’t Die” religion, setting him up to launch his health start-up Blueprint and a starring role in a recent Netflix documentary.
But behind the scenes, the 47-year-old former Mormon missionary was pressuring employees, vendors and contract workers at his startup Blueprint, as well as his sexual partners, into signing restrictive confidentiality agreements, according to The New York Times.
Soon after Johnson made his millions from the sale of his payments firm Braintree to PayPal in 2013, he divorced his wife, hired prostitutes and experimented with acid and psychedelics like DMT, the outlet reported after interviewing 30 people for its expose.
Johnson has the chemical structure of DMT tattooed on his arm.
In 2016, he founded Kernel, a brain tech start-up. He had turned down an offer to form a similar company with Tesla founder Elon Musk, who ended up launching Neuralink, according to the report.
As Musk’s star-power grew, Johnson grew more focused on his own image, wondering why he was not getting as much publicity as the Tesla mogul and started to lean more heavily on the NDAs, former friends and employees told the Times.
As of last year, the agreements were 20 pages long with a range of restrictions, like keeping confidential “any nonpublic information regarding Bryan’s home, office, personal effects in his home or office, any spaces rented or owned by Bryan, any vehicles/planes/automobiles/boats/other methods of transportation that are not publicly accessible,” according to a copy reviewed by the Times.
Employees often had to sign up to three separate documents, the Times said.
One was an unusual “opt-in” document in which staffers had to say they were comfortable with Johnson wearing “little and sometimes no clothing/no underwear” and with hearing “discussions of sexual activities, including erections,” according to a copy viewed by the Times.
They also had to agree that his behavior was not “unwelcome, offensive, humiliating, hostile, triggering, unprofessional or abusive,” according to the report.
In a post on X, Johnson said the opt-in document was “fair to all concerned and is in everyone’s best interest.”
Johnson often walked around wearing little clothing during the workday, and flirted with Blueprint’s largely female staff, sources told The Times.
They said they felt they could not speak up because of the agreements.
A representative for Johnson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Jamie Contento, who was Johnson’s personal assistant, left Blueprint last year and told the Times she emailed human resources to raise concerns about the work environment.
She is one of at least three of Johnson’s former employees – including his former fiancée – to file complaints with the National Labor Relations Board about his confidentiality agreements.
Taryn Southern, Johnson’s former fiancée and employee at Kernel, had previously raised concerns, filing a 2021 lawsuit accusing Johnson of firing her from the company after breaking up with her while she had Stage 3 breast cancer.
In the suit, Southern alleged Johnson pushed her to sign an NDA that included a $500,000 penalty each time she broke the confidentiality rules.
She said Johnson had broken a promise to pay her $150,000 in exchange for rent and moving out of their home after their split, according to the Times.
But Johnson moved the lawsuit to arbitration and in 2023, it was ruled that Southern had to comply with the agreement, which meant she could not sue him.
Johnson countersued for legal fees – and Southern was ordered to pay him more than $584,000.
The health fanatic posted a YouTube video detailing the ordeal, and later made a 2,400 word post on X claiming his health routine had saved Southern from her cancer, and that he feared she would kill him with scissors.
Johnson had said in his YouTube video that he would set up a trust so payments from “his accuser” would go toward her medical fees. He opened the trust last year, but closed it without putting any money into it, according to the Times.
The report also claims statistics about Johnson’s health were cherry-picked, like him reversing aging by 5.1 years – and that results from other studies showed his biological age had actually increased as much as 10 years, according to blood test results viewed by the Times.
In February, Johnson had warned the Times was preparing a hit piece on him “reviving accusations” from Southern “that were twice rejected by two legal forums, repackaging them for clicks.”
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