"I'm a warlord now, bitch!"

Steven Simoni, wearing a $4,000 Celine track suit unzipped to reveal a bare chest and a silver chain, was holding court at a recent film premiere in the East Village of Manhattan, joking with a reporter about his latest venture.

The tech entrepreneur was in town to see "Match in a Haystack," a documentary he funded about a dance troupe that defeats the odds to put on a show in war-torn Ukraine.

A little more than a year ago the 39-year-old was a typical Silicon Valley success story having sold a payments company to DoorDash for $125 million in 2022.

But now he is the co-founder of a different kind of startup, Allen Control Systems, which makes a product far removed from menu QR-codes: an AI-powered autonomous machine gun called the "Bullfrog" designed to sho

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