Jesse Michels
| Jesse Michels | |
|---|---|
| Occupations | Venture capitalist, documentary filmmaker, YouTuber |
| Known for | First filmed interview with David Grusch; American Alchemy (YouTube channel) |
Jesse Michels is an American venture capitalist and independent documentary filmmaker who became a prominent figure in the UAP disclosure community. He works in venture capital as his primary occupation and produces documentary content on his YouTube channel American Alchemy. He is best known for conducting the first filmed interview with UAP whistleblower David Grusch following the July 2023 Congressional hearings on non-human intelligence.
Biography
Michels entered the UFO and frontier-science space while working at Peter Thiel's family office in Los Angeles, where his role combined traditional venture investing with hosting events for unconventional thinkers. His connection to Grusch came through a mutual contact — a former Space Force officer whom Michels had met in a venture capital context, who had previously served alongside Grusch in the Air Force. Michels had known Grusch for approximately two years before the Congressional hearings, and was advising him informally during that period. He attended the 2023 Congressional UAP hearings in person.
Disclosure and public activities
Michels has characterized the UFO field as unusually hard to navigate because deception and genuine information are deeply intermingled. His "contrarian take," he has said, is that beyond the field's "kooks and grifters" sits a larger group of people "telling partial truths" while pursuing ulterior motives — sources he regards as practicing a form of controlled opposition, figures giving off "bad vibes" whose accounts must nonetheless be weighed because they carry real information. The observation parallels the "90/10" pattern described for counter-disclosure assets, in which a planted source mixes a large measure of truth with a small, misdirecting falsehood.
Documentary work
American Alchemy has produced documentary content on Thomas Townsend Brown and his electrogravitic propulsion experiments, Bob Lazar, the Peruvian mummies controversy, and interviews with figures including Blake Lemoine (the Google LaMDA whistleblower), Mike Masters (proponent of the humans-from-the-future hypothesis), and Joseph McMoneagle (a CIA remote viewing operative). The Townsend Brown documentary was cited by Karl Nell — a former deputy CTO of Northrop Grumman and Army representative of the UAP Task Force — as recommended viewing for audiences wanting actionable material on UAP-related physics. Joe Rogan praised the production quality of American Alchemy's output as "really well produced."
Michels also hosted an episode titled "UFOs, Consciousness, and the Hidden Architects of Reality," exploring the relationship between UAP phenomena, consciousness, and hidden structures underlying perceived reality.
In a February 2025 interview with Danny Jones, Michels covered UFO whistleblowers, claims regarding NASA time travel research, and programmes involving psychic soldiers. Topics discussed included the properties of Nitinol-like memory-effect metals allegedly found at crash retrieval sites, and Michels's view that the most important near-term actionable research involves the physics of zero-point energy and electrogravitics rather than the biological or intelligence dimensions of the UAP phenomenon.