Rich people in Silicon Valley spend money for life, and Sam Altman also invests. The only thing that can beat AI is immortality

Recently, Coinbase CEO founded NewLimit and raised $40 million in Series A financing to extend human life span. "Father of ChatGPT" Sam Altman, Meta helm Zuckerberg, etc. are also fanatical pursuers of "immortality".

Written by: Eric

Edited by: Zuri

*Pursue eternal life, transcend the shackles of time, and continue the eternal existence. *

In the Silicon Valley venture capital circle, AI is really hot.

In the recently released 2023Q1 Emerging VC Fund Manager Survey Report, 91/185 fund managers listed AI & ML (machine learning) as the investment direction with the biggest bubble.

So, in contrast, what is the most neglected investment direction? Surprisingly, the topic of prolonging human life was selected as the first.

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Source: Signature block

Behind this is the problem of population aging that is becoming more and more difficult to ignore.

According to the US census data, from 2010 to 2020, the proportion of US residents aged 65 and over in the total population increased by 38%, accounting for 16.9% of the national population, the fastest growth rate in 130 years. On this trend, by 2034 there will be more seniors in the United States than children for the first time.

European countries are starting to solve the problem of labor shortage caused by the aging population by delaying the retirement age and extending the time limit for social security payment. For example, in France, the retirement age will be extended from 62 to 64 (in 2030), and 43 years must be paid (from 2027) to enjoy full pension. Even more so in Germany, the current retirement age has been set to 65 years and 9 months, and it is planned to delay it to 67 years old in 2029. ‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍

Aging population, insufficient labor force...Under a series of problems, delaying aging, or even immortality, is indeed becoming more and more attractive.

In the US technology circle, quite a number of technology companies are committed to achieving immortality, and have started a capital game. Recently, NewLimit, the immortality company founded by Coinbase CEO** Brian Armstrong**, raised $40 million in Series A financing to extend human life.

In addition to capital and enterprises, there are also many bigwigs who are passionate about practicing for immortality. Can you believe it, "Father of ChatGPT" Sam Altman is not only an AI expert, but also a fanatical pursuer of "immortality".

Didn't it mean that AI can make consciousness immortal? How come even AI bosses are pursuing physical immortality? It sounds ironic.

Why are they so keen on immortality? What are the practical benefits behind it? These are mysteries to be solved.

01 The ambition of NewLimit, the madness of capital

NewLimit is a San Francisco-based company with 17 employees that's barely a year and a half old.

Despite being a startup, NewLimit is doing very interesting things. It argues that humans age because of the decline in organs that occur with age. If genetic cells can be reprogrammed, this decline can be reversed, and people can live forever.

To test this claim, NewLimit experimented with mice. First, it took an old skin cell from the mouse, bred a newborn mouse, and then did the same with the new mouse. As a result, 13 generations of mice were bred, all from the same mother cell.

At present, NewLimit is still doing some basic research, and its idea is that if successful, it can make the immune function of the elderly younger and stronger.

Source: The Coin Republic

Although we don't know when NewLimit will achieve its "rejuvenating" goal, its star founders have already garnered a lot of attention for the company.

In addition to Brian Armstrong, the co-founder of Coinbase, another co-founder BlakeByers is no ordinary person. In 2021, he founded Byers Capital named after himself. Before that, he worked at Google. The venture capital firm GV has served as a managing partner for more than ten years, and has invested in well-known companies such as Robinhood, Grail, and Gusto.

Unlike the two star co-founders, the other two co-founders are low-key but solid technical. Greg Johnson obtained a graduate degree in biomedical engineering and a Ph.D. in computational biology at Carnegie Mellon University. Amazon has made outstanding contributions and has led the development of machine learning models at the Allen Institute for Cell Service (Institute of Biological Cells). He will be responsible for NewLimit's machine learning platform; JacobKimmel from *Google *Calico, a company under the parent company Alphabet that studies the topic of "immortality", once led a laboratory in the company to study epigenetic reprogramming to discover ways to reprogram cells and reverse their aging process.

Like NewLimit, there are many companies doing the same research. For example, Rejuvenate Bio is a company founded by gerontologist George Church, which focuses on the use of gene therapy to treat diseases related to aging. There is also a company called Turn Bio, which studies the restoration of youthful characteristics of cells through genetic manipulation.

However, although immortality sounds exciting, it is a very expensive job to actually study it. Despite aging being a major driver of human disease, research into the biology of aging has been underfunded, according to NewLimit.

Therefore, capital has become a key force in the study of "immortality".

Back in 2021, NewLimit announced that it had raised $105 million in funding from co-founders, while Coinbase co-founder Fred Ehrsam, Y Combinator president Garry Tan, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, "solo" venture investor Elad Gil and other big names in capital are also supporters of NewLimit.

In fact, looking at the entire venture capital circle, the topic of "immortality" has always been the object of capital pursuit.

Previously, Unity Biotechnology, a life science company invested by The Longevity Fund of the United States, received personal funding from investor Peter Thiel and Amazon founder Bezos, and successfully listed on NASDAQ in 2018 gram listed.

Source: Twitter

"MIT Technology Review" previously published an article stating that the Saudi royal family established a non-profit organization called Hevolution Foundation, which plans to invest $1 billion a year to promote anti-aging basic research and clinical transformation of anti-aging drugs . To put it bluntly, it is to study how to prolong life. This can be said to be very generous. As a comparison, the National Institutes of Health, the official anti-aging agency in the United States, only spends 300 million US dollars on aging research every year. The Saudi royal family is really rich.

From the perspective of capital, the market prospect of immortality is very broad. According to BCG Analysis data, the investment in the field of aging will increase by more than 9 times from 2016 to 2022. Some institutions predict that the longevity technology market will reach 600 billion US dollars by 2025.

In this infinitely imaginative market, the craziest ones are those top technology giants. Their every move is attracting global attention.

02 In order to live forever, how hard is the boss?

Right now, Sam Altman can be said to have won a large number of fanatical AI fans around the world. In addition to AI and Web3, he also has a soft spot for practicing the secret of longevity.

MIT Technology Review reports that Sam Altman has shown a keen interest in extending lifespan. Although he is born in the 1980s, he has already started to "anti-aging" by taking diabetes drugs early. This method is said to have been popular in Silicon Valley for many years, but it has not been recognized by professionals.

In addition to taking anti-aging drugs, Sam Altman also spent $180 million investing in biotechnology company Retro Biosciences to develop methods to delay death.

Source: BioTecNika

In addition to Sam Altman, the 45-year-old tech billionaire Bryan Johnson also became popular because of his crazy pursuit of immortality. After getting rich, the boss wants to return to the age of 18, so he spends at least 2 million US dollars a year and hires more than 30 health experts to monitor more than 70 organs in his body. Even when he sleeps, he has to connect to the machine for monitoring, which is crazy to the extreme.

When he is not sleeping, Bryan Johnson wakes up at five o'clock to exercise. He usually eats a vegan diet to control calories. His body fat rate was once as low as 3%. This figure has threatened his health, but he still enjoys it.

There are also some top tech giants who have been paying attention to immortality for a long time. In 2013, Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin established the anti-aging company Calico, and set the goal to "solve the problem of death."

In 2020, Bezos invested $3 billion to create cell regeneration startup Altos Labs. The company focuses on cell reprogramming technology. Bezos even set an amazing vision to let Altos Labs replace all 40 trillion to 60 trillion cells in the whole body, and return to the baby, which is equivalent to living once. If it can be realized, human beings may be able to obtain infinite lives.

Meta at the helm Zuckerberg also invested 3 billion US dollars to establish the BioHub Biological Center Research Institute, hoping to draw a human "cell map" and find the mystery of immortality.

Zuckerberg and his wife are pictured with BioHub staff | Source: GenomeWeb

According to the thinking of many of us ordinary people, it is basically impossible to live forever, which is superstitious thinking. Why are these top tech giants so flocking to it?

In fact, some people are in business for a good return on investment. Some people are born of fear, and the more elites who stand at the top of the pyramid, the easier it is to fear death.

Facing the unknown, they always want to do their best to gain certainty and prolong the existing superior life.

At a forum hosted by the Frontiers Open Science Platform in Switzerland, there were more than 400 scientists, politicians and other industry elites from around the world. The host asked, "How many people want to live to be 120?" About a third of the audience raised their hands. He asked again, "How many people wish they could regain their 20-year-old vigor?" Nearly all hands went up.

Of course, there are also some people in the technology giants who oppose the study of immortality, such as Elon Musk, who always speaks amazingly.

He has stated that he "doesn't think that trying to make people live very long will lead to suffocation of society, because the truth is, most people will not change their minds. If they don't 'retire from the stage of history', we will stay in the old world." society will not progress in terms of ideas.”

Readers, what do you think of immortality?

Reference source:

Emerging Fund Manager Report - Q1 2023（SignatureBlock）

NewLimit, co-founded by Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong, raises $40M to extend life（TechCruch）