Investing in Longevity

Longevity is booming, with hundreds of companies now tackling the biggest issue of all: death. Here is what I am investing in.

Some personal news first: my company Zama just announced its $73m Series A, one of the largest ever for a french company. If you want to learn more about our plans to make the internet encrypted end-to-end with FHE, check out our masterplan!

We all heard the myth of the Fountain of Youth: drink water from this magical fountain, and you will be young again. For thousands of years, people have been selling magical concoctions to people who didn’t know better, sometimes spending fortunes trying to live forever. It’s no surprise then that most attempts at scientific longevity was dismissed with skepticism.

But a convergence of factors changed the game: first, we discovered ways to actually reverse the clock on cells, something called “cell reprogramming”. Second, Covid made everyone realize that our old healthcare system no longer works, and that we need to invest heavily into new ideas if we are to live past a hundred years old.

Biotech is having its moment, and longevity is arguably the biggest market of all, with an estimated 200B in revenue to whoever comes up with a longevity pill. Rather than curing a specific disease, the idea is to prevent or reverse aging itself, and let the body do the rest. After all, very few people get cancer, heart attacks or Alzheimers in their 20s!

My longevity thesis

I have been a biohacker myself for over a decade. My current pace of aging is 0.75, which means I age 25% slower than average. My goal however is to reduce my pace of aging to zero, while reversing the clock on whatever damage I will have accumulated by the time I get there.

My framework for longevity is split into 2 parts: Plan A is about living as long as possible in the most healthy way possible. Plan B is what can be done if you die. If you are building in one of these categories, get in touch!

Plan A: Don’t Die.

Plan A can be broken down into 3 categories: slowing down aging, reversing aging, and replacing broken body parts.

1. Slowing Down Aging

   1. Preventive Diagnostics: Most people go to their doctors and get tested when they are sick. This is upside down, and if you want to live longer, you need to take a proactive, preventive approach. Many companies are now offering tests to help you understand how your body ages and what issues you might develop down the line. One very exciting company I invested in is Glycanage, which measures your biological age and predispositions to various diseases.

   2. Lifestyle interventions: The first thing you can do to live longer is have a healthy lifestyle. The latest research shows that if in your 40s you stop smoking and drinking, start eating well, sleeping well and exercising, you can reach 100. This is a very broad investment category, as it encompasses everything from lifestyle apps to gyms and food. One company I am investing in is Zero Club, a longevity community and marketplace that started out by replicating Bryan Johnson’s Blueprint protocol and making it easy for people to follow.

   3. Supplements: Countless studies showed that some drugs and supplements can help extend lifespan and healthspan, sometimes by up to 25%. The problem is that it’s very hard to sift through the noise and find quality products. I am interested in companies creating new drugs and supplements, as well as companies packaging them for easy consumption.

2. Reversing Aging (Rejuvenation)

   1. Cellular reprogramming: Slowing down aging is great, but reversing it is even better, in particular if you are already well in your 60s and 70s. Numerous teams are currently working on this, mostly based on some variation of cellular reprogramming. This is a very biotech, early stage category, but with a massive impact.

   2. Immune system rejuvenation: The immune system is an extremely powerful weapon against all sort of diseases, aging included. The problem is that as we get older, our immune system gets weaker. There are several attempts at solving this, from pharmaceutical drugs to thymus regeneration, stem cell therapy, bone marrow transplants and more. I’m a big believer in this approach. One company I have recently invested in is Deciduous Therapeutics.

   3. Senolytics: Senescence is a process by which a cell becomes old and dies off, but doesn’t get cleared by the body. It basically lingers around like dead weight, wreaking havoc in the body. Clearing out these senescent cells has been shown to improve pretty much everything. While there are natural supplements that helps with it, potent senolytic drugs will be an important part of anti-aging protocols.

3. Replacing Body Parts

   1. Organ cryopreservation: If one of your organs is damaged, why not just find a donor and replace it? The problem here is that organs can’t be kept for too long (a few hours at most) when someone dies, so the likelihood that you will find a donor that is compatible at exactly the right time is slim. One way to solve this is to cryopreserve (aka freeze) the organs of donors, so that they can be reused later.

   2. Growing organs: The next frontier is to actually grow organs and body parts from scratch, ideally from your own DNA. This includes both growing individual things, as well as growing brainless clones and harvesting them as needed. I know, I’m casually throwing human cloning in there, but scientifically speaking it seems possible and is actually something a few companies are already working on!

   3. Partial brain replacement: On top of body parts and organs, you also want to keep your brain active and working. As you age, your brain shrinks and dies off, a process that cannot be reversed. One promising approach is to grow fresh brain cells and replace the dead parts with them. I am currently investing in the leading team working on this, BE Therapeutics.

Plan B: Life after death.

Plan A can still fail: you can get hit by a bus, or we might not get to rejuvenation in time. Plan B is another option that allows for things to not completely end there, and revolves around 2 things: cryopreservation and mind upload.

1. Full body cryopreservation: The idea here is that if/when you die, rather than just disposing of your body and brain, you keep it “frozen” in the hopes that one day you can be brought back, and cured of whatever made you die the first time. While science hasn’t been able to bring mammals back yet, it is already possible to cryopreserve and resuscitate insects. Some companies have been offering expensive cryopreservation services for decades, but it’s only recently that things became more mainstream, with companies such as Tomorrow Biostasis (that I invested in) offering an affordable subscription model.

2. Mind Upload: Another option is to get rid of biology entirely, and upload your mind to a machine. But you don’t have to necessarily upload your brain, you can instead upload all your personal data, videos, text messages etc, train an AI model on it, and have it take over for you. This could be a complementary service to cryopreservation, such that you can still be interacting with your friends and family, work, make money etc while you wait for your biological body to be brought back. I personally don’t think this artificial mind will actually be you, but it might be good enough to fool others into thinking it is you, and being productive in your absence. This will likely be doable within a couple decades.

I realize this is a lot to digest. Some of these scenarios seem more far-fetched than others, but they are all different facets of the same problem: how can we go beyond the natural capabilities of biology, and transcend it? What amazes me though is that there are companies working on each of these things today! And some of them are already very heavily funded.

I’m not sure what will end up being the winning strategy here, but one thing is for sure, we are witnessing a historical moment for science and humanity!

Rand