Over the previous decade, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos and Peter Thiel have all poured cash into life-prolonging and anti-aging analysis. Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk is not shopping for in.
“I do not assume we must always attempt to have individuals dwell for a extremely very long time,” Musk recently told Insider. “It might trigger asphyxiation of society as a result of the reality is, most individuals do not change their thoughts. They simply die. So if they do not die, we can be caught with outdated concepts and society would not advance.”
That is a contrarian viewpoint, not less than amongst Silicon Valley billionaires — lots of whom have a monitor document of investing in longevity analysis. To this point, only a few — maybe none — of these investments have panned out.
In September 2021, the MIT Know-how Overview reported that Bezos invested an undisclosed sum of cash in anti-aging start-up Altos Labs, which formally launched earlier this yr. In response to its web site, the San Francisco-based biotech firm focuses on “mobile rejuvenation programming,” a theorized technique of reversing illness, damage and incapacity.
Bezos and Thiel have additionally each invested in Unity Biotechnology, a South San Francisco-based firm that researches “senescent cells,” which cease dividing in people as they age. The thought, in line with the corporate’s web site, is to develop “transformative medicines to gradual, halt, or reserve illnesses of getting old.”
Unity Biotechnology raised greater than $300 million in funding earlier than going public in 2018. As of Monday afternoon, it has a market cap of $73.06 million, down considerably from its September 2018 peak of practically $972 million.
Thiel is maybe one among Silicon Valley’s most well-known proponents of anti-aging analysis. One start-up Thiel helped fund, known as Ambrosia, revisited a Fifties observe known as parabiosis, which experimented with reducing open and stitching collectively circulatory methods in rats.
The research did not yield concrete conclusions, however the Monterey, California-based firm nonetheless started comparable trials in people — injecting blood from individuals beneath age 25 into individuals aged 35 and older — claiming rejuvenation results.
“It is one among these very odd issues the place individuals had completed these research within the Fifties after which it received dropped altogether,” Thiel told Insider in 2015. “I believe there are numerous these items which were surprisingly underexplored.”
In 2019, the U.S. Meals and Drug Administration issued a warning in opposition to parabiosis. Ambrosia seems to be nonoperational right now.
That hasn’t stopped different tech billionaires from pursuing comparable finish objectives. Zuckerberg and his spouse, Priscilla Chan, are co-founders of The Breakthrough Prize, which yearly awards $3 million to scientists who make “transformative advances towards understanding dwelling methods and increasing human life,” in line with its web site.
“I am most fascinated about questions on individuals,” Zuckerberg mentioned at a 2015 Facebook Q&A event. “What is going to allow us to dwell endlessly? How do treatment all illnesses? How does the mind work? How does studying work and the way we are able to empower people to study one million occasions extra?”
According to The New Yorker, Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison has donated not less than $370 million to anti-aging analysis. Google co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Web page helped launch biotech start-up Calico, an Alphabet subsidiary that researches aging-related illnesses like diabetes and Alzheimer’s.
In different phrases, plainly Musk — the richest individual on the planet, with a internet value of $265.4 billion, according to Forbes — stands in opposition to lots of his Silicon Valley friends. “I actually wish to preserve well being for an extended time period,” Musk informed Insider. “However I’m not afraid of dying. I believe it might come as a reduction.”
Bezos, Thiel, Musk, Zuckerberg, Ellison, Brin and Web page didn’t instantly reply to CNBC Make It is request for remark.
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