Billions for eternal life

Who invests in immortality

Margarita Vznuzdaeva, vc.ru

A biotech startup from Google

Back in 1999, futurist Raymond Kurzweil in his book "The Age of Spiritual Machines: When Computers Become Smarter than Humans" ("The Age of Spiritual Machines: When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence") predicted that a person would first be able to overcome the problem of aging with the help of computer technology, and then completely change the usual laws of life and death:

By the 2040s, we will be able to multiply human intelligence by a billion times. It will be a profound and unique change.
Computers will become smaller, they will enter our bodies and brains, make us healthier and smarter.
Raymond Kurzweil

Kurzweil is now the executive director of Google, and thanks to the efforts of Larry Page, one of the co–founders of the tech giant, in 2013, a startup Calico appeared, one of the main tasks of which is to provide humanity with a longer and healthier life with the help of advanced technologies. Page's anti-aging partners at Calico were Sergey Brin, Apple CEO Arthur Levinson, and Google Ventures founder Bill Maris.

If you ask me today if it is possible to live up to 500 years, I will answer "yes". Bill Maris

By 2017, about $1 billion had been invested in the work of the research laboratory.

The founders of Google are mentioned in Yuval Noah Hararay's book "Homo Deus: A Brief History of the Future" in a somewhat ironic manner.

Google probably won't have time to solve the mortality problem in time to make its co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin immortal. Yuval Noah Hararay

In response to these lines , Brin said to his girlfriend Nicole Schoenehen:

Yes, I appeared to die, but I don't really plan to do that. Sergey Brin

His position is echoed in the Score by Maris.

We have everything to achieve even the most daring ideas from the point of view of life sciences. I just hope to live long enough not to die. Bill Maris

But Calico employees, unlike the founders, are not obsessed with the theme of eternal life. The company's vice president of aging research, Cynthia Kenyon, studied the problem of life extension long before there was interest in it from businessmen. Her former colleague Laura Deming founded The Longevity Fund, a venture fund that focuses on the problems of aging and longevity.

The activities of both women scientists are aimed at solving issues related to age-related pathologies and controversial methods of cancer treatment. "They are not looking for the fountain of immortality," writes NY Times.

A research laboratory from a British gerontologist

In 2009, the non-profit organization SENS Research Foundation was established. One of its founders, Aubrey de Grey, believes that the victory over aging is just a matter of time, and it is technological progress that will ultimately help people achieve "accelerated life extension."

He himself invested 11 million pounds in the project, inherited from his mother, the artist Cordelia. According to the Evening Standard, SENS received support from Peter Thiel, co-founder of the PayPal payment system. The investments amounted to more than $ 6 million, writes UFX.

Gerontologists are confused by the search for the root cause of aging. But everything falls apart in an instant due to the fact that our systems are interconnected. So we have to separate them and defeat the problem. Aubrey de Grey

A "vampire" startup for Peter

Peter Thiel does not change himself and over the past years has been actively investing in biotech startups and non-profit organizations that deal with the problems of longevity and immortality. According to The Washington Post, the billionaire funds scientists through his non-profit laboratory Breakout Labs. Its activities are aimed at supporting companies at an early stage.

Aging research may not always be a great commercial business, but it is a very important area for philanthropic investments. Peter Thiel

Ambrosia is one of Thiel's most controversial investments, which caused a violent reaction in society and in the press. The startup is called "vampire": it studies the problem of aging through the prism of parabiosis – transfusion of plasma from young people to older ones for rejuvenation.

According to some reports, Peter Thiel showed a direct interest in the process itself: according to Gawker, he spends about $40,000 dollars every three months on blood transfusions of eighteen-year-olds. Nevertheless, in June 2017, Jesse Karmazin, the founder of the startup, said that Thiel was not his client.

The co-founder of PayPal himself refrains from any comments. "I've studied it all. But he hasn't started anything yet," Peter Thiel said about extending his life.

The Startup that Freezes Death

Alcor Life Extension Foundation is another way to deceive not just the aging process, but, if successful, death itself. The company founded by Max More is engaged in cryopreservation: it preserves human bodies and animal bodies after death by treating them in liquid nitrogen.

Freezing the whole body costs from $ 100 thousand to $ 200 thousand, you can also freeze only the brain – for $ 80 thousand. The brain is frozen for the future – it is assumed that scientists will be able to recreate a clone of the client's body, and he will recover as a full-fledged person.

Among the members of Alcor now are Aubrey de Grey, Ray Kurzweil and Peter Thiel, who, according to UFX, supports 14 different startups related to the topic of life extension and immortality. Don Lochlin, the owner of a casino in Las Vegas and an American billionaire, also plans to cryopreservate his body.

Traditional medicine on the guard of youth

A more "classic" option for investment regarding the transfusion of blood of young people and the preservation of bodies is the biotech company Unity Biotechnology by Ned Davis. Unity has received $116 million in funding, including from Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and Peter Thiel.

Most diseases are associated with aging. You have a one in a thousand chance of getting cancer at the age of 30, but at 80 this probability is one in ten. Peter Thiel at the Web Summit

The company develops medicines that can suspend or slow down the course of diseases associated with aging processes. Unity employees hope to find a way to remove aging cells, which, on the one hand, stop the development of cancer cells, but on the other hand, accumulate over time and cause age–related vision changes and arthritis.

Studies conducted on mice have shown that removing cells "can prevent or slow down tissue dysfunction and promote health."

According to the Daily Mail, Jeff Bezos in his 53 years, captured during the Allen conference & Sun Valley Company in the summer of 2017, began to look much better than in 2012. The publication wonders if the medical company helped him in this.

About immortality in Russia

Not only Western businessmen are ready to invest in life extension technologies and immortality. For example, media magnate and economist Dmitry Itskov founded the transhumanist project "Russia 2045" back in 2011.

Its main goal is to find a way to transfer the human mind into robotic avatars – artificial bodies, the use of which will help people live forever. Itskov claims that avatars can become a "source of cyber immortality" accessible to all people if they take part in the activities of the organization.

Avatars will become cheap and accessible to many if people put their own efforts into it, and not passively watch, hoping that someone will do everything for them. Dmitry Itskov

At first, the project was criticized by the Commission on Combating Pseudoscience of the Russian Academy of Sciences. But after a re-examination of the activities and according to the results of a joint meeting of representatives of the Russian Academy of Sciences with experts from the Kurchatov Institute and the Ministry of Education and Science, "Russia 2045" was recognized as socially useful, aimed at improving the quality of human life.

Georgy Solovyov, CEO of Skyeng, in his interview with Maxim Spiridonov also said that he sees the fight against human mortality as his mission and believes in the progressive power of modern technologies to combat it.

If in 2012 the market of anti-aging technologies, illusorily bringing society closer to immortality, was estimated at $1.6 billion, then by 2025 this market price may well reach $20 billion, according to Inc.

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