Longevity Vision Fund
One hundred million for eternal life
Alexander Baulin, Forbes, 04.02.2019
A fund with Russian roots has been launched, which will invest in life extension technologies. The founders' goal is to develop technologies and services that increase the average life expectancy of a person to 100 years.
The Longevity Vision Fund venture fund focuses on investments in technologies and businesses that improve human life. One of the goals of the foundation is to prolong people's lives. This was reported to Forbes by the founder of the foundation Sergey Yang.
The fund will amount to $100 million, the focus will be investments in early-stage technologies, products and services that serve for active longevity.
Sergey Yang, a native of Russia, became the fund's manager. He already has experience investing in human life extension technologies: in particular, he is a partner in the life extension and longevity sector of the Bold Capital Partners fund. In addition, Yang is a member of the innovative board of directors of the Xprize Foundation: he funds on a charitable basis the development of the program of the future global Xprize competition for life extension.
Yang told Forbes that the first investments are planned in the field of stem cell therapy, genetic data processing, the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in drug development, as well as in the early diagnosis of cancer and heart disease – the main causes of death of people over 50 years old. The geographical focus of investments is the USA, China and India.
The Longevity Vision Fund is being created in partnership with Peter Diamandis and his fund Bold Capital Partners. Diamandis is known as the organizer of the Xprize competition, in which breakthrough solutions in various fields of human activity are awarded.
"An increase of 20-30 years in the period of active healthy life of people will give huge opportunities for the whole Earth," explains Peter Diamandis, the chosen investment direction. He believes that the combination of genome editing, AI and cellular medicine will make it possible to make a breakthrough, as a result of which the 100-year–old age will become as familiar as the 60-year-old is now.
"Over the past few years, the situation in biogerontology has changed radically. There are biomarkers of aging, really promising therapeutic drugs and companies that are ready to play by the rules of the pharmaceutical industry to bring products to the market and show that you can make money on it. Funds have also emerged that not only want to prolong healthy longevity, but also do a deep analysis of the industry, work only with professionals, develop new business models and earn money for investors," explained the situation in the field of longevity research Alex Zhavoronkov, head of Insilico Medicine, which develops medicines and reveals new properties of existing drugs using modeling and artificial intelligence algorithms.
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