Longevity & aging
Extend healthspan. Aging is the single largest driver of disease burden, and it is treatable.
The summary lives here. The full whitepaper walks through the four-axis ranking, existing alternatives, proposed direction, cost & scale, and suggested investors — in the spirit of Hyperloop Alpha.
Severity · WTP / wealth
share of affected person’s wealth they would pay for a solution
Current solutions
quality of existing solutions — low score = high opportunity
Market size · TAM
USD / year the world is already paying
Time · OOM to impact
order-of-magnitude horizon to civilizational-scale impact
Capital · OOM to solve
cumulative R&D + deployment + supply chain across the arc
Three-lens scoring
Aging underlies cardiovascular disease, cancer, neurodegeneration, and frailty. Every human alive is affected. The hallmarks-of-aging framework (López-Otín et al.) gives discrete targets: senescent cell clearance, epigenetic reprogramming, stem cell exhaustion. Partial cellular reprogramming (Altos, Retro, NewLimit) and geroprotective drugs (rapamycin, metformin class) are in early trials. Utility delta is enormous: current median healthspan ~75 years, theoretical ceiling unknown and likely much higher.
The success vision · 30 years horizon
If we solve this, here is the world we get.
Before · today
Healthspan declines starting ~age 50. Aging treated as inevitable rather than as a disease. ~100M humans living with frailty-driven decline.
After · 30 years
Healthspan extended by 20+ years. Aging recognized as a treatable condition with FDA-approved interventions. 100→120-year healthy lifespan common in cohorts born after 2030.
Voices on this quest
3 thinkersNeuralink targets brain and spinal-cord disease as near-term deliverables with long-term implications for human-AI symbiosis and healthspan.
Extending healthy human life is a core progress goal. Curing aging is as legitimate a target as curing any single disease.
Human lifespan extension is on the canonical list of "good quests that require massively leveled heroes."
Companies on this quest
8 mappedDe-extinction and genetic engineering. Biosecurity adjacency via rapid genome editing and cold-chain logistics.
Cellular rejuvenation via partial reprogramming. $3B at founding with Shinya Yamanaka on scientific board.
AI-driven drug discovery. Industrializes biology through automated phenotypic screening at scale.
Alphabet-spinoff applying AlphaFold-class ML to drug design. Deals with Novartis and Eli Lilly.
Alphabet company for aging biology. Research partnership with AbbVie; long-horizon mandate rare in pharma.
Cellular reprogramming, autophagy, and plasma-exchange therapeutics. Seed-funded by Sam Altman at $180M.
Partial reprogramming for aging, started by Blake Byers, Jacob Kimmel, and Brian Armstrong.
FDA-track longevity drug for dogs. First-of-its-kind lifespan-extension regulatory pathway.
Capital funding this quest
5 allocatorsEmergent Ventures
GrantFast grants. High-variance, unconventional, talent-first.
best for: Unproven people with a weird, specific idea and no credential path.
Thiel Fellowship
Fellowship$100k to stop out of school and build something important.
best for: Under-22 builders with spiky talent and a real project.
Deep Science Ventures
Venture StudioOutcome-first venture creation. Define the holy-grail outcome, then recruit founders.
best for: Founders who want a co-founder thesis and institutional support from day one.
Founders Fund
Venture CapitalContrarian hard tech that rebuilds the industrial base.
best for: Scaling massive hard-tech quests, space, defense, biotech, fusion.
Lux Capital
Venture CapitalCounter-conventional science at the edges of physics and biology.
best for: Technical founders at the frontier who need contrarian conviction capital.