Why billionaires are betting millions on beating death

Tech billionaires and leaders are investing heavily in longevity research and technologies. They aim to reverse aging and extend healthy human lifespans significantly. Historical attempts at rejuvenation have yielded limited success, but new science shows promise. This pursuit raises concerns about inequality as only the wealthy may afford early treatments.

For most of human history, death had one great advantage. Nobody could negotiate with it. Kings died. Emperors died.

Billionaires, had they existed, would have died too. No amount of gold, land or political power could buy a way out. That certainty is now being challenged by a peculiar alliance of Silicon Valley billionaires, longevity entrepreneurs and powerful political leaders who are betting that technology might eventually do what religion, alchemy and medicine never quite managed -- push death back. The fantasy ranges from the relatively sensible -- living healthier for longer -- to the spectacularly ambitious, including reversing biological ageing, replacing failing organs and, eventually, achieving something resembling immortality.

Also Read: Tech billionaires are obsessed with living longer, and a new business frontier From "live longer" to "don't die" The most colourful face of the longevity movement is Bryan Johnson, the tech entrepreneur who has reportedly spent millions of dollars a year trying to make his body younger. His Blueprint regime involves strict diets, exercise, supplements, sleep tracking, blood tests, imaging and an astonishing number of biomarkers. Johnson has even published data claiming his body ages at a fraction of the normal rate. In an interview with The i Paper, Johnson said he believes humanity may be approaching a moment when people can seriously contemplate not dying at all.

He has experimented with plasma treatments and previously used plasma from his teenage son before discontinuing the practice. He still tracks everything from his blood markers to biological-age measurements. India has its own version of this increasingly obsessive approach to the body. Deepinder Goyal, the billionaire founder of Eternal -- formerly Zomato -- is preparing to launch Temple, a tiny wearable designed to sit on the side of the forehead and measure what he describes as the body's metabolic state in real time.

Goyal told Bloomberg in July that Temple would initially launch as a wellness device, backed by peer-reviewed studies. The device is expected to cost around $1,000 and is aimed less at the mass market than at athletes, executives and founders -- people who are already willing to spend heavily on tracking their sleep, fitness and recovery. What makes Temple particularly interesting is Goyal's motivation. He said the project began as a personal science experiment to understand cerebral blood flow.

His team subsequently identified what he calls "entropy", a biomarker that he says correlates with metabolic rate and could provide insights into stress, meditation, recovery, sleep and exercise. The science is still awaiting independent validation, and Temple has not received medical regulatory approval. Goyal has described Temple as something he is primarily building for himself, with the business being a "side effect" of the experiment. Also Read: Deepinder Goyal reveals new Temple and you can soon pre-order it Johnson is hardly alone.

Sam Altman has put $180 million of his own money into Retro Biosciences, which is pursuing technologies aimed at adding years of healthy life. Jeff Bezos is a major funder of Altos Labs, a biotech company working on cellular rejuvenation. Elon Musk has gone even further, telling Peter Diamandis that "semi-immortality is an extremely solvable problem." Peter Thiel, meanwhile, has invested heavily in longevity research and has spoken about the possibility of using young blood plasma to extend life. He has also signed up for cryonic preservation -- essentially betting that future science might one day be able to revive his frozen body.

In other words, some of the richest people on Earth are treating mortality less like an unavoidable fact of life and more like a particularly difficult engineering problem. And then there are Xi and Putin A hot-mic exchange between Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin during a September 2025 military parade in Beijing captured the two leaders discussing whether advances in medicine and biotechnology could dramatically extend human life. Putin suggested that organs such as the heart and liver could eventually be replaced, allowing an ageing person to become progressively younger. The young-blood craze is older than you think The idea that youth can somehow be transferred from one body to another is hardly a Silicon Valley invention.

In the 19th century, French physiologist Charles-Édouard Brown-Séquard injected himself with extracts from animal reproductive organs, claiming improvements in energy, cognition and sexual function. The results were later understood largely as a placebo effect. Decades later, surgeon Serge Voronoff transplanted monkey testicular tissue into older men, claiming rejuvenating effects. More than 2,000 procedures were reportedly performed worldwide before the treatment fell out of favour.

Modern science did produce a genuinely intriguing version of the young-blood idea. In experiments published in Nature in 2005, researchers Irina and Mike Conboy connected young and old mice so that their blood circulated together. Older mice showed improved regeneration in muscle, liver and brain tissue. The finding suggested that something in young blood could influence ageing tissues.

But translating that finding into a fountain of youth for humans is another story. A private company, Ambrosia Health, eventually charged people $8,000 for transfusions of plasma from young donors. The US FDA later warned about unapproved young-plasma treatments being marketed as cures, and the company shut down. The researchers behind the original mouse work did not endorse the commercial treatment.

But money changes the question The industry is already expensive. The i Paper cited research estimating that the global longevity market could grow from $27 billion in 2025 to $67 billion by 2035. There are hundreds of longevity centres offering everything from cold therapy to infrared treatments, while high-end clinics can charge tens of thousands of pounds a year for extensive testing. If radical life extension works, it is unlikely to arrive on day one as a universal public service.

The first beneficiaries may be the people who can afford personalised medicine, experimental therapies, elite doctors and years of monitoring. That makes the immortality race more about inequality and power. The rich may be able to buy more time. They may even help develop technologies that give everyone healthier, longer lives.

But immortality? For the moment, even the world's richest people are still waiting for their biggest investment to pay off.