Let’s All Be Struldbrugs!

Altos Labs bursts onto the scene with a $3 billion Series A round and re-ignites the quest for life extension

Image credit: The Times

Every decade or so, a fabulously wealthy person looks in the mirror and thinks, “I’ve got everything any human being could desire: billions of dollars in the bank, enormous mansions, private jet aircraft at my disposal, superyachts that cost more than the annual GDP of many countries, and sycophants clinging to me wherever I go. But I’m growing old and all my toys won’t stand between me and that moment when I desperately struggle for my final breath. Damn! Surely something can be done about this? What use are all my billions if I can’t buy a dozen or more years of extra life?”

And so the fabulously wealthy person decides they’re going to put some of their money to work on finding the elixir of youth. Back in the early 2000s, Larry Ellison (CEO of Oracle Corporation) is reputed to have spent more than $650 million of his own cash chasing the Holy Grail of life extension, with precisely nothing whatsoever to show for it in the end.

In 2013, Google’s Larry Page became so excited about the idea of living forever — or at least, for a few more decades — that he persuaded his fellow Googlers to fund Calico Life Sciences, a startup with access to everything any researcher…