Founder Of ChatGPT Invests $180 Million Into Life Extension Startup

Sam Altman, a co-founder of OpenAI, rose to fame after he released ChatGPT late last year, but he has also taken an interest in another area of technology as well. According to MIT Technology Review, the tech entrepreneur has invested $180 million in a company that seeks to defy age and extend the lifespan of humans by using artificial intelligence.

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Retro Biosciences, a San Francisco-based biotech company, announced in April 2022 that they had secured funding for an ambitious mission: to extend the lives of healthy people by 10 years. In spite of the multimillion-dollar funding boost, the source of the funding has remained anonymous until now—all of it came from Altman himself. On the company's website, Retro simply states: "We are fortunate to have been awarded an initial round of funding that will take us to our first proofs of concept, and ensure the stability of the company throughout the next decade.".

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MIT Technology Review reported that Altman's investment in Retro in 2021 is one of the largest investments ever made by an individual in a startup specializing in anti-aging products. Biotech veterans are at the helm of the company's founders. It is well known that Joe Betts-LaCroix has advised multiple startups as well as founded two research-based companies. Sheng Ding, a senior investigator at the Gladstone Institute, is well known for conducting biomedical research, and he has founded four other companies. Aside from Matthew Buckley, a biotech and healthcare professional, he has worked for companies such as Illumina and Bayer Healthcare.

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Betts-LaCroix also worked part-time for Y Combinator from 2014 to 2019, Altman's startup incubator. A few years ago, Altman became interested in health research after he read about studies that were carried out on mice to test the efficacy of reinvigorating old mice with the blood of young mice. Later on, he managed to get in touch with Betts-LaCroix to fund a company that would investigate many aspects of aging and biology.

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Retro is Altman's first major investment into biotech, but it is not his first significant investment into technology as a whole. The startup Helion Energy, which aims to produce limitless amounts of clean energy as a result of fusion energy, received $375 million from him in 2021.

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'It's quite a lot. I invested all my liquid net worth in these two companies," Altman told MIT Tech Review.

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Retro declined Fortune's request for a comment on the matter. Fortune contacted OpenAI for a comment, but they did not respond immediately to the request.

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As of 2019, Altman has been appointed CEO of OpenAI, a company that conducts artificial intelligence research. As a first step, the company created an artificial intelligence-based creation tool called DALL-E (unveiled in 2021) that would be able to create an enormous number of images based on the text prompts given to it. Several months later, OpenAI introduced ChatGPT, an internet-famous chatbot that can sustain human-like conversations with its users, answer questions in a matter of seconds, and generate stunningly detailed content from seemingly simple instructions with the help of artificial intelligence.

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In terms of health and longevity, Altman is not the only Silicon Valley entrepreneur who is interested in these topics. Theil, who donated millions to the nonprofit longevity foundation in 2006, has predicted that “dramatically improved health and longevity for all will occur.” Calico Life Sciences, which is a company that specializes in aging research, has been backed by high-profile investors, including Alphabet, the parent company of Google. In early 2022, Altos Labs, a company reportedly backed by tech moguls including Jeff Bezos, announced that it had received a $3 billion investment from a group of investors. During the course of an individual's life, they claim to be able to reverse diseases, injuries, and disabilities through the process of science. As part of its efforts to slow the aging process, even the Saudi government has said that it plans to invest $1 billion a year to find ways to do so.

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There have also been high-profile Silicon Valley entrepreneurs who have dabbled in health and longevity on a personal level. A 45-year-old tech CEO, Bryan Johnson, has spent over $2 million on medications and treatments since the start of 2023 to keep himself looking like an 18-year-old in order to maintain his attractiveness. There are dedicated physicians who monitor the aging process in his organs and measure metrics such as his body fat and the rate at which his heart beats.

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“Longevity research is moving from a theoretical model to a much more rigorous and clinical one,” George Church, a Harvard University geneticist, told Trade Algo.

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Besides investing millions of dollars in the longevity startup, Altman also participates in his own age-reversing rituals that he practices on a daily basis. As per reports, he eats a healthy diet, exercises regularly, and takes a diabetes drug called metformin which is believed to increase the life expectancy if taken regularly.