Visionary CEO Sam Altman, who leads OpenAI and its world-renowned AI language ChatGPT model, has recently made a bold investment – $180 million to a biotech startup called Retro Biosciences. Founded in April of this year, Retro Biosciences’ goal is to extend the human lifespan by ten years by deploying cutting-edge medical tactics targeting the aging process. Altman’s affiliations with the biotech firm began years ago when he and the company’s founder, Joe Betts-LaCroix, launched the company while they were part of the startup accelerator Y Combinator. Delving deeper into life extension projects, Altman and Betts-LaCroix focused their attention on a Harvard study that found that the blood plasma of older mice in the experiment regained youthful characteristics. Striving to take the research even further, the duo joined forces to form Retro Biosciences and Altman gave the ample financial backing for the organization to bring their dreams to fruition.
Retro Biosciences will make use of this large investment from Altman to realize their mission and appear to be in a favourable position to pursue their objectives. Although, Altman has chosen to maintain his involvement with the company confidential, his ambitious approach and great wealth of knowledge in the area have the potential to be incredibly impactful. Altman’s dedication to extending the human lifespan is further underlined by his own practices such as taking the diabetes medication metformin and emphasising healthy eating and adequate sleep.
The success of Retro Biosciences’ research is something that Sam Altman has a vested interest in, not only as a major investor in the company, but also because he aspires to directly benefit from the therapies they will develop. Having previously worked at Y Combinator, the outfit which Altman directed between the years of 2014 and 2019, the two inventors were able to collaborate on their respective ideas in hopes of achieving a sustainable way to prolong life.
A game-changer within the world of biotechnology, Retro Biosciences has the potential to revolutionize the longevity of the human life. With Altman’s incredible investment of $180 million, along with Betts-LaCroix’s dedication and expertise, the biotech startup is well-positioned to bring about remarkable advances in their mission to defy aging and death.
