Virtually everyone would like to live a longer, healthier life. Given the ubiquity of this aspiration, it’s not surprising that longevity has a lengthy history as a popular startup investment theme.
However, the space is also not immune to market dynamics. In recent quarters, investors appear to have pulled back on large financings for startups innovating around extending lifespans. This comes in the wake of underwhelming performance of many of their biggest prior bets.
As we’ve seen in prior analyses around longevity startup funding, deals continue to get done, even during off cycles. To illustrate what’s attracting interest this time around, we used Crunchbase data to assemble a list of 14 longevity-focused startups that secured funding in 2025.
Few moonshots, more measured dealmaking
The largest longevity-related funding round we could find this year totaled $130 million — which is sizable but not crazy moonshot-level dealmaking. It went to NewLimit, a startup co-founded by Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong that touts its mission as “epigenetically reprogramming cells to younger states.”
The next-largest rounds went to AI drug discovery companies, coinciding with a very buzzy year for the space. This includes Insilico Medicine, an AI drug developer that cites aging-related diseases as one of its core focus areas, which raised $110 million.
Nine-year-old Juvenescence also picked up a $76 million Series B-1 tranche this spring to develop a pipeline of AI-enabled therapeutics to extend healthy lifespans. It’s focused on medicines that target core aging mechanisms to treat and prevent age-related diseases.
And on the prevention side, Fountain Life, a startup that counts Peter Diamandis and Tony Robbins among its co-founders, secured an $18 million Series B. Fountain sells memberships that it says offer access to AI-guided insights, personalized restorative therapeutics and “proactive biologic optimization” for every stage of life.
Seed-stage action
Seed-stage companies, meanwhile, secured smaller rounds but also demonstrated ambitious visions.
Toronto-based Grey Matter Neurosciences, for example, is looking to use focused ultrasound to treat age-related diseases of the brain. Launched last year, it secured $14 million in an initial funding round in January.
Another intriguing newcomer is Seattle’s Circulate Health, which offers therapeutic plasma exchange to patients seeking to extend their healthy lifespan. The startup emerged from stealth and announced in July that it raised $12 million in a seed funding led by Khosla Ventures.
And while it’s not precisely a longevity startup, Tomorrow Bio certainly has an intriguing business model. The Berlin-based startup provides cryopreservation for humans and pets.
Longevity startups don’t always age well
Since the desire to live a longer, healthier life is so universal, it’s common for longevity startups to generate early enthusiasm. Ironically, they don’t always age well.
Performance of several longevity-focused IPOs demonstrates this propensity. Probably the most recent was BioAge Labs, a startup focused on “harnessing the biology of human aging” to develop new therapies for obesity and metabolic diseases. It went public on Nasdaq just over a year ago, and shares are now trading at less than half the initial IPO price.
One of the biggest disappointments was Unity Biotechnology, a longevity-focused biotech that went public in 2018 after raising nearly $300 million in venture funding. Its shares are now worthless, and the company is no longer operating.
Among early private unicorns, Human Longevity, a provider of diagnostics and longevity also co-founded by Diamandis, also underperformed expectations. The San Diego-based company reportedly saw its valuation fall to $310 million from $1.6 billion in 2018. It’s unclear where the valuation stands now.
Not just about returns
For longevity founders, however, ROI is obviously not the only metric that matters. The big success stories will be those that advance our understanding of the aging process and contribute to dialing back the ravages of age-related disease. Hopefully, they’ll continue to forge ahead on these fronts regardless of how the IPO market is faring.
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Illustration: Dom Guzman
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