Sam Altman's Life Extension Guy Warns of Injections That Cause Wild Tumor Growth

BILLIONAIRES WANT TO LIVE FOREVER!

Victor Tangermann
Tue, December 19, 2023


OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has invested a whopping $180 million in a startup called Retro Biosciences that's looking for novel ways to extend human longevity.

As Bloomberg reports, the company has an unusual way of exploring new treatments: it's investigating not just one area of research, but five — an extremely costly and high-risk approach in the world of anti-aging science.

Altman, who recently was fired and promptly reinstated at OpenAI, gave Retro cofounder Joe Betts-LaCroix an immense opportunity.

"Sam was willing to do something different and throw lots of money at a bunch of things in parallel," Betts-LaCroix told Bloomberg, referring to his support as "freaking awesome" and "cool."

But considering the sheer risks involved, we're unlikely to see potential life extension research being tried out on humans any time soon.

Case in point, one avenue of research being investigated by Retro Biosciences is reprogramming damaged or decayed cells to revert them to a healthier and younger state.

However, researchers have run into some serious roadblocks when trying the process out on lab mice. In some experiments, mice that had some of their genes reprogrammed, started growing tumors called teratomas, which can be made up of several different types of tissue, including hair, bone, or teeth.

"There’s thinking that you can inject a virus that will go into someone’s tissues, put the genes for these transcription factors into the cells and express them for a while in hopefully a very controlled way," Betts-LaCroix told Bloomberg.

"You have to stop before you go too far and make a pluripotent stem cell, because it will start trying to grow an entire person right there and form the tumors," he added. Yikes!

According to the report, Retro is undertaking several cell-reprogramming experiments, including one involving human tissues collected from cancer patients. Another experiment is looking to rejuvenate the immune system, which could give the human body a better way to fight diseases.

But whether Altman will be able to benefit from any of these therapies any time soon remains to be seen. The science is still in its infancy, and these are hard problems with significant consequences for failure — or success, for that matter.

Altman is only one of several billionaires betting big on anti-aging research, including the likes of Jeff Bezos and Peter Thiel. The industry, however, has become infamous for making unfounded claims and leaning on science fiction rather than actual science.

Whether Betts-LaCroix and his company will be able to crack the code is anyone's guess. Even with Altman's sizable investment, there are no guarantees.

"Getting to the final products will require more investors and going public at some point," cofounder Sheng Ding told Bloomberg. "Sam will not be able to fund this all the way."

More on anti-aging: Zillionaire Biohacker Brags That He's His Dad's "Blood Boy"


The University of Michigan wrote Sam Altman’s venture capital firm a $75M check earlier this year for a new fund

Jessica Mathews
Wed, December 20, 2023 


Yesterday evening I reported that the University of Michigan wrote a $75 million check to a new fund from Sam Altman’s venture capital firm earlier this year—the second check the university has written to funds managed by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s venture firm, Hydrazine Capital.

This new fund, his venture firm Hydrazine Capital’s fourth fund, was disclosed to the Securities and Exchange Commission in March, and sometime before the end of June got a check from one of Silicon Valley’s more noteworthy limited partners, the University of Michigan’s $17.9 billion endowment, which has also invested directly in OpenAI and in OpenAI’s corporate venture fund, according to public filings and documents obtained by Fortune via a Freedom of Information Act request.

From the story:

“We have a longstanding relationship with Sam and Hydrazine IV. Hydrazine IV is a small fund in which the University of Michigan is the only outside investor, and this is an extension of our ongoing investment strategies,” Dan Feder, senior managing director of investments at the University of Michigan’s endowment, told Fortune. It’s unclear the fund’s exact size or focus. Feder, OpenAI, Altman, and Hydrazine declined to share more details of the fund or didn’t respond to requests for comment.

In a statement to Fortune, an OpenAI spokeswoman said that Altman “is fully focused on his role as CEO of OpenAI and spends only a small fraction of his time investing. He maintains transparency with the board about his occasional investments and adheres to a process for managing potential conflicts of interest.”

A list of all the endowment’s venture capital fund investments that was provided to Fortune show that the University of Michigan has written two of its largest-ever venture capital fund checks into Hydrazine funds: A $105 million check to Hydrazine’s second fund and, most recently, the $75 million into Hydrazine’s fourth fund. The endowment has also invested $18.7 million in an investment vehicle called Apollo Projects that Altman and his brothers set up a few years ago, records show. Altman is listed as director on all of the Hydrazine funds’ disclosure documents.

You can read the full story here, and you can send me a note below if you like.

See you tomorrow,

Jessica Mathews