XPrize founder Peter Diamandis spends $120,000 every year to try to live as long as he can. Above, he undergoes therapeutic plasma treatment — “basically giving myself an oil change” — in Santa Monica last month. LOS ANGELES — Peter Diamandis, a week away from turning 63, bounds out of a Starbucks on a recent morning with a cup of decaf, his daily medley of 70 supplement capsules in his pocket and, tucked under his left arm, a box of freshly deposited poop.
“I’m basically giving myself an oil change,” Diamandis says once he’s hooked up, a large-gauge needle poking out of each arm, deep red blood flowing in both directions. He’ll be here for the next three hours. The anti-aging movement has also gotten a boost — and a fair share of ridicule — from extreme tales of rich immortality biohackers such as Los Angeles multimillionaire ” plan — downing shots of olive oil and protein-packed “nutty pudding” and obsessively measuring his bodily functions down to the duration of his nighttime erections — in an attempt to turn back his biological clock.
Attendees try red-light therapy at the Conscious Life Expo in Los Angeles in February. Anti-aging enthusiasts believe the treatment improves skin health and reduces inflammation in the body. How long would he like to live? “One hundred is a lowball offer,” he told a packed audience during a longevity roundtable at the Milken Institute Global Conference earlier in the week. “Let’s add a few multipliers on that.”
Diamandis first became intrigued by super-long living when he was a medical student at Harvard and learned about the bowhead whale, which scientists estimate can live to more than 200 years, and the Greenland shark, with a lifespan believed to be as much as 500 years. He had children for the first time at 50 — twin sons who are now 12 — and he wants as much time with them as he can get .
A separate analysis by Deloitte found that the top 50 longevity-focused companies raised more than $1 billion in venture funding as of 2020 and noted that “we are at the cusp of a new multibillion-dollar longevity industry.” He is co-founder of biotech firms including Celularity, a regenerative and cellular medicine company, as well as several consumer-facing ventures.
Other groups catering to the uber-wealthy are assembling their own anti-aging programs. Last year R360, an exclusive organization for centimillionaires, led a longevity trip to the Harvard laboratory of David Sinclair, a genetics professor and leading researcher on reversing the aging process at a cellular level. This July members will visit the Buck Institute for Research on Aging in Novato.