My Dear Friends,
About 18 years ago, I decided to leave a successful career in IT to pursue a lifelong dream — to develop a set of technologies that would allow humans to age without losing and continuously improve. In my opinion, there is
no cause more urgent, more altruistic, more impactful, more important, and more ambitious than enabling humans to improve continuously. Aging is restricting our freedom in more ways than any regime, religion, or exploitive corporation. Aging is the major barrier to individual freedom, hope, and prosperity. It inhibits economic growth as well as our collective ability to develop sustainably and responsibly.
After 18 years in the longevity field, while there was significant progress made in many areas of science and technology, I realize that the progress is much slower than I originally expected. Although there are many emerging business models and substantial progress in enabling technologies, including those developed by the companies I run or advise, we are still far from curing or preventing Parkinson's or Alzheimer's, not talking about substantially slowing down or reversing aging.
What frustrates me is that most people do not pay enough attention to the inevitable decline, frailty, loss of function, diseases, and death that are associated with aging and choose to be distracted and spend their time on attention-grabbing causes that only provide a temporary reward. And many very talented human beings choose to focus on inventing, making, and selling stuff and content that people can easily live without instead of contributing to fighting the one silent enemy that is certain to kill everyone eventually. This may be because the problem feels so grand and unachievable that it is easier to rely on others to solve it sometime in the future. But the problem is here, right now, and every individual contributor can make a difference. Like climate change or poverty,
aging research requires everyone on the planet to become involved. But unlike climate change, aging is causing millions of casualties and suffering worldwide today and right now.
On the positive side, after two decades of hard work, my commercial ventures have started yielding financial returns. It would be logical to donate part of my wealth to charitable foundations focusing on aging research. However, my ventures are already focused on longevity or enabling technologies, and I do have a pretty good view of the recent trends. And I firmly believe that a company like Insilico Medicine will make much more impact in longevity biotechnology than any charity. That is why
I continue to invest in the company personally.
Over the past two decades, I supported many projects in longevity, saw many failures, analyzed a massive number of grants, and learned how to evaluate the impact of the various longevity initiatives. In addition to capital, I can now bring years of experience, and multiple partner organizations to the most impactful projects.
Therefore, I would like to
pledge everything I have now, and what I will get in the future, to only one cause —
extending healthy productive longevity for all human beings. Instead of donating just a portion of my wealth and energy to this cause, I would like to do more.
Recently, I realized that while aging is at the core of most global problems, the generative AI I am working on can be applied to sustainability, environmentally friendly materials, new approaches to CO2 capture and utilization, and other areas related to keeping our planet clean. I will also dedicate a small part of my time and resources to the development of new technologies needed to ensure the long-term survival of humans and other essential species.
I pledge to spend 100% of my time and personal resources to accelerate research and clinical deployment of longevity technologies. At present, I am not married and do not have kids. I calculated that I could probably spend 6-7 hours a week on my personal life, and I didn't want to disappoint anyone by being a bad husband or a bad father. I will not marry until I meet someone as dedicated to the cause as I am. Also, if I ever reproduce, I pledge to train my kids to excel in biology, chemistry, computer science, and medicine and motivate them to prioritize extending healthy human longevity above all other values.
At present, I do not plan to leave an inheritance, and I will
invest everything I have into projects and companies that extend healthy, productive life for everyone on the planet.