Let me preface this by saying this story is crammed with technical longevity metrics. Not because it should be a convoluted read— simplification is always the goal—but because their inclusion has value. You can use them as an entry point for any deeper research you wish to conduct.
Trying to look younger than we are isn’t enough anymore. As the global longevity market surges to an estimated US$8 trillion ($10.18 trillion) by 2030, it’s almost as if we ought to be burning rubber in reversing agerelated biological changes.
Peter Diamandis is doing just that. The serial entrepreneur is 64 years old chronologically, but 39 biologically. This isn’t conjecture, but measurements derived from biomarker testing. The primary metric is epigenetic clocks, which analyse DNA methylation patterns through tests such as the Horvath Clock or GrimAge. “
These tests look at your genes and how they are expressed and regulated, which gives us a molecular read-out of how fast you’re ageing at the cellular level,” Diamandis explains.
In addition to epigenetics, he tracks an extensive suite of biomarkers every quarter: inflammation markers like CRP and IL-6; metabolic indicators, including insulin sensitivity, HbA1c and lipid panels; cardiovascular metrics such as coronary calcium scores and CIMT; cognitive performance; muscle mass; VO2 max; and cellular senescence.
Confused? Stay with me. One of the longevity movement’s most recognisable evangelists—he has close to 300,000 followers on Instagram—Diamandis follows an anti-ageing protocol he calls “aggressive”. Among other things, it involves taking more than 50 supplements daily, including magnesium L-threonate for brain health, NMN to support energy metabolism, and ashwagandha for stress management.
Diet, of course, plays a major role. He eats roughly one gram of protein per 500g of body weight, avoids sugar “like it is poison”, and sequences his food: fibre first, protein second, and then carbohydrates. Sleep is also non-negotiable. Unsurprisingly, he tracks his sleep metrics as well, clocking eight hours nightly, and wearing an eye mask in a cool, dark room.
Is he a biohacker? “Absolutely. I’m hacking my biology with every tool science has given us,” he says. “However, I prefer the term ‘longevity entrepreneur’ as I am not just optimising myself but also building the companies and technologies that will help billions of people do the same.”
Having established over 25 companies across diverse fields such as space, longevity, education, and exponential technologies, Diamandis is no stranger to ambitious ventures. His notable projects include the Xprize Foundation, which designs large-scale competitions to accelerate technological breakthroughs; Singularity University, focused on exponential technologies; Zero Gravity Corporation, offering weightless flight experiences; and Human Longevity Inc., a health intelligence company leveraging genome sequencing, AI-powered imaging and diagnostics to detect diseases like cancer.
Fountain Life, his flagship longevity company, harnesses regenerative medicine technologies to optimise healthspan and prolong lifespan. “It’s built around one core philosophy: don’t die from something stupid. By ‘something stupid’, I mean diseases that could have been detected and treated at stage zero—before symptoms, before damage, before it’s too late.”
Even though longevity is concerned with both healthspan and lifespan, the latter is more important, he makes plain.
“What’s the point of living to 120 if you’ll just be drooling in a wheelchair in the last 30 years? I want to extend the period of life in which you have the vitality, cognition, and physical capability you had in your 30s or 40s. “Lifespan without healthspan is a curse. Healthspan with extended lifespan is the goal.”
THREE TECHNOLOGICAL FACTORS THAT TRANSFORM AGEING
He often discusses longevity escape velocity (LEV): the point at which medical advances add more than one year of life expectancy per year. In other words, if you biologically age one year but science extends your life by 1.2 years in the same period, you are effectively outrunning ageing.
Computer scientist and futurist Ray Kurzweil predicted that humanity would reach LEV between 2029 and 2033. Diamandis believes we’re on track. It helps that the US Food and Drug Administration is beginning to recognise ageing as a treatable condition, he adds. In this way, companies can conduct clinical trials that directly target the hallmarks of ageing rather than waiting for age-related diseases to develop.
He believes three technological forces drive this momentum. The first is AIpowered drug discovery. Drug development costs between US$2 billion and US$3 billion per drug and can take up to 15 years. AI is compressing those timelines dramatically. Today, companies can screen billions of compounds, predict their effects on biological pathways, and identify viable candidates in months rather than years. AI is also making it possible to anticipate how drugs interact with different genetic profiles, paving the way for personalised medicine at scale.
Second, genomics, or the study of an organism’s genetic material, and gene therapy. With scientists now understanding the nine hallmarks of ageing, tools such as CRISPR, a technology that selectively modifies the DNA of living organisms, and prime editing can theoretically correct the underlying mechanisms of ageing. “We are seeing teenagers cured of genetic diseases that would have killed them a generation ago,” Diamandis says. “The same techniques can be applied to ageing.”
The third—and the frontier he is most excited about—is cellular reprogramming. As a result of the Yamanaka factors, a set of four proteins capable of converting adult cells back to a pluripotent stem-cell state able to undergo self-renewal, cellular ageing could potentially be reversed. “
This can reverse cellular age without turning cells cancerous. Some biologists are running trials on partial epigenetic reprogramming right now. If it works, we could literally turn back the biological clock of your cells by 20 to 30 years. This is not science fiction—trials are happening this year.”
speaker Tony Robbins.Photo: Peter Diamandis.
Together, these technologies create what Diamandis describes as a powerful feedback loop: AI accelerates drug discovery, genomics identifies the targets, and cellular reprogramming reverses damage. According to him, LEV is inevitable when these three forces converge.”
Still, he stresses that longevity isn’t so much about pills and procedures as mindset. We can accomplish this in a couple of ways. One is to think long-term. “Most people optimise for the next week or month. Having a longevity mindset means thinking in decades. It’s not a 30-day diet; it is about building a nutrition system for the next 50 years. You’re not exercising to look good in summer—you’re maintaining muscle mass to prevent sarcopenia in your 80s.”
Taking a proactive approach to healthcare instead of a reactive one is another. Traditional medicine, Diamandis argues, waits for something to break before intervening. In longevity medicine, the goal is to detect problems at stage zero and stop them from becoming symptoms. A proactive mindset includes seeking comprehensive diagnostics, demanding deeper testing, and taking control of one’s health data.
There is also a belief in abundance over scarcity. “Many people have a scarcity mindset health. They go, ‘I’m getting old and that’s just what happens’. But the longevity mindset is one of abundance. We should be saying, ‘Ageing is a solvable engineering problem, and I’m going to use every available tool to address it’.”
MAKING LONGEVITY ACCESSIBLE TO EVERYONE
Despite this, it is natural that we struggle to adhere to those mindset strategies. Evolution has wired humans for short-term survival, not for optimising life to 120 years old, Diamandis points out. Similarly, society celebrates youth while accepting physical decline as part of life as well. Good thing he has a few psychological hacks to help us overcome this resistance. To start, leverage the fear of missing out. “If you don’t start now, you might die five years before LEV hits. That’s dying from something stupid as it’s completely preventable.”
Next, surround yourself with likeminded peers. Social proof is powerful, so build communities centred around biomarker tracking, protocol sharing and longevity optimisation.
Third, gamify your health data. “Compete with your past self. Celebrate wins when your VO2 max improves or your inflammation markers drop. Make longevity fun, not a chore.”
However, longevity treatments are costly. Is radical life extension likely to widen inequality? Even though Diamandis acknowledges the concern, he remains optimistic that longevity technologies will democratise faster than most expect.
“History shows that technologies follow a predictable curve,” he says. “They start expensive and exclusive, then their costs collapse.” As an example, he cites genome sequencing. It cost US$3 billion to sequence the first human genome in 2001. Today, it can be done for less than US$200. As AI automates the interpretation of whole-body MRI scans and adoption increases, they are also becoming cheaper.
In his view, mass accessibility rests on three developments. First, AI-driven diagnostics at scale. He envisions AI-powered health platforms analysing genetics, wearable data and bloodwork to generate personalised longevity recommendations at near-zero marginal cost. “This is five to 10 years away, not 50,” he says.
Second, open-source protocols. Biohacker communities already share longevity protocols openly. It will be easy to introduce evidence-based, do-it-yourself guides as more data become available.
Third, policy intervention. Governments, he argues, should subsidise longevity diagnostics the same way they subsidise vaccines. “Prevention is cheaper than treatment,” he says. “A US$500 whole-body MRI every few years costs less than a single hospitalisation for advanced cancer.” Does he believe lifespan extension should be ethically limited? “No. I reject the premise,” he says bluntly. To him, opposing lifespan extension is the same as accepting preventable death. “If we can cure cancer, Alzheimer’s and cardiovascular disease, all diseases of ageing, why wouldn’t we? It is ethically imperative to extend a healthy lifespan for everyone who desires one.
The real ethical questions concern access and societal adaptation. Overpopulation fears, in his view, are overstated given collapsing birth rates across much of the developed world. “Japan, South Korea and much of Europe are already below the replacement rate. The bigger challenge is redesigning social systems: retirement ages, career structures, education models. If people routinely live to 120 in good health, retiring at 65 makes no sense.”
The solution lies in flexible systems like subscription-based healthcare instead of agegated Medicare; lifelong learning instead of front-loaded education; and treating longevity as a public good, not a luxury.
Ever the futurist, Diamandis already has several projects in the pipeline. Among them are a synthetic biology investment fund focused on AI-driven biotech, an Abundance360 longevity curriculum, and a clinic network offering early access to advanced diagnostics, as well as a Longevity Moonshot Report mapping the path towards LEV between 2030 and 2033.
At this stage, Diamandis is betting his last dollar on longevity—and he sees little reason not to. “It is the most important mission of our generation. If we solve ageing, we solve nearly every other problem. If we don’t, none of the other moonshots will matter. I intend to be here to see it through.”
