Coinbase's founder is going to research immortality

Original: Odaily Planet Daily (@OdailyChina)

Author: Azuma (@azuma_eth)

In the early hours of June 3, Beijing time, longevity tech startup NewLimit announced the completion of a $435 million Series C funding round. This round was led by Peter Thiel's Founders Fund, with continued participation from Abstract Ventures, Kleiner Perkins, NFDG, Eli Lilly Ventures, Valor Equity Partners, and others, while also bringing in new investors such as Thrive Capital, Greenoaks, and Quiet Capital.

WSJ reported that NewLimit's valuation in this funding round is $3.1 billion, more than tripling from a year ago.

In its funding announcement, NewLimit revealed that, following breakthrough research results, the company is advancing longevity medicine into human clinical trials. Its first drug, targeting alcohol-related liver disease, is expected to initiate clinical trials next year.

NewLimit also emphasized: "By reprogramming cell age, humans have the potential to achieve a longer healthspan. Now, we are closer than ever to the goal of delaying, or even reversing, aging."

The Founder is an Old Acquaintance

It's worth noting that NewLimit's co-founder is a familiar face to us — Coinbase founder and CEO Brian Armstrong.

In 2021, Brian Armstrong, along with former GV partner and bioengineer Blake Byers and stem cell biologist Jacob Kimmel, jointly invested $110 million to establish NewLimit in South San Francisco.

Image: NewLimit founding team

Prior to this round, NewLimit had completed three previous funding rounds, as detailed below.

• Completed a $40 million Series A in May 2023, with investors including Dimension, Founders Fund, and Kleiner Perkins;
• Completed a $130 million Series B in May 2025 at a valuation of $810 million, led by Kleiner Perkins, with participation from Founders Fund, Khosla Ventures, and Human Capital;
• Received an additional $45 million investment in October 2025, bringing its post-money valuation to $1.62 billion, with backers including Lilly Ventures, Duke University, and Section 32.

According to NewLimit's official introduction, the company is dedicated to developing drugs that extend human healthspan — "As we age, our cells' function gradually declines, making us more susceptible to disease. People once believed aging was inevitable, but emerging science suggests the aging process can be reversed at the cellular level. We are developing the first drugs based on these discoveries to restore the youthful function of aging cells."

In simpler terms, NewLimit is using scientific methods to research immortality!

Reversing Aging is Not a Fantasy

Over the past few decades, while the scientific community has long understood the link between aging and cellular functional decline, it has struggled to precisely identify methods to make cells "rejuvenate." A turning point came in 2006 when Japanese scientist Shinya Yamanaka discovered that by activating just a few specific transcription factors, adult cells could be reprogrammed into a youthful state resembling embryonic stem cells. This discovery was later named the "Yamanaka Factors" and helped him win the 2012 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.

Odaily Note: Image shows Shinya Yamanaka speaking in Tokyo

Yamanaka's research was the first to prove something previously thought impossible — that cellular age is not irreversible. The story NewLimit tells is built directly upon this discovery.

NewLimit writes on its website: "Our drugs work by activating specific transcription factor genes to reprogram the epigenome of cells to a more youthful state. We already know that this reversal is possible. However, for different types of cells, the exact combination of transcription factors required to restore youthful function remains unknown. Finding and discovering these effective genetic payloads is the core challenge of our work."

NewLimit's strategy is to first target a specific disease to gain drug approval, then explore broader applications. As mentioned earlier, NewLimit is advancing a drug for alcohol-related liver disease toward clinical trials.

NewLimit co-founder and CEO Jacob Kimmel further explained this, stating that liver disease can essentially be viewed as an "accelerated form of aging" — it merely presents the aging process everyone experiences in a faster, more dramatic way.

Those Who Love Investing in This Track Are All Billionaires

NewLimit is not the only tech company currently targeting "immortality" in the market.

In 2022, Sam Altman invested $180 million in Retro Biosciences, which is currently developing drugs to revitalize aging cells and revealed last month that its valuation has reached $1.8 billion.

Additionally, Altos Labs, reportedly backed by Jeff Bezos, launched in 2022 with $3 billion in funding, and its total cumulative funding is said to have nearly doubled since then.

It's easy to see that from Peter Thiel to Sam Altman to Jeff Bezos, those most keen on investing in this track are invariably super-billionaires at the pinnacle of technology and wealth. Peter Thiel has publicly expressed an extreme aversion to death, repeatedly voicing similar views: "Death is humanity's greatest enemy, yet we treat it as a natural law..."

The logic behind why these tech titans are willing to invest billions of dollars is not hard to understand — when wealth and power reach their peak, time becomes the only enemy, and the only luxury that money cannot directly buy.

With enough money already made, "how to live longer" becomes the ultimate question.