Silicon Valley's Obsession with Young Blood: Why Even the Palantir Founder Is Interested [Tech Talk]

Circulating Young and Old Blood: "Parabiosis"
Little Medical Evidence, But Unwavering Interest
Startups Offer $8,000 Transfusion Services

Silicon Valley is home to tech billionaires who have amassed unimaginable wealth. However, there is still one area even they have not conquered: immortality. The obsession of Silicon Valley's wealthy with reversing aging is well known and goes beyond imagination. One famous billionaire even sparked controversy by conducting an experiment in which he received a blood transfusion from his own son. This procedure, known as "parabiosis," once attracted significant attention in Silicon Valley.

Silicon Valley's Desire to Reverse Aging: Embracing Parabiosis

Silicon Valley entrepreneur Brian Johnson, who has embarked on a conjoined twin experiment involving regular blood transfusions from his 17-year-old son. Instagram capture

Braintree founder and Silicon Valley billionaire Bryan Johnson began receiving blood transfusions from his 17-year-old son in 2023 as part of his "reverse aging" project. Now 47 years old, he employs every possible therapy to reverse his body's aging, and even founded a startup called Blueprint to manage the project and share his expertise.

The practice of receiving blood from a younger person to reverse aging is called parabiosis. While research on this has been attempted for a long time, there is little clinical evidence that it can actually rejuvenate the human body. Nevertheless, interest in parabiosis has always been high in Silicon Valley.

Connecting Young and Old Blood Vessels... Little Medical Evidence

Parabiosis is a procedure where the blood of a young organism circulates through the blood vessels of an older organism. The claim is that this can prevent the aging of organs, especially the brain, in the older organism. Parabiosis itself has a long history. In the 17th century, German chemist and physician Andreas Libavius believed that directly connecting the arteries of a young person and an old person could enable rejuvenation.

Related studies are occasionally published in major academic journals. For example, in 2023, a research team at Duke University in the United States claimed in "Nature Aging" that surgically merging the circulatory systems of young and old mice resulted in a 10% increase in the lifespan of the older mice. Similar mouse experiment results with the same intent have been reported previously.

Laboratory rat. Photo is not related to any specific expression in the article. Getty Images Bank

So, is parabiosis a reliable procedure? There is still no clear evidence. Most parabiosis experiments to date have been conducted on laboratory mice, and even these have not been large-scale studies, making it difficult to consider the data reliable. Most importantly, laboratory mice are bred specifically for experimentation and are fundamentally different from humans. Receiving another person's blood indiscriminately also poses the risk of severe side effects due to immune rejection.

Peter Thiel Also Responds: "There Is a Lack of Research"

Nevertheless, some wealthy individuals in Silicon Valley are showing serious interest in parabiosis. Johnson, who conducted the experiment of receiving his son's blood, is one example, and Palantir founder Peter Thiel has also made positive comments regarding parabiosis. In a 2016 interview with the American business magazine "Inc. Magazine," he said, "I am currently researching parabiosis, and it is very interesting," emphasizing, "Injecting the blood of young mice into old mice produced incredible rejuvenation results."

Peter Thiel Palantir Co-founder. Screenshot of X

He also expressed dissatisfaction, saying, "Parabiosis research was actually conducted in the 1950s but was completely discontinued. Isn't that a very strange case? There is a significant lack of this kind of research."

There have also been attempts to commercialize this interest. One example is Ambrosia, a startup founded in 2016, which promoted participation in "parabiosis clinical trials" for a fee of $8,000 (about 1.105 million KRW) per session. In just one year, 600 wealthy individuals participated in the experiment. However, Ambrosia halted all experiments in 2019 after receiving a safety warning from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

A scene from the popular HBO drama "Silicon Valley," which satirizes the "age reversal" craze in Silicon Valley. A young part-timer, called the "blood transfusion boy," is transfusing his blood to a businessman. YouTube capture

There is even a television drama that satirizes Silicon Valley's obsession with parabiosis. The popular HBO comedy series "Silicon Valley" featured an episode called "Blood Boy," which became a hot topic for its story about a young man living as a "living blood pack" for a wealthy executive.

Billions Invested at the Slightest Hope of Reversing Aging

Although the possibility of reversing aging currently appears to be very low, Silicon Valley's wealthy have not given up hope. In fact, Silicon Valley is quick to invest astronomical amounts of capital in any technology that even hints at the possibility of reversing aging. One representative example is Altos Labs, which is attempting a project to reverse aging using pluripotent stem cells.

Altos Labs is a biotechnology company with research centers in the United States and the United Kingdom. It has attracted as much as $3 billion (about 4 trillion KRW) in investment from venture capitalist Yuri Milner and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, among others. The company has gathered renowned biotechnologists from around the world to focus exclusively on anti-aging technology. Even Professor Shinya Yamanaka, who won the 2012 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his research on induced pluripotent stem cells, has joined as a scientific advisor.