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Founders invited to join ‘Longevity Pledge’

Howard Lake | 25 October 2022 | News

Alex Zhavoronkov's Longevity Pledge logo

The AI and biotech pioneer Alex Zhavoronkov PhD has announced the Longevity Pledge. He is inviting founders and the wealthy to join him “to make longer, healthier human lifespans a reality for everyone”.

Through his personal pledge Zhavoronkov has committed all of his wealth and resources, as well as all of the remaining time to supporting and developing research and clinical solutions for extending healthy productive longevity for everyone on the planet.

The pledge, which is now open for anyone to commit to, is reminiscent of The Giving Pledge in which some of the world’s wealthiest people have pledged to give all or a substantial proportion of their wealth to good causes during their lifetime.

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But Zhavoronkov’s pledge is different. He is pledging not just financial wealth but the wealth of his time, giving it to others to help them make progress in the area of human longevity.

Specifically he has pledged to commit:

Longevity Pledge

Alex Zhavoronkov and the Longevity Pledge
A quest for ageing without losing and continuous improvement

Zhavoronkov’s Longevity Pledge is flexible. It features a “select-your-commitment version” that lets supporters opt-in to as their resources allow.

It is open to anyone to commit to, but Zhavoronkov is proposing it primarily to founders, “altruistic billionaires” and the world’s top 1% wealthiest people.

Longevity

Zhavoronkov sees longevity for all as a primary objective for social good, and worthy of financial support. And of course his thinking combines not just longevity itself, but productive, healthy longevity. For all, not just the wealth elite.

He says:

“Making productive longevity, or the ability to live a longer, healthier life, is the most altruistic cause you can support.

“If we could extend everyone’s life by just one more high-quality, healthy year, our world would benefit from roughly 8 billion more impactful years in a few generations. These years could mean thousands of new medical and scientific discoveries, impactful action on climate change, and more.

“This is no time to waste. I hope my example will motivate people with similar backgrounds to not only commit their wealth, but also their intellect, skills, and ingenuity to this strangely underappreciated cause.”

Zhavoronkov and longevity

Alex Zhavoronkov PhD
Alex Zhavoronkov PhD

Zhavoronkov is the founder and CEO of Insilico Medicine, a specialist in artificial intelligence technologies for drug discovery and biomarker development.

He is a member of the Longevity Science Foundation Visionary Board, as well as the founder and Chief Longevity Officer of Deep Longevity, and an adjunct professor at the Buck Institute for Research on Ageing.

He serves on the Visionary Board of the Longevity Science Foundation, is part of the advisory board for longevity and biotech venture capital firm LongeVC and advises multiple other non-profits and startups working in longevity biotechnology.

He is the author of “The Ageless Generation,” published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2013, which explained the pressing need to accelerate aging research to revive the global economy and avoid economic collapse.

Longevity funding and investment

Longevity is the focus of others of course, including tech pioneers and founders. There are numerous research projects and investment funds operating in this area, including:

X Prize founder and Executive Chairman Peter Diamandis is a long-time writer, speaker and investor in longevity initiatives. Coinbase co-founder Brian Armstrong and Amazon’s Jeff Bezos have both invested in longevity-focused companies and research.

What Zhavoronkov will fund

Zhavoronkov lists many initiatives which he aims to fund having made his pledge, including:

Accelerating breakthroughs

“Making productive longevity, or the ability to live a longer, healthier life, is the most altruistic cause you can support" - quote with photo of Alex Zhavoronkov
“Making productive longevity… is the most altruistic cause you can support”

By inviting others to join the Longevity Pledge, Alex Zhavoronkov believes that four significant breakthroughs for human longevity will be accelerated from some 20 or so years hence to being broadly available in five years:

Zhavoronkov’s focus on accelerating change has led him to conclude that the issue needs a far wider audience of supporters.

He said:

“Like climate change or poverty, ageing research requires everyone on the planet to become involved. But unlike climate change, ageing is causing millions of casualties and suffering worldwide today and right now.”

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