2026
- Industry · Purpose4 min read
Two reports in two days: one counts the people, one counts the market
Yesterday the Milken Institute published The Future of Aging and Longevity: A Decade of Progress, A Decade to Act, a collection of essays and interviews from more than fifty contributors — foundations, universities, AARP, Meals on Wheels, the MIT AgeLab, the Stanford Center on…
- Follow the Money · Clinical5 min read
Nonprofit hospitals are selling longevity packages from $5,500. Here is what in them is free.
STAT published the first part today of a series on a trend we have watched arrive: cash-pay longevity clinics inside nonprofit academic hospitals, naming Northwestern, Weill Cornell and the Mayo Clinic.
- Follow the Money · Industry4 min read
The aging industry's annual self-portrait convenes at Harvard today. Read the sponsor list.
The Aging Research and Drug Discovery meeting — the largest conference in longevity biotechnology, now in its thirteenth year and in Boston for the first time — opens today at Harvard and runs through Friday.
- Sleep · Evidence5 min read
More REM, less disease: a 95,559-person study, and why your ring's REM number is still not this
A study published today inPLOS Medicine is the largest look yet at sleep stages and disease. Researchers in Beijing took seven days of wrist-accelerometer data from 95,559 UK Biobank participants, estimated REM, deep sleep, wakefulness and irregularity with a machine-learning model…
- Evidence · Industry4 min read
The aging clocks respond to interventions. The authors say that is not the same as being right.
Four days after a study explained why epigenetic clocks disagree, a second one — in Nature Medicine today, described by Yale — asks whether they move.
- Evidence · Industry4 min read
Two biological-age tests, two answers. A study of 3,227 people explains why.
Patients bring us two biological-age results from two companies and ask which is right. A study from the University of Southern California, published in npj Aging and described by the university last week, offers the best answer so far: they are measuring different things.
- Industry · Evidence4 min read
Twenty finalists, ten million dollars, and a yardstick that hasn't moved
XPRIZE named twenty finalists today in its $101 million Healthspan competition, ten of them receiving $1 million milestone awards. When we wrote about the forty semifinalists in May of last year, we said the thing to watch was the yardstick: to win, a team has to restore muscle…
- Follow the Money4 min read
$450 million to pay for marketing, repaid by members: the blood-panel funnel gets its own fund
Function Health, the 160-test membership we wrote about in November, announced $450 million today from a General Catalyst vehicle called the Customer Value Fund.
- Follow the Money4 min read
The full-body scan comes to Manhattan with $700 million. The business is the second scan.
Neko Health, the Stockholm company co-founded by Spotify's founder, announced a $700 million Series C today, led by Lightspeed, ahead of a US launch beginning in New York later this year.
- Follow the Money · Industry4 min read
The FDA closed the WHOOP blood-pressure letter. The two words that matter are 'as modified.'
Eleven months after it told WHOOP that an estimated-blood-pressure feature was on the wrong side of the line between wellness and medicine, the FDA has closed the matter.
- Evidence · Clinical4 min read
The first person has been dosed with a reprogramming therapy. Phase 1 means safety, not benefit.
Life Biosciences announced today that the first participant has been dosed in the Phase 1 trial of ER-100, the partial epigenetic reprogramming therapy whose trial clearance we covered in January.
- Follow the Money · Industry4 min read
A reprogramming company's valuation tripled in a year. What changed is a date.
NewLimit, the epigenetic-reprogramming company we wrote about last October, announced a $435 million Series C today, led by Founders Fund, with Eli Lilly's venture arm returning alongside a long list of new and existing investors.
- Follow the Money · Industry4 min read
A $1.8 billion valuation and no human efficacy data. Here is how the math works.
Retro Biosciences, the longevity company founded with roughly $180 million from the chief executive of OpenAI and with the stated goal of adding ten years to healthy human lifespan, announced today an initial close of its next financing at a pre-money valuation of $1.8 billion, led…
- Follow the Money4 min read
The ring filed to go public. The prospectus will be the most honest document the wearable industry has produced.
Oura announced today that it has confidentially submitted a draft registration statement to the Securities and Exchange Commission for an initial public offering.
- One Chart · Follow the Money3 min read
One chart: twelve deals took 59% of the quarter's health money. The band was the biggest.
Rock Health's first-quarter tally, out today, counts $4.0 billion of venture money into US digital health across 110 deals, up from $3.0 billion across 122 deals a year ago.
- Follow the Money4 min read
Investors just paid about $4,000 per wrist for a $199-a-year band. Read the arithmetic.
WHOOP, the fitness-band company that received an FDA warning letter over a blood-pressure feature last July, has raised $575 million at a valuation of $10.1 billion, led by Collaborative Fund.
- Follow the Money · Clinical4 min read
The FDA warned 30 telehealth companies about GLP-1 ads. The word at issue is 'same.'
The FDA announced today that it has sent warning letters to 30 telehealth companies over the marketing of compounded GLP-1 drugs — versions of semaglutide and tirzepatide made by compounding pharmacies rather than the manufacturers.
- Follow the Money · Evidence4 min read
The first longevity drug may be for dogs. That's the honest path, and here's why.
Loyal, the company developing lifespan-extension drugs for dogs, announced a $100 million Series C today, bringing its total raised past $250 million.
- Evidence · Mouse Dish or Human?4 min read
The first reprogramming therapy is cleared for a human trial. 'Cleared to test' and 'shown to work' are different sentences.
Life Biosciences announced today that the FDA has cleared its investigational new drug application for ER-100, which the company describes as the first cellular rejuvenation therapy using epigenetic reprogramming to be allowed into human trials.
- Follow the Money · Real Food4 min read
How a diet becomes a subscription: a sovereign fund buys into the five-day fast
L-Nutra, the Los Angeles company behind ProLon — a five-day kit of soups, bars and drink mixes designed to mimic a fast — announced today a $36.5 million investment led by Mubadala, Abu Dhabi's sovereign wealth fund, bringing its Series D to $83.5 million.
- Follow the Money · Clinical4 min read
A prescription drug now costs what a longevity subscription does. Compare what you get.
The pill version of Wegovy, approved two weeks ago, went on sale today at more than 70,000 US pharmacies, including CVS and Costco, and through telehealth companies.
2025
- Follow the Money · Industry4 min read
An AI drug company that promises 'productive longevity' listed today. Its lead drug is for lungs, not aging.
Insilico Medicine began trading on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange this morning under the code 3696, raising about HK$2.28 billion — roughly US$290 million — in what the company calls the largest Hong Kong biotech IPO of the year.
- Clinical · Evidence4 min read
A weight-loss pill with trial data. The longevity aisle should take notes.
The FDA approved today a once-daily pill form of semaglutide, the GLP-1 drug sold as Wegovy, for chronic weight management. In the trial that supported it, 307 adults took the pill or a placebo for 64 weeks; those on the drug lost on average 13.6% of body weight against 2.4% on…
- Follow the Money4 min read
160 biomarkers for $365. The reference range is where the money is.
Function Health, the direct-to-consumer lab-testing company, announced today a $298 million Series B at a $2.5 billion valuation, bringing its total raised to about $350 million.
- Follow the Money · Mouse Dish or Human?4 min read
One of the world's largest drugmakers just bought into cellular reprogramming. Read what 'clinical' means here.
NewLimit, the San Francisco company working on epigenetic reprogramming — resetting the chemical marks that tell a cell how old to act — announced today an additional $45 million from Eli Lilly, Duke University's endowment, Section 32 and existing investors, at a $1.62 billion…
- Follow the Money4 min read
The ring is now worth $11 billion and sells blood tests. We said this would happen.
Oura, the Finnish smart-ring maker, announced today a $900 million round led by Fidelity at a valuation of about $11 billion — roughly double where it raised ten months ago.
- Industry4 min read
Apple's watch got cleared for what WHOOP got a warning letter for. The difference is the paperwork, and the design.
The FDA cleared Apple's hypertension notifications last night, three days after the company announced them. The feature runs passively on the watch's optical heart sensor, looks for patterns consistent with chronic high blood pressure over thirty-day windows, and sends a notification…
- Follow the Money · Industry4 min read
The FDA just told a wearable where wellness ends. Blood pressure is on the other side.
The FDA has sent WHOOP, the Boston fitness-band company, a warning letter dated July 14 over Blood Pressure Insights, a feature that gives wearers a daily estimated blood-pressure range on a green-yellow-orange gauge.
- Industry · Evidence4 min read
A $101 million prize for restoring ten years of function. Watch the yardstick, not the money.
XPRIZE named forty semifinalists today in its $101 million Healthspan competition, chosen from more than 600 teams in 58 countries. Each gets $250,000 to run a trial.
- Follow the Money4 min read
Whole-body MRI raised $120 million. The radiologists' own college says don't.
Prenuvo, the whole-body MRI company, announced today a $120 million Series B co-led by Forerunner Ventures and Left Lane Capital, with investors including Cindy Crawford, Anne Wojcicki and Eric Schmidt.
- Follow the Money4 min read
The biggest checkbook in aging science belongs to a government. That changes the questions.
The second Global Healthspan Summit wraps up today in Riyadh. Its host, the Hevolution Foundation, was created by Saudi royal decree, describes an annual budget of up to $1 billion, and says it has committed $400 million to aging research over the past three years, which makes it the…
- Follow the Money4 min read
A £299 full-body scan just raised $260 million. Here is what a scan can and cannot tell you.
Neko Health, the Stockholm company co-founded by Spotify's Daniel Ek, announced today a $260 million Series B led by Lightspeed Venture Partners, reportedly valuing it at about $1.8 billion.
2024
- Follow the Money4 min read
A ring is worth $5.2 billion. The thing it measures is free.
Oura, the Finnish company behind the smart ring, announced today that it has closed a $200 million Series D at a $5.2 billion valuation, with Fidelity and the glucose-sensor maker Dexcom participating.
- Follow the Money4 min read
Two nonprofits merged today. Here is the part of longevity that does not scale.
The SENS Research Foundation — a Mountain View nonprofit founded in 2009 around the idea that aging is accumulated damage that can be repaired — and Lifespan.io, a New York advocacy and crowdfunding group founded in 2014, announced today that they have completed a merger into a new…