Silicon Valley’s quest for immortality with Elon Musk’s AI brain chips and injections of ‘young’ blood to live forever

TECH tycoons are shelling out millions in a race against the clock as they strive to reverse the inevitable process of aging.

But is their strife any more than a cautionary tale of ultra-powerful men who have yet to realize they can't control everything?

YOUNG BLOOD TRANSFUSIONS

At one time, Bryan Johnson was best known as the founder of Braintree, a payments processing company that acquired Venmo and was sold to PayPal for $800 million.

Now the 46-year-old has a different reputation: as an out-of-touch technocrat who received a blood transfusion from his son in a desperate bid to reverse aging.

Johnson made headlines last year after recruiting his 17-year-old son and 70-year-old father to take part in "the world's first multigenerational plasma exchange."

The trio headed to Resurgence Wellness, a so-called medical spa in Arlington, Texas, for their signature "Young-Plasma" therapy.

The treatment involves taking plasma from a teenager and injecting it into the veins of someone with the same blood type and sex.

During an interview with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, the millionaire said he'd offered to give up his own plasma amid his father's struggles with cognitive decline.

"My 17-year-old son was there and he was like, hey, if you guys are doing it, I'm in," Johnson said, adding that was when he decided to make it "a family affair."

"So my son gave me a liter of plasma. I gave my dad a liter of plasma. The data showed that in me, there was no effect, that my biomarkers didn't change. But in my dad, his speed of aging reduced by 25 years."

Johnson's teenage son, Talmage, lost a full liter of blood - around one-fifth of his total supply.

The plasma, or liquid component, was then separated from the blood cells and platelets that float in it.

Johnson also had a liter of blood removed to make space for his son's plasma, while his father, Richard, had his own blood drained to leave room for Johnson's.

"We all donate blood, it's just in a slightly different frame," Johnson said.

Plasma infusions have applications in traditional medicine. They are used to replace low levels of blood proteins in the aftermath of an accident or illness.

Resurgence Wellness claims the therapy "has been proven" to counteract symptoms of aging including cognitive and muscular deterioration.

However, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration issued a warning against young plasma infusions in 2019, claiming they are "promoted as unproven treatment for varying conditions."

"Simply put, we’re concerned that some patients are being preyed upon by unscrupulous actors touting treatments of plasma from young donors as cures and remedies," former FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb wrote.

"Such treatments have no proven clinical benefits for the uses for which these clinics are advertising them and are potentially harmful."

Gottlieb cited "reports of bad actors" charging thousands for treatments that were "not guided by evidence from adequate and well-controlled trials."

While it is unclear how much the trio shelled out for the therapy, other companies are known to sell liters of plasma for up to $8,000 a pop.

And while Johnson admitted seeing no effect, he isn't slowing down his race against the clock.

The tech tycoon's daily regiment includes monitoring his body fat, consuming close to 2,000 "vegan calories," and taking more than 100 pills.

Now, Johnson claims to have biomarkers in "the top 1%." This includes ranking in the top 1% of 18 year olds for metrics like "cardiovascular fitness" and having a heart that is "biologically 37."

His latest venture, Blueprint, is a biotech company that sells protein powder and capsules said to improve cellular repair, heart health, and brain function.

Driving the message home is a blue ticker tape on the website reading: "Don't die."

BRAIN CHIPS AND DIGITAL CONSCIOUSNESS

Elon Musk has embarked on a series of controversial ventures since starting his first company in 1995.

Between constant Tesla recalls and the hostile takeover of Twitter, now X, Musk is no stranger to the spotlight.

The 53-year-old founded Neuralink in 2016, claiming the brain chip technology would allow paralyzed people to regain control of limbs and prosthetics.

And the grandoise claims didn't stop there. Musk believes Neuralink's devices will be able to restore eyesight, cure neurological disorders and more.

The world's richest man has expressed interest in a device that allows users to upload their consciousness to the cloud, allowing them to live on once their physical bodies have expired.

And it seems Neuralink is the first step in making this fiction a reality.

The company successfully implanted a brain chip in a human for the first time earlier this year.

The coin-sized device is placed beneath the skull and uses 64 tiny wires that read signals from individual neurons and feed them back to the brain using electrical stimulation.

The wires are partially inserted into the brain's motor cortex, which is responsible for like skeletal muscle movements.

In an interview with physician Peter Diamandis, Musk referenced a fictional device called a "neural lace" that first appeared in science fiction series "The Culture."

The technology, Musk explained, "retains all your memories and your brain state, so even if your physical body dies, you can kind of be reincorporated in another physical body and retain your original memories and brain state."

While Neuralink is a "long way from that," Musk believes such a device is "definitely physically possible."

"Ultimately, you will have a whole brain interface that I guess is a sort of form of immortality in that if your brain state is stored, you're kind of backed up on a hard drive," the billionaire said.

"You can always restore that brain state into a biological body or maybe a robot or something."

As for Musk, the tech tycoon is not interested in living forever.

In a July 15 tweet, the 53-year-old claimed he would "welcome the sweet release of death" after talking to his grandchildren a final time.

Despite having lofty aspirations, Neuralink has already run into problems. The company faced public outrage over the gruesome deaths of nearly 1,500 animal subjects from 2018 to the present.

The condition of a six-year-old macaque known only as "Animal 15" was documented in veterinary records before and after surgery.

According to documents reviewed by The U.S. Sun, Animal 15 was observed “pulling on implant repeatedly” and "aggressively picking" at the incision on her head.

Roughly three months after the procedure, the monkey was euthanized when her health failed to improve.

A necropsy found that the implants left parts of her brain “focally tattered” and that “remnant electrode threads” were found in her brain, in addition to signs of hemorrhaging.

Neuralink's human patient, Noland Arbaugh, may be experiencing complications - though the firm remains tight-lipped.

In the weeks after the surgery, a number of wires "retracted from the brain,” according to a May blog post. It is unclear whether this has affected Arbaugh.

THE QUEST FOR ETERNAL LIFE

Nearly two months after Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos blasted off on a self-funded trip to space, the tech tycoon announced a new endeavor.

The 60-year-old billionaire is among the ultra-wealthy investors in Altos Labs, a startup that seeks to reverse the effects of aging.

Altos is focused on biological reprogramming technology, a way to revitalize cells in the lab that has the potential to prolong human life.

The group's founding scientist, Juan Carlos Izpisua Belmonte, demonstrated that cells could be "partially" reprogrammed in 2016.

Rather than reverting them back to stem cells - which can then develop into different cells - Belmonte showed they could retain their identity as well as the characteristics of younger cells.

Since its founding, most of the company's activities have remained under wraps.

Altos was incorporated in the United States and the United Kingdom in 2021. A securities disclosure filed in California showed the company had raised around $270 million at the time.

Altos has established institutes in the Bay Area, San Diego, and Cambridge, UK in its search for eternal life.

"What are the fundamentals of this biology? Which parts can be harnessed to help more people live free from disease or disability?" reads the group's website.

"Our work is to pursue answers to these questions and more, and to develop applications for what we discover, with the goal of reversing disease."

Bezos has not publicly commented on his involvement with Altos. More upfront is Larry Page, one of the co-founders of Google, who helped form a similar venture.

Calico, short for the California Life Company, was announced prior to Google's restructuring in September 2013.

Page referenced the biology company in that year's Founding Letter, describing its focus on "health, wellbeing and longevity."

Calico was incorporated into Alphabet in 2015. Since then, the research group has brought dozens of scientists on board and grown to more than 100 employees.

Animal test subjects are housed at the Buck Institute for Research on Aging, about 30 miles from Calico’s headquarters.

The firms entered into a partnership nearly a decade ago, allowing Calico to fund its research while maintaining certain science operations at Buck.

Calico describes itself as a morph between a "traditional biotechnology company" and an "academic institution."

The group aims to understand the biology of aging and develop interventions that enable people to live longer and healthier lives.

Principal investigator Eugene Melamud is an alum of Princeton University's Rabinowitz Lab, where he studied cellular metabolism.

Melamud's lab at Calico develops modeling techniques to study molecular pathways, tissue homeostasis, and aging.

The researchers use data from human cohorts to study rates of physiological declines, the onset of chronic conditions, mortality rates, and more.