Sam Altman-backed Retro Biosciences to raise $1bn for project to extend human life
Retro Biosciences is raising a $1bn round to fund the artificial intelligence-powered biotech’s mission to increase human lifespan by a decade, starting by getting its first drug into trials this year.
OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman, who provided the initial $180mn to seed the start-up, will put in more money in the series A.
The company is in talks with family offices, venture capitalists and sovereign wealth funds, as well as a US “hyperscaler” data centre to provide computing power to run the AI models it uses to create and test its treatments.
In partnership with OpenAI, the start-up has built a bespoke AI model that designs proteins to temporarily turn regular cells into stem cells, which it says can reverse their ageing process.
The San Francisco-based biotech will use the money to fund clinical trials for three drugs, including a potential treatment for Alzheimer’s disease, which will be tested in an early stage study in Australia this year.
It is also working on drugs for rejuvenating blood and brain cells.
Joe Betts-LaCroix, Retro Biosciences’ chief executive and a close confidant of Altman who has previously sold companies to Google and biotech Recursion, said his goal is to “reduce human misery”.
“Right now if someone gets Alzheimer’s, it doesn’t matter what your resources are. You know, if you’re like Joe Biden, or Elon [Musk], or whoever, you can write as big a cheque as you want to anybody and nobody knows how to cure it,” he told the Financial Times…
