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$1 Billion to Extend Human Lifespan

$1 Billion to Extend Human Lifespan

Christopher Webster
January 27, 2025

Startups:

Sam Altman backed Retro Biosciences:

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is doubling down on Retro Biosciences, a biotech startup based in San Francisco that wants humans to live 10 years longer than what it calls a healthy human lifespan. Altman reportedly covered the bill on Retro’s entire seed round of $180 million. Guess he can’t foot the whole bill this time with the company raising a $1 billion Series A. Retro Biosciences is planning on launching trails for drugs targeting diseases like Alzheimer’s. They have trained a model with OpenAI to turn regular cells into stem cells. A bunch of billionaires are scared of losing their wealth by dying which is why other companies like Altos Labs and Unity Biotechnology have gone to Jeff Bezos and Peter Thiel for funds.

Perplexity really wants TikTok:

Perplexity AI wants TikTok so bad that they have submitted a revised proposal to merge with TikTok. This time they would give the U.S. government up to 50 percent ownership of the new entity. The AI search engine had previously proposed creating a new company by combining Perplexity, TikTok US, and additional equity investors. Under the new bid, the government would receive its stake after an initial public offering of at least $300 million, while TikTok’s current Chinese owner ByteDance could also retain ownership, according to the AP. Perplexity reportedly revised its bid based on feedback from President Donald Trump’s administration. This desperate proposal comes at a time when Oracle is starting to make a big push to buy TikTok. Will Perplexity be able to win the bidding war?

Venture:

Madrona Ventures fresh new capital:

Madrona capital is a venture firm based in Seattle which recently celebrated being in business for 30 years. What better way to celebrate than raising $770 million in new capital? This will be the firm’s largest raise yet. Beating their previous raise of $690 million. This comes at a time when many venture firms are being forced to reduce the size of their funds. Guess it pays off to have invested in the handful of companies that sold, Docusign for $165 million and Octo AI for $250 million. The company started as just a bunch of “super angels” who happen to write a check for an online bookseller called Amazon. Then the firm evolved into a multi-stage venture firm backing companies like Redfin, Smartsheet, Snowflake, and more. Will Madrona invest in the next Amazon with this fresh capital?

Big Tech:

Chinese DeepSeek gets U.S. copmanies talking:

Chinese AI company DeepSeek has come out with a new open source version of their reasoning model R1. This has got all of the tech world to start talking from Marc Andreessen, Neal Khosla, Garry Tan, and Yann LeCun. The model beats OpenAI’s o1 model on certain bench marks while only costing $5.6 million to train. This is pennies compared to the hundreds of millions that American companies are spending to train their models. Some argue that the Chinese Communist party is lying about the price to hurt American companies. While we don’t know for sure there is one thing we do know. American companies will now be pushing to make their models more efficient for cheaper driving more competition. Will China take over in the AI game or will America continue to push ahead?