Death-defying tycoon seeks new age of ideas

Tech tycoon Peter Diamandis’s latest project is a competition to extend the human lifespan and reverse the effects of ageing.

Tech tycoon Peter Diamandis.

Peter Diamandis, a 63-year-old tech tycoon and friend to billionaires the world over, plans to live another 100 years so he can see us colonise Mars and have a conversation with our dogs. Really.

“This is the most extraordinary time ever to be alive. Do we have problems on the planet? 100 per cent. Do we have the tools more than ever to solve them? Yes, by 1000-fold,” Diamandis says

Chief among those problems? Death. And the California-based Diamandis is intent on doing something about it.

The founder of the X Prize opened applications last week for one of his organisation’s largest and most ambitious competitions: $US111m ($171m) for a team or company that develops a single treatment capable of reversing by 20 per cent the effects of ageing on muscles, cognition and immune function.

Requiring all three conditions to be addressed is a high bar. Diamandis’s aim is to push humanity to “escape velocity”, the controversial notion that anti-ageing advances will eventually outpace the natural process of getting older. That we can, collectively, stop the biological clock.

“I had kids at age 50, and I want to see them and their great grandchildren,” he says.

“I know the ravages of ageing are coming, so let me do everything I can to die as late as possible.”

The award that put X Prize – and Diamandis – on the map, was its first: the 1994 Ansari X Prize, offering $US10m to the first private company to make a reusable spaceship.

Scaled Composites, a small California firm, won the prize in 2004. Sir Richard Branson bought the company, which formed the basis for his Virgin Galactic business.

Next on Diamandis’s list? An “interspecies two-way communication” prize for anyone who can leverage artificial intelligence to allow humans to converse with animals. He says: “They’re communicating with themselves on a reliable basis. The data is there, and large-language models will give us the ability to interpolate between species.”

His immediate goal is, however, not dying. “I need another 100 years of lifespan to enjoy and see the future I want,” he says. Aside from talking to your dog, the future Diamandis wants includes humans living on Mars and mining asteroids.

Diamandis has honed a unique skill: separating billionaires from their money by matching them with causes they hold dear: “I am railing against the amount of wealth that is doing nothing.”

To wit, when Elon Musk saw his net worth surge in 2021 to make him the world’s wealthiest man, Diamandis texted him about funding a prize for the removal of carbon dioxide from the air or sea. “He was getting a lot of flak for not being philanthropic, so I said, ‘How about another prize?’.

“He texted back, ‘Sure’.”

Musk put up $US100m for the prize, plus $US20m to run the competition. A field of 6000 applicants has been whittled down to 300 finalists. A winner will be chosen next year.

The funding for the longevity prize was led by Hevolution, Saudi Arabia’s ambitious anti-ageing initiative, along with billionaires such as Christian Angermayer, the London-based longevity and psychedelics investor, and Chip Wilson, founder of the Lululemon apparel empire.

James Peyer, boss of Cambrian Bio, which incubates and funds longevity drugs, says: “What the X Prize has done historically, and what it is doing here, is bringing lots of serious attention to the space.”

Peyer, who says his company will “probably” enter the competition, does not expect it to unleash a new wave of researchers, but instead to motivate those already working on one aspect of ageing to raise their sights to a treatment that addresses all three of the targets laid out in the prize.

“Companies that are already going to be successful in this broader ageing space will see this as an opportunity to run an extra trial to see if they can win the prize,” he says.

THE SUNDAY TIMES