Ask the Expert: Sergey Young on his Experience as a Pioneering Longevity Investor and Thought Leader, and Vision for the Future of Geroscience

Sergey Young has a goal—to help 1 billion people live a happy and healthy 100 years. As a pioneering longevity investor, author, and thought leader, Mr. Young has committed to using his expertise and experience to democratizing longevity. He is the author of the bestselling book The Science and Technology of Growing Young, and the co-founder of the BOLD Longevity Growth Fund. He is also a development sponsor of the XPRIZE Healthspan and serves as a Board Member for AFAR. He spoke with AFAR about his work and his goals for the future. His answers were edited for brevity and clarity.

What first sparked your interest in longevity and healthspan?

Many people come to the longevity field after a personal health wake‑up call, and I am no different. A routine check‑up showed my cholesterol was dangerously high, and my doctor immediately recommended lifelong statins. Faced with that reality, I took a deep dive into nutrition, supplements, and exercise. Within months, my blood markers improved so significantly that my doctor agreed I no longer needed a statin at this time. That experience wasn’t dramatic, but the process and outcome sparked a passion: I wanted to understand not only how to extend our years, but how to make those years healthier and more vibrant. From that moment on, I’ve dedicated myself to the science and technologies of longevity, driven by the belief that, with the right tools and knowledge, everyone can live longer and healthier.

How did your background in investment and business shape your unique perspective on aging research?

Since my health wake-up call, my personal mission became to make longevity affordable and accessible for everyone. I have over 20 years of experience in investments, and I thought the best way for me to contribute to my mission was to create a venture fund supporting longevity breakthroughs. So, in 2018, I started a longevity investing platform that supported 18 leading companies in gene therapies and editing, organ and tissue regeneration, artificial intelligence (AI) drug discovery, and early diagnostics. That same year, I was inspired by Peter Diamandis’s XPRIZE Foundation. I joined him and provided initial capital for the XPRIZE Healthspan (initially called Age Reversal XPRIZE). It seemed crazy at the time, because we didn’t yet know how to measure age reversal despite running multiple years of human trials. We engaged leading scientists like David Sinclair and George Church to set clear goals around reversing aging biomarkers. Several AFAR Board Members have also contributed to the initiative as advisors, helping to shape the competition from both scientific and medical perspectives. To date, the XPRIZE Healthspan has raised over $101 million and attracted over 600 teams from more than 40 countries. By engaging these leading experts to develop technologies capable of turning back human biological aging by 20 years, we are focusing on feasible solutions and making them an affordable reality.

More recently, I co-founded the BOLD Longevity Growth Fund with Peter. Our team has an extensive investing background, and we wanted to create a disciplined investment framework that removed as much risk as possible. As a growth fund, we prefer to invest in more mature companies and technologies. We have intentionally broadened our mandate to build a balanced, diversified portfolio. Any company targeting a biological mechanism of aging or improving the ability to quantify, manage, and detect diseases early falls within our scope.

Through your venture funds, you’ve backed many pioneering companies. What kinds of breakthroughs are you most excited about right now?

In my book The Science and Technology of Growing Young, I mapped longevity innovations across two horizons:

1. The Near Horizon (technologies available now or in the near future that will help us live to over 120 years)
2. and the Far Horizon (technologies available in 10-20 years that will allow humankind to achieve extreme longevity – as long as 200 years)

I’m excited by technologies that, given time, could become accessible and affordable for everyone. The biggest trend across both the Near and Far Horizons of longevity is the integration of AI, which can now perform tasks that once required thousands of human labor hours and millions of dollars in trial‑and‑error screening. To put this revolution in context: traditionally, only 1 out of approximately 5,000 drug candidates makes it all the way from discovery to FDA approval. This extremely high failure rate leads to the average cost to bring a drug to market to over $2.3 billion (source). As a specialized fund, we target unique AI and data-driven platforms. Great examples are some of the leading AI drug discovery companies we invested in, such as Insilico Medicine, Verge Genomics, and BigHat Bio. They demonstrate that it’s possible to accelerate new drug research and development by 2- to 4-fold, while reducing costs from design to validation by more than 10-fold. Even a modest 30% reduction represents nearly $700 million in savings per asset—transformative both financially and for patient access.

You curate a webinar series for AFAR that connects leaders in the private sector with academic researchers to discuss hot topics in biotech. How do you assess which technologies have true transformative potential—not just hype—in this space?

I’m excited to be part of AFAR and help with the webinar series because it does more than showcase cutting‑edge science—it builds a bridge between emerging talent, such as young scientists and entrepreneurs, and the industry’s most successful and reputable pioneers. When assessing a technology’s transformative potential, it is important to keep in mind that any emerging theme can get caught in a “hype cycle.” Overpromising breakthroughs and risk disappointing investors and drying up the patient, growth-stage capital the field requires. To avoid this trap, we follow three core principles with each investment:

1. We define clear, scientifically grounded milestones—biomarker validation, regulatory filings, proof-of-concept studies—before writing each check. If a company can’t deliver on its own metrics, we are unlikely to invest, no matter how compelling the pitch.
2. Rather than investing large checks early based on big visions, we start with a modest initial investment in the single-digit millions. We then double down on companies that demonstrate real progress.
3. We diversify our portfolio by combining new therapies, such as gene editing or tissue regeneration, with more de-risked assets, such as early diagnostic tools and digital-health platforms that can generate revenue sooner.

In short, we evaluate transformative potential by demanding rigorous scientific evidence, viable business and regulatory models, scalability, and clear impact on affordability and accessibility.

In an ideal world, where will aging research and healthy aging be in ten years?

Some of the brightest minds in longevity research believe we are not decades—but just 10–20 years—away from crossing the threshold of Longevity Escape Velocity (LEV), which is the point at which scientific advancement in health and longevity technology begins to extend human life by more than one year for every year that passes. In other words, we would extend our lives faster than we are aging. I agree that we are closer to LEV than ever before. Achieving LEV would mean we effectively turned the tables on aging. I believe whether in 10 or more likely in 20 years, we won’t merely wish for “looking good for our age;” we will be able to choose our preferred age and maintain it. But to ground this vision in real‑world needs, consider the diseases that still challenge us. Given today’s pace of innovation, in 10 years we should have (1) curative therapies for most cancer types, (2) gene‑editing cures for rare diseases impacting over 400 million people worldwide, and (3) AI‑powered diagnostics and treatments. This may seem radical, but I believe it is possible, and I look forward to helping make this healthier vision possible.