The Founder of Coinbase Is Going to Research Immortality

marsbitPublished on 2026-06-03Last updated on 2026-06-03

Abstract

Coinbase founder Brian Armstrong has co-founded NewLimit, a longevity biotech startup, which just raised $435 million in a Series C funding round led by Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund. The round values the company at $3.1 billion, more than triple its valuation from a year ago. NewLimit is developing drugs aimed at reversing cellular aging to extend human healthspan. Its approach builds on Nobel Prize-winning research on cellular reprogramming (Yamanaka factors), with a focus on identifying specific gene combinations that can restore younger cell function. The company plans to begin human clinical trials next year, initially targeting alcohol-related liver disease as a form of accelerated aging. Founded in 2021 by Armstrong alongside biotech investor Blake Byers and scientist Jacob Kimmel, NewLimit has now raised over $700 million across multiple rounds. It joins a growing field of well-funded longevity ventures backed by tech billionaires, including Sam Altman’s Retro Biosciences and Jeff Bezos-backed Altos Labs, reflecting a surge of interest in using science to combat aging and extend healthy lifespan.

Author | Azuma(@azuma_eth)

At 3:00 AM Beijing time on June 3, longevity technology startup NewLimit announced the completion of a $435 million Series C funding round. This round was led by Peter Thiel's fund Founders Fund, with continued participation from Abstract Ventures, Kleiner Perkins, NFDG, Eli Lilly Ventures, Valor Equity Partners, among others, while also introducing new investors such as Thrive Capital, Greenoaks, and Quiet Capital.

A WSJ report indicated that NewLimit's valuation in this round reached $3.1 billion, more than triple its valuation from a year ago.

In its funding announcement, NewLimit revealed that following breakthrough research achievements, the company is advancing longevity medicine into the human clinical trial stage. Its first drug targeting alcohol-related liver disease is expected to commence clinical trials next year.

NewLimit also emphasized: "By reprogramming cell age, humans may achieve longer health spans, and now, we are closer than ever to the goal of delaying or even reversing aging."

The Founder Turns Out to Be an Old Acquaintance

It is worth mentioning that one of NewLimit's co-founders is none other than our old acquaintance — Coinbase founder and CEO Brian Armstrong.

In 2021, Brian Armstrong, together with former GV partner and bioengineer Blake Byers and stem cell biologist Jacob Kimmel, invested $110 million to establish NewLimit in South San Francisco.

Picture: The NewLimit founding team

Prior to this funding round, NewLimit had already completed three rounds of financing, as detailed below.

May 2023: Completed a $40 million Series A round, with investors including Dimension, Founders Fund, and Kleiner Perkins;
May 2025: Completed a $130 million Series B round, reaching a valuation of $810 million, led by Kleiner Perkins, with participation from Founders Fund, Khosla Ventures, and Human Capital, among others;
October 2025: Received an additional $45 million investment, bringing the post-money valuation to $1.62 billion, with investors including Lilly Ventures, Duke University, Section 32, etc.;

According to NewLimit's official introduction, the company is dedicated to developing drugs that can extend human health span — "As humans age, cellular function gradually declines, making people more susceptible to diseases. It was once believed that aging was inevitable, but emerging science shows that the aging process can be reversed at the cellular level. We are developing the first drugs based on these discoveries to restore the youthful function of aging cells."

In simpler terms, NewLimit is using scientific methods to research immortality!

Reversing Aging is Not a Fantasy

Over the past few decades, while the scientific community has long recognized the link between aging and cellular functional decline, it could not precisely find a way to make cells "rejuvenate." The turning point came in 2006 when Japanese scientist Shinya Yamanaka discovered that activating just a few specific transcription factors could reprogram adult cells into a youthful state resembling embryonic stem cells. This discovery was later named "Yamanaka Factors" and helped him win the 2012 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.

Odaily Note: Picture shows Shinya Yamanaka speaking in Tokyo

Yamanaka's research first proved something previously considered impossible — that cellular age is not irreversible. And the story told by NewLimit is built precisely upon this discovery.

NewLimit writes on its website: "Our drugs can reprogram a cell's epigenome to a younger state by activating specific transcription factor genes. We already know this reversal is possible. However, for different cell types, exactly which combinations of transcription factors are needed to restore their youthful function remains unknown. Finding and discovering these effective payloads is the core challenge of our work."

NewLimit's strategy is to first target a specific disease to obtain drug approval, and then explore broader applications. As mentioned earlier, NewLimit is advancing a drug for alcohol-related liver disease into clinical trials.

NewLimit Co-founder and CEO Jacob Kimmel further explained, "Liver disease can actually be viewed as an 'accelerated version of aging,' it just presents the aging process that everyone experiences in a faster and more intense manner."

The Biggest Investors in This Sector Are All Billionaires

NewLimit is not the only tech company currently targeting "immortality."

In 2022, Sam Altman invested $180 million in Retro Biosciences, which is developing drugs to rejuvenate aging cells. Last month, Retro Biosciences disclosed its valuation had reached $1.8 billion.

Furthermore, Altos Labs, reportedly backed by Jeff Bezos's funding, also launched in 2022 with $3 billion and has since raised nearly twice that amount in total funding.

It's easy to see that from Peter Thiel to Sam Altman to Jeff Bezos, the biggest investors in this sector are without exception super-rich individuals at the pinnacle of technology and wealth. Peter Thiel has publicly expressed extreme aversion to death, advocating similar views on multiple occasions: "Death is humanity's greatest enemy, yet we treat it as a natural law..."

The logic behind these tech titans' willingness to invest hundreds of millions is not hard to understand — when wealth and power reach their peak, time becomes the only enemy, the only luxury that cannot be bought directly with money.

Having earned enough money, "how to live longer" becomes the greatest challenge.

After Marvell's 32% Surge, the Chinese Chip Family Behind It Emerges

The stock price of Marvell Technology surged 32.5% on June 2nd, driven by NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang highlighting its custom ASICs and optical interconnects as core to AI data center architecture. This event brought attention to the Chinese semiconductor family behind Marvell: the Dai siblings. The story centers on three siblings, all UC Berkeley graduates, whose three-decade entrepreneurial journey aligns with major semiconductor industry shifts. In 1995, youngest sister Dai Wei Li co-founded Marvell with her husband Sehat Sutardja and his brother, focusing on storage controllers. Eldest brother Dai Wei Min founded EDA company Ultima, later sold to Cadence, and later founded VeriSilicon (芯原) in China, becoming a leading semiconductor IP provider. Second brother Dai Wei Jin co-founded EDA firm Silicon Perspective (sold to Cadence) and GPU IP company Vivante, later acquired by VeriSilicon. The combined "Dai-Sutardja" family network extends beyond Marvell. Their ventures and investments form a comprehensive ecosystem for the post-Moore's Law, chiplet era. Key holdings include: Dream Big Semiconductor (AI SuperNICs, acquired by Arm), Alphawave (high-speed SerDes IP, acquired by Qualcomm), and Silicon Box (a chiplet advanced packaging foundry). VeriSilicon itself thrives on the AI ASIC and IP boom in China. Collectively, the family's AI infrastructure-related portfolio is estimated at over $22 billion. Their strategy represents a distinct path: building critical components for open standards and key manufacturing capacity in the chiplet era, rather than pursuing standalone AI chip dominance. While this path may not create the next NVIDIA, it has enabled repeated successful exits and sustained influence within the global semiconductor industry.

marsbit40m ago

After Marvell's 32% Surge, the Chinese Chip Family Behind It Emerges

marsbit40m ago

Microsoft is Afraid of Being Marginalized by AI Giants

Microsoft, once the defining force of the PC era, now faces a familiar challenge in the AI age: the risk of being relegated to a profitable but invisible infrastructure provider. This anxiety was laid bare at Build 2026, where CEO Satya Nadella unveiled a major strategic pivot. The catalyst was a quiet April agreement that dissolved Microsoft's exclusive licensing and cloud-hosting deal with OpenAI, its once-vital partner. This erased Microsoft's key AI moat. With OpenAI and Anthropic defining AI applications and gaining enterprise traction—even within Microsoft's own ranks—Nadella had to answer: without exclusivity, what is Microsoft's role? The answer was a suite of seven in-house AI models, a developer-focused AI workstation (Surface RTX Spark Dev Box), and, most crucially, the Agent 365 platform for enterprise AI governance. The models, notably targeting Anthropic's strengths in coding and enterprise, signal a defensive move. However, the broader strategy is to make the models themselves less decisive. Financially, Microsoft's AI revenue is strong, driven largely by Azure running others' models. Yet its user-facing products like Copilot show weak penetration and engagement. Microsoft earns infrastructure money but lacks direct user mindshare. Nadella's core fear is being "hollowed out." As OpenAI and Anthropic prepare for IPOs and gain financial independence, they may build their own infrastructure, threatening Azure's lucrative AI revenue stream. Microsoft's window is to entrench itself deeper: not as the model creator, but as the indispensable platform for securely deploying, managing, and governing all AI models within the enterprise through Agent 365. Build 2026 revealed Microsoft's bet: in the AI era, the ultimate power lies not in any single model, but in the enterprise "operating system" that controls them. Nadella is determined to ensure Microsoft is the driver of this new era, not just a passenger.

marsbit53m ago

Microsoft is Afraid of Being Marginalized by AI Giants

marsbit53m ago

US Stocks Surge 16% in Two Months: Only 4 Occurrences in History, the Most Recent Was Just Before the 1987 Crash

U.S. stocks have surged 16% over April and May, a gain seen only four times since WWII, according to Deutsche Bank strategist Henry Allen. Three prior instances followed recessions, but the sole non-recession precedent was in early 1987, months before the "Black Monday" crash. The current rally is underpinned by AI enthusiasm and strong data, but its speed without an economic recovery is historically unprecedented. Meanwhile, credit spreads remain near record lows despite growing consumer strain—the U.S. savings rate hit just 2.6% in April, a level last seen before the Global Financial Crisis, and consumer sentiment is at its lowest since 1952. Market risks are concentrated. While stocks and credit markets appear immune to geopolitical tensions, sovereign bonds tell a different story. Treasury yields have tracked oil prices and recently hit multi-year highs, creating a widening divergence with equities. Surprisingly stable oil prices, despite the prolonged closure of the Strait of Hormuz, have been a key pillar for risk assets. However, if the blockage persists, this support could fade, raising the risk of a stagflation shock not currently priced in.

marsbit54m ago

US Stocks Surge 16% in Two Months: Only 4 Occurrences in History, the Most Recent Was Just Before the 1987 Crash

marsbit54m ago

CPU, Quietly Returning to the Center of the AI Computing Power Stage

Over the past three years, AI computing power narratives have been dominated by GPUs. However, starting in 2026, this story began to shift. While training large models remains GPU-intensive, the rapid growth of inference and AI agent workloads, which require high levels of task orchestration, concurrency, and data flow management, has highlighted a renewed critical role for CPUs. These are tasks GPUs are not designed to handle. Intel's recent launch of the Xeon 6+ processor, built on its Intel 18A process and featuring up to 288 efficiency cores (E-cores), exemplifies this strategic pivot. It is positioned not as a mere companion to GPUs but as the essential "control plane" for AI infrastructure, optimized for high-density, energy-efficient, and high-throughput workloads characteristic of AI agents and inference. This "CPU resurgence" is not about CPUs outperforming GPUs in raw computation. It reflects a systemic bottleneck: as AI scales from training single models to deploying countless intelligent agents, the demand for coordination and data handling surges. Major cloud providers are also developing their own high-density ARM-based server CPUs for similar workloads. However, Intel's success with this strategy faces significant challenges. Competition includes NVIDIA's integrated CPU-GPU solutions, the expanding adoption of cloud vendors' in-house ARM CPUs, and the crucial market test of Intel's 18A manufacturing process against rivals like TSMC's N2. In conclusion, CPUs are indeed reclaiming a central, though redefined, role in AI compute—managing the complex orchestration that enables massive-scale AI deployment. While the trend is clear, which company will ultimately lead this CPU resurgence remains an open question to be decided in the data centers of 2027 and beyond.

marsbit1h ago

CPU, Quietly Returning to the Center of the AI Computing Power Stage

marsbit1h ago

TON Rebrands Native Token As Gram, Reviving Original White Paper Name

The native token of the Toncoin (TON) network is being rebranded to 'Gram,' reviving its original name from the project's first white paper. This change, announced by Telegram co-founder and CEO Pavel Durov, is the fourth step in his "Make TON Great Again" (MTONGA) initiative. The transition period is expected to take about three weeks, and a new logo has been previewed. The rebrand follows Telegram's official return to the ecosystem in May as its largest validator, after a six-year absence that began with a 2020 legal dispute with the SEC. Durov stated that the move "returns to our roots" and paves the way for future developments, with three more steps remaining in the MTONGA roadmap. At the time of the announcement, Gram was trading around $2.02.

bitcoinist1h ago

TON Rebrands Native Token As Gram, Reviving Original White Paper Name