Biotechnology startup NewLimit has secured $130 million in Series B funding to advance its mission of extending healthy human lifespan through cellular reprogramming technology. The round was led by Kleiner Perkins, with participation from new investors Nat Friedman, Daniel Gross, and Khosla Ventures, alongside returning backers including Founders Fund, Dimension Capital, Elad Gil, Garry Tan, and Patrick Collison.
Co-founded by Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong, former GV partner Blake Byers, and stem cell professor Jacob Kimmel over four years ago, NewLimit has now raised a total of $170 million following its $40 million Series A round in 2023.
Breakthrough in Epigenetic Reprogramming
According to Chief Scientific Officer Jacob Kimmel, NewLimit has made significant progress in developing treatments that can restore youthful characteristics to aged cells. The company has discovered three prototype medicines capable of reprogramming liver cells, with laboratory experiments demonstrating these rejuvenated cells exhibit improved ability to process fat and alcohol.
"Once thought to be irreversible, the emerging science of epigenetic reprogramming has shown that aging is in fact malleable," the company stated. NewLimit's approach focuses on modifying the human epigenome—altering how cells behave without changing their underlying DNA structure.
The company measures its progress by comparing how cells from younger and older individuals respond to various substances. Kimmel explained that older liver cells treated with NewLimit's epigenetic reprogramming technology behave more like younger cells.
AI-Powered Discovery Engine
At the core of NewLimit's research methodology is its "Discovery Engine," which combines large-scale genomics with artificial intelligence to accelerate the development process. This system tests thousands of reprogramming combinations on human cells and analyzes the effects.
"What the AI model allows us to do is run all those experiments in simulation and then only follow up on the most promising subset," Kimmel explained. The data points from physical laboratory experiments are then used to retrain the AI model in a process the company calls "lab in a loop."
This approach enables NewLimit to avoid random trial-and-error in favor of targeted experimentation, potentially shortening the timeline for developing effective age-reversing therapies.
The Road to Human Trials
Despite the promising early results, NewLimit acknowledges it is still several years away from beginning human clinical trials. The company plans to continue developing new anti-aging medicines using its AI models and testing the most promising candidates in its laboratory.
NewLimit describes its ultimate mission as treating aging itself, which it calls the "meta driver of nearly every major human disease." By focusing on increasing "healthy life expectancy"—how long someone can live a healthy life, rather than just extending lifespan—the company aims to address the root causes of age-related decline.
Part of a Growing Longevity Movement
NewLimit joins a growing cohort of well-funded biotechnology ventures focused on extending human healthspan and lifespan. The company is part of a trend among tech entrepreneurs and billionaires who are redirecting their attention from software and fintech to biological challenges.
Other notable entries in this space include Retro Biosciences, backed by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, and Altos Labs, which has received investment from Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. These companies share the ambitious goal of developing technologies that can slow or reverse aspects of human aging.
The Methuselah Foundation, which counts PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel and Ethereum's Vitalik Buterin among its donors, has set the ambitious target of making "90 the new 50 by 2030."
"We've built technology to run the largest experiments in the field," NewLimit stated. "Our bet is that this combination of AI and scaled genomics can unlock medicines that give each of us more healthy years."
