Altman has chucked a lot of cash at Retro Biosciences. He has spent $180 million in the company, which touts the lofty goal of extending “the healthy human lifespan by ten years.” According to Retro’s strategy statement, it aims to do so by finding and demonstrating anti-aging mechanisms in non-human mammals and then translate those scientific strategies to humans.

Retro publicly launched in April 2022, under the leadership of CEO Joe Betts-LaCroix. At launch, the company announced it had raised $180 million in its initial funding round—all of which apparently came from Altman. At first, Retro opted to conceal Altman’s involvement. Yet now, the company has gone public with its funding source—after initial concerns Altman’s name could “prove a distraction.” 

In addition to the big investment in Retro in 2021, Altman dumped an even greater amount of money ($375 million) into Helion Energy, a moonshot nuclear fusion power startup. Helion aspires to create a “limitless source of clean energy,” through the thus far, unresolved question mark tech of crashing atoms together. 

Altman's story seems to be about a rich man seeking the fountain of youth. He has so far spent $555 million for eternal life and a distant possible renewable energy source.

He told Tech Review that he had emptied his piggie bank: “It’s a lot. I basically just took all my liquid net worth and put it into these two companies. I am super confident fusion is going to work, and I want to use Retro therapy someday.” 

Altman told Tech Review that he became fascinated by “young blood” research, in which old mice have their fluids swapped out with fresher juice, about eight years ago. 

Altman is chummy with Peter Thiel, who is another very rich person who wants to avoid death. Fortunately for the rest of humanity, such huberous is likely to attract the wrath of the gods sooner particularly if a Silicon Valley elite start draining young people of their life juices.