Cure
Overview
Investors at LongeVC, Draper Associates, and YK Bioventures explain what they need to see in the data and the people before they fund a longevity startup.
LongeVC has reviewed roughly 5,500 companies across its first two funds and invested in 26 of them, said Sergey Jakimov, the firm's co-founder and managing partner. That's fewer than 1 in 200.
LongeVC is one of a small number of venture firms dedicated to longevity. It backs early-stage companies working on therapeutics, diagnostics, and AI drug discovery for age-related disease, including Rubedo Life Sciences, which is developing drugs that target the senescent cells implicated in many diseases of aging.
The odds stay long even as more money pours into the field. Investors put a record $18.4 billion into longevity biotech in 2025, up from $4.7 billion the year before, and another $12.1 billion so far in 2026, according to a September report from the industry publication Longevity.Technology. The report also found that capital is concentrating in fewer, larger deals.
So what separates the handful of companies that raise from the thousands that don't? We asked three investors who regularly hear longevity pitches and looked at the year's largest financings.
Their answers point in the same direction. The companies getting funded tie aging biology to a specific disease, move quickly toward human testing, and are run by founders who are candid about what their data can and can't show. Investors' views vary more on how big a leap a new drug needs to make, and on whether consumer products are a smart way to pay for the science.
Aging Isn't an Indication
Because aging itself isn't an established regulatory indication for drug approval, longevity companies generally need to target a specific disease or condition.
"You need to explain to us how you're going to get there," Jakimov said.
This year's biggest longevity financings show what that looks like in practice. NewLimit, which is developing medicines meant to restore youthful function to old cells, raised a $435 million Series C in June, led by Founders Fund, at a valuation of about $3.1 billion. Its first clinical trial will test a liver medicine.
In May, Retro Biosciences, whose stated goal is to add 10 healthy years to the human lifespan, raised new money at a $1.8 billion pre-money valuation in a round led by 4P Capital. It didn't disclose the amount. Its lead drug, RTR242, is being tested in Alzheimer’s disease.
Life Biosciences closed an $80 million Series D in April to fund a Phase 1 trial of its lead program, ER-100, in optic neuropathies, including glaucoma. ER-100 uses partial epigenetic reprogramming, an approach that aims to return aged cells to a younger state.
Each company describes its mission in terms of aging. Each is entering the clinic through a disease regulators already recognize. Longevity.Technology founder Phil Newman expects that pattern to hold: therapies will be approved first for a recognized disease and only later shown to deliver broader benefits against aging.
The Money Follows Human Data
For LongeVC, diligence starts with the evidence.
"Evidence based over everything, data over everything," Jakimov said.
That doesn't mean the firm expects definitive proof from the outset. LongeVC is willing to back ambitious hypotheses, Jakimov said, provided founders are transparent about the limits of their evidence.
Gary Yeung, founder and managing partner of YK Bioventures, holds founders to a similar standard. His firm invests across therapeutic areas, including cancer and metabolic disease, and recently co-led a $70 million Series B for obesity biotech Moonwalk Biosciences. YK has reviewed more than 1,000 proposals in the last four years and funded 27, he said.
Peer-reviewed publications help establish credibility, Yeung said, but he also wants laboratory and animal data suggesting a discovery could benefit patients. Founders need to know when that evidence is strong enough to move into clinical testing.
"You can't just keep curing mice. At some point, you have to cure a human," he said. "Can you translate those interesting signs into a therapeutic for patients? That's the ultimate measure for us as a VC in terms of success."
NewLimit, Retro, and Life Bio all raised as they reached that point. Life Bio closed its round after the FDA cleared ER-100 for human testing. Retro dosed its first participant in 2025, months before its latest financing, and NewLimit raised its Series C as it prepared for its first trial.
What Investors Look for in a Founder
At the earliest stages, a company's founders can matter as much as its science, said Michelle Kwok, a principal at Draper Associates, an early-stage firm that invests across industries. Kwok co-leads Draper's New York office and its healthcare and biotech investing, which includes regenerative medicine and AI-driven drug discovery.
She looks for complementary expertise: researchers who understand the biology, paired with business leaders who know the industry, potential customers, and how to build commercial relationships.
She also tests whether founders can explain what they're building. Kwok sometimes asks colleagues without scientific backgrounds to listen to a pitch. If they can't grasp the basic idea after a few follow-up questions, she sees that as a warning sign.
"It's not that it's not a great product, it's not that it's not great science, it's just that they can't get people to understand it," she said.
Yeung pays close attention to how founders handle time and money. Unrealistic clinical timelines and underestimated trial costs can undermine a founder's credibility, he said. He looks for founders who are upfront about the risks and have a plan for different possible outcomes.
LongeVC thinks about the exit early. Jakimov said the firm considers whether a startup's intellectual property could be valuable to a pharmaceutical company looking to add a new technology or treatment to its portfolio. Pharma is already watching the field: Eli Lilly's venture arm invested in NewLimit's Series C.
The Consumer Question
Drug development takes years, and investors take different views on how longevity companies can fund themselves in the meantime.
Kwok sees an opportunity for some companies to bring in revenue through consumer products or cosmetics while they continue developing therapies.
LongeVC is wary of businesses that rely heavily on influencer marketing rather than defensible science. Jakimov has told R&D World that longevity companies can "go shallow," pointing to Botox, aesthetics, and consumer cosmetology.
For founders deciding whom to pitch, the difference is practical. A company with a consumer product on the side may find a warmer reception at a generalist firm like Draper than at a dedicated longevity fund like LongeVC.
How Big a Leap?
How much better a new drug needs to be depends on whom you ask.
Draper wants companies that could fundamentally change how a disease is treated. Kwok said the firm wants to invest in treatments with the potential to eliminate disease rather than manage it over time.
"We don't wanna be investing in anything incremental," she said.
Yeung sets a different bar. He looks for new approaches that deliver "tremendous value to the patient," but a drug doesn't need to target an entirely new biological pathway to get there, he said. A substantial improvement over existing options, through better efficacy, fewer side effects, or less frequent dosing, can be enough.
For Jakimov, the appeal of longevity is the size of the potential payoff, even though investors may put tens of millions of dollars into a hypothesis that ultimately fails.
"If the science works, it's gonna be tremendous," Jakimov said.
