Saudi Arabia has quietly been making a massive bet on a surprising area of science: longevity.
The desire to live longer has long been a focus of startups out of Silicon Valley, but now Saudi Arabia is aiming to become the new global leader.
The big picture:
- Saudi Arabia has committed a staggering $1 billion per yer to fund longevity science and research
- Saudi Arabia has launched the Hevolution Foundation, which is aiming to become the global leader in longevity science, therapeutics and technology
Who is making moves:
- Insilico Medicine entered into a partnership with Saudi Arabia to advance their artificial intelligence enabled biotech platform
- One of the foundational areas of Saudi’s partnership with Insilico is to develop a research lab that is entirely run by AI robots
- The Hevolution Foundation has given two grants to the American Federation For Aging Research, totalling roughly $10M
- Twinn Health, an AI platform that gives leading edge preventive medicine insights into MRI scans, recently landed investment from the $500 million venture fund backed by Saudi Aramco
Going deeper:
- Part of what makes Hevolution Foundation unique is that they plan to operate as a non-profit and return any profitable investments back into research
- With a $1 billion per year budget, Saudi Arabia and the Hevolution Foundation are essentially able to act as permanent capital in both non profit research and venture backed startups, which changes the landscape of longevity science globally
- Hevolution Foundation is taking a borderless approach to their funding, giving grants to United States based universities and investing seed capital in biotech companies across the globe
- While Silicon Valley has historically been the leading place for longevity based startups to find funding, Saudi Arabia is quickly displacing them as the global hot spot for longevity startups and scientific advancement
