Retro Biosciences is a clinical-stage longevity biotech in Redwood City, California with a single, unsubtle goal: add ten healthy years to the human lifespan. Founded in 2018 and launched publicly in 2021 with $180 million from OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, the company attacks aging at the cellular level across three platforms - autophagy enhancement, cellular reprogramming, and plasma-inspired therapeutics. Its lead drug, RTR242, an autophagy-restoring small molecule aimed at Alzheimer's disease, entered a first-in-human Phase 1 trial in 2025. A 2026 raise valued Retro at $1.8 billion.
Dr. David Werdegar, MD, MPH is the former President and CEO of Institute on Aging (IOA), San Francisco's leading nonprofit dedicated to helping older adults and adults with disabilities live with dignity and independence. A physician trained at New York Medical College and UCSF, Werdegar transformed IOA from a community program into a comprehensive elder-care organization serving thousands annually across the San Francisco Bay Area. Under his watch, IOA opened a landmark 50,000-square-foot campus on Geary Boulevard in 2011, consolidating programs spanning home care, dementia day enrichment, and the 24/7 Friendship Line warmline. He retired in 2022 after steering the organization to nearly $100 million in annual revenue with a staff of around 900.
Marty Lynch, PhD, MPA, is CEO Emeritus of LifeLong Medical Care, the Berkeley-based federally qualified health center he led for nearly four decades. He grew a small Over 60 Health Center into a 16-clinic network covering Alameda, Contra Costa, and Marin counties, and now lectures at UC Berkeley while serving on California's Master Plan for Aging Advisory Committee.
Gero is a Singapore- and Palo Alto-based biotech company applying physics-informed AI to longitudinal human health data to find the root causes of aging and develop therapies for age-related diseases. Co-founded by physicist Peter Fedichev and entrepreneur Maxim Kholin, Gero has built a foundational model of human health trained on 100M+ medical records, and partners with major pharma including Pfizer and Chugai.
Maxim (Max) Kholin is the co-founder and COO of Gero, a physics-powered longevity biotech company applying statistical physics and AI to crack the biology of aging. With roots in contract law, international business, and computational drug design, he bridges the gap between cutting-edge science and real-world commercialization. Gero - which he co-founded with physicist Peter Fedichev in 2015 - has pioneered the field of 'Gerophysics,' trained its models on 100M+ longitudinal medical records, and secured partnerships with Pfizer and Chugai Pharmaceutical worth up to $250M in milestones. Based across Singapore and Palo Alto, Kholin's mission is nothing less than transforming humans into a non-aging species.
Peter Fedichev is a theoretical physicist turned longevity entrepreneur who co-founded Gero, a biotech AI company applying physics-based generative AI models to crack the root causes of aging. A former top-2 cited Russian physicist under 35, he traded quantum gases for aging clocks, building a platform that predicted biological age from wearable data before it was fashionable, secured a Pfizer collaboration, and landed a potential $250M deal with Chugai Pharmaceutical (Roche Group) in 2025 - all while publishing over 75 scientific papers and winning a $10,000 prize for winning a public debate on defeating aging.
Mon Ami is a San Francisco software company building a cloud-based operating system for the aging and disability services sector - the agencies, nonprofits, and state units that quietly hold up America's care infrastructure. Its platform replaces decades-old databases and spreadsheets with a HIPAA-compliant system for case management, programs, billing, and reporting.
Francisco Leport is the co-founder and CEO of Gordian Biotechnology, a South San Francisco-based company pioneering high-throughput in vivo drug discovery for age-related diseases. Trained as a physicist at Stanford, Leport pivoted from particle physics and energy tech into biotech, driven by a lifelong fascination with longevity sparked by his mother's fruit fly research. Gordian's signature 'mosaic screening' platform uses gene therapy vectors and single-cell RNA sequencing to test hundreds of therapies simultaneously in single animal models, with an AI system called Pythia scoring results against human disease signatures - achieving 80% accuracy in predicting clinical outcomes. The company raised a $60M Series A in April 2024, backed by Founders Fund, Gigafund, and The Longevity Fund, and in early 2026 announced a research collaboration with Pfizer to accelerate obesity drug discovery.
Joy Zhang is the CEO and Co-Founder of Mon Ami, a San Francisco-based healthtech company building HIPAA-compliant SaaS for agencies that serve older adults and people with disabilities. A Stanford MBA who has volunteered in hospice and dementia care since high school, Zhang co-founded Mon Ami in 2018 after interviewing 150+ seniors and caregivers to understand what the system was missing. Today Mon Ami is used by government agencies and nonprofits across the US, helping them replace manual paperwork with automation - so their staff can focus on care instead of administrative burden. The company has raised over $12M and grown to 180 employees, making it one of the most visible startups in the aging-services technology space.
Omri Amirav-Drory, Ph.D., is a General Partner at NFX leading NFX Bio, a pre-seed and seed venture fund focused on scientist-founders at the intersection of technology and biology. A former Fulbright Scholar and Stanford postdoc turned biotech entrepreneur, he co-founded Genome Compiler (acquired by Twist Bioscience), launched Tech.Bio, and now backs breakthrough life sciences companies while co-founding Renewal Bio - a longevity company building synthetic embryo-derived tissues to combat aging. His stated mission is ending involuntary death.