Bryan Johnson's Blueprint just raised sixty million
At six each morning, the kitchen scale on Bryan Johnson’s counter comes alive. The almonds are counted. The smoothie is measured. A pill tray the size of a chessboard clicks shut. He logs the night’s sleep, the first heart-rate readouts, and the green bands of glucose that mean yesterday’s meals did not misbehave. The day proceeds like a flight checklist. Strength, stability, Zone 2. Red light, cold, sauna. Blood draws as routine as coffee.
Johnson has made his body a public project. Ten years after selling his payments company, Braintree, to PayPal for eight hundred million dollars, he redirected his fortune to a single aim: do not die any sooner than necessary. He built Blueprint, first as a personal protocol, then as a business. Last year, he announced sixty million dollars in new funding and said he would hire a chief executive so he could spend more time on his umbrella movement, “Don’t Die.” Investors signed on, product lines expanded, and the idea hardened into a promise you could subscribe to: testing, meals, drugs, coaching, even an app that talks back when your choices drift. PMC+2Fortune+2
It is tempting to frame Johnson as a curiosity. He is also a weather vane. In a country where life expectancy slipped even before the pandemic, and where the medical system excels at rescue but struggles at prevention, his project poses a useful question. If you constructed preventive care around the individual, spared no expense, and enforced adherence with machine rigor, how much better would a human life go
A fair answer begins with what we know works. Cardiorespiratory fitness is among the strongest, most consistent predictors of how long people live. In massive cohorts, the difference between low and elite fitness tracks with striking mortality gaps. Strength matters, too, and the combination matters most. You do not need a branded protocol to capture that; you need training you will keep doing. PMC+2JAMA Network+2
Nutrition is harder. There is no single diet that lengthens life for everyone, but some principles travel well. Favor protein that preserves muscle as you age. Favor fiber. Keep energy intake honest. If your weight, waist, and labs migrate in the right direction, the macronutrient arguments recede. On the frontier tools—continuous glucose monitors for people without diabetes—evidence is emerging but modest. These devices can nudge behavior, yet they have not shown clear improvements in hard outcomes for healthy people, and recent assessments urge caution about cost and over-interpretation. BioMed Central+1
Screening is where enthusiasm most needs a governor. Whole-body MRI for the asymptomatic is marketed as a safety net but produces a thicket of incidental findings that often lead to invasive and unnecessary follow-ups. Radiology groups and professional societies have warned against routine use outside research or very specific indications. You want to find disease early, not go looking for ghosts. Fortune
Then there are drugs that flirt with aging biology. Rapamycin—a decades-old mTOR inhibitor—extends lifespan in multiple animal models and is being tested in humans, but clinical evidence that it lengthens human life or reliably slows human aging remains incomplete. Small trials suggest immune benefits in older adults and signals in specific tissues; side effects and dosing windows remain unsettled. In other words, promising does not mean proven. The Lancet+1
Johnson knows this. He publishes his setbacks alongside his wins. He stopped plasma exchanges when they did nothing for him. He has paused and restarted drugs when side effects outweighed theory. He invites the world not simply to like him, but to assay him. The rhetoric soars—“the first generation not to die”—but the measurements are humbler. Age “clocks” built from DNA methylation patterns may correlate with risk, yet the scientists who build them warn against treating clock shifts as proof that you are younger or that a stack of interventions is causal. Surrogates are not destinies. PMC
If Johnson is a weather vane, the wind he catches is money. The new funding was accompanied by plans to scale: blood testing, meals, prescription pathways, GLP-1s for weight, toxin panels, hair and skin kits, and an AI coach to bind it all. The pitch is prevention as a product suite. But prevention at population scale is different from prevention as a luxury boutique. In the wild, adherence ebbs. Budgets exist. False positives carry human costs. The best programs minimize friction and maximize the few levers with the biggest risk-adjusted returns. For middle-aged adults, that still means fitness, blood pressure control, LDL lowering when indicated, diabetes prevention and treatment, and vaccinations. It is unglamorous. It also saves more lives than any stack you can swallow.
So what should a skeptical reader do with Blueprint
Three lenses help.
Lens one: outcomes you can bank today. If an intervention reduces heart attacks, strokes, or deaths in randomized trials, it deserves a seat at the table. GLP-1 medicines such as semaglutide reduce cardiovascular events in people with obesity even without diabetes. Statins and blood-pressure medicines do the same when used according to guidelines. Exercise that raises your VO₂ max and preserves strength is the closest thing we have to a pan-system risk reducer. If a protocol pushes you toward those, that is signal.
Lens two: surrogates with discipline. Wearables, CGMs, and clocks are not useless; they are instruments. Use them to change behavior you can sustain—earlier dinner, more steps, fewer late-night calories—then look for real-world proof that health is improving. Waist down. Blood pressure down. ApoB or LDL down if high. Fewer sick days. Better performance. When the gadgets lead and the basics lag, you have swapped priorities.
Lens three: screens with a stop rule. Choose the screenings that major societies agree prevent death or disability at an acceptable cost of harm. Colorectal cancer tests on a regular schedule. Targeted imaging when symptoms or family history warrant. Be deeply wary of scans sold as reassurance. If you would not want the biopsy or the surgery that a “maybe” nodule might trigger, do not order the scan that finds it.
There is, finally, the matter of story. Johnson’s is tidy, a founder cashes out and reinvents himself as a systems engineer of the flesh. The rest of us have messier arcs. We juggle kids and parents and rent. We work in low-control jobs. We eat what is near. That is why the most valuable idea in his project is not the supplement stack or the lights, but the insistence on measurement and iteration married to a few durable levers. If a glossy regimen gets you to train, sleep, and eat like your future depends on it, keep the parts that move the numbers you care about and discard what doesn’t.
What of the business itself Will Blueprint prevent death That is the wrong bar for any company. The right bar is whether it helps ordinary people improve risks that actually change fate. When Johnson’s venture points people toward higher fitness, controlled blood pressure, lipid management, vaccination, weight loss where needed, and evidence-based screening, it aligns with the boring heroics of modern public health. When it drifts toward bells, whistles, and scans that migrate worry without improving outcomes, it becomes an expensive costume.
Two closing notes for readers who want receipts.
First, the money and the model. Johnson’s path from Braintree to Blueprint is well documented, as is his public see-saw about whether to run the company personally and his plan to bring in leadership while expanding the platform. The raise itself and the product roadmap were announced across his own feeds and in trade reporting. None of that proves clinical effect; it does show intent to scale. PMC+2Fortune+2
Second, the evidence landscape. Fitness predicts survival. GLP-1s reduce events in high-risk obesity. Whole-body MRI screening in the well remains a hazard-rich maze. CGMs for the non-diabetic are a tool in search of hard outcomes. Rapamycin remains a hypothesis with animal support and human questions. These are not culture-war positions; they are the center of gravity in current literature and guidance.
That leaves a pragmatic prescription. Build a personal program with five blocks you can defend to your future self.
Train for fitness you can measure. Aim for steady aerobic work that climbs over time and two to three weekly strength sessions that move real weight. Track progress, not perfection. JAMA Network
Tame your numbers. Know your blood pressure, LDL or apoB, A1c, and waist. Treat what is high with lifestyle first and medicines without shame when indicated. Wikipedia
Eat for muscle and metabolic peace. More protein, more plants, fewer late-night calories. Use gadgets if they help you change habits, not as ends in themselves. BioMed Central
Screen with a bias for benefit. Do what saves lives. Skip what mostly finds maybes. Fortune
Sleep like it is training. Guard it with the same stubbornness you give your workouts.
If you want structured help building something like this—and you care about assembling your records, labs, and goals into a truly evidence based single plan—there is a waitlist at moccet where you can raise your hand. No promises of immortality. Just a place to make the basics unavoidable.