Longevity might sound like an elite wellness trend. In reality, it addresses one of the biggest questions facing mankind: the Silver Tsunami. By 2030, one in six people will be over 60. The number of individuals aged 80 years or older is expected to triple between 2020 and 2050. This demographic imbalance is set to crush pension – and healthcare systems, if healthspan isn’t improved within aging populations.

The Longevity Investors Lunch aspires to be the arc before this tsunami. The conference, hosted annually in Davos, is a nexus of longevity science and capital. Ultimately, the event aspires to bring longevity innovation from the lab to the public, while also sharing the latest breakthroughs within the space. Finews attended the lunch to share some of the most fascinating insights from the event.

The Next Chapter of Health: Ultra-Personalisation

The lunch takes place in the room where Yassir Arafat, the former Palestinian leader, and Israel’s former president Shimon Peres held the 1994 WEF peace negotiations. Where leaders once negotiated, nvestors now sit with furrowed brows, surrounded by fine porcelain and vitality cuisine, listening intently to leading longevity scientists.

The consensus throughout the presentations seems to be that true longevity might be found in ultra-personalisation. «The hallmark of medicine for the last 200 years has been an average generalised human, who does not exist,» says Isaac Bentwich, founder and CEO of Corex.

Recent longevity sentiment moves away from one-size-fits-all cures for a generic idea of disease to a micro-level analysis of an individual’s biological profile and fixing issues independently. For example, the cause of one person’s acceleration of Alzheimer’s could be completely different from another’s.

Andrea Gartenbach, founder of the longevity specialist, Axmann Gartenbach, reveals that this granular, profile-based approach to health now also extends to parenthood. In line with this, her clinic now offers genetic compatibility testing for future parents to predict the likelihood of disease in offspring. 

Meanwhile, speaker Neven Piculjan and his firm Aion are working on creating customised therapies to bio-optimise men. «Since the 1980s, men's testosterone has been sinking by 1% every year,» he says. Conversely, men's health is a $1.42 trillion dollar market that is growing annually, prompting more gender-specific start-ups within the longevity space.

Family Offices Building Their Own Healthcare Infrastructure

However, ultra-personalisation is no longer limited to individual patients. It is now extending to family offices themselves. After building their own banking and investment ecosystems, family offices are now designing their own bespoke healthcare infrastructure.

Jordan Shlain, founder and chairman of Private Medical, points to the rise of concierge-level medicine as a cornerstone of this shift. Based in the U.S., Shlain works with CEOs, celebrities, and professional athletes, offering 24/7 medical access, highly coordinated specialist care, and long-term health optimisation strategies rather than episodic treatment. He sees private medical infrastructure as a natural extension of the family office, integrated alongside its financial architecture.

«It’s Time for Medicine 3.0»

While many are well-familiar with going to the doctor and not feeling listened to, it appears that longevity is now listening more closely than ever. «AI combined with advanced biologies allows you to chat with your liver,» says Bentwich, founder and CEO of the BioAI company, CoreX. You will be able to hear the biofeedback of what your organs respond and feel, he shares.

Bentwich and his group have been pairing AI with miniaturised biology to create bio-avatars of organs on chips. «Imagine holding a tiny version of your beating heart in your hand,» he says.

Currently, this tech is on the verge of being used in clinical medical trials, he says. «Now is the time for Medicine 3.0», says Bentwich. 

He believes that in the foreseeable future, a decade or two of health is certainly attainable. It also includes visions of digitalised medical records and genetic data put into benevolent AI, which will allow biotech and pharma to produce better drugs, he elaborates.

Warnings on Wellness IVs

Those inspired by the longevity movement might be tempted to start taking matters into their own hands with supplements. The speakers at the Longevity Investors Lunch, however, warned that this approach is often a cure worse than the disease.

Shlain recounts the case of a client who used a commercially available L-carnitine injection after friends claimed it «made them feel great.» Subsequent laboratory testing found that the supplement contained two MDMA-related compounds, as well as Prosulfocarb, an agricultural herbicide. Shlain also cautions against so-called wellness IVs, noting that most IV bags and tubing release greater than 50,000 nanoplastic particles per liter into the bloodstream.

Pricing an Extra Year of Life

A final takeaway that becomes evident at the lunch is that when lifespans become variable, markets respond. «Longevity is not a health condition. It is a challenge for society and the greatest economic force in our generation,» says Bentwich.

The scale of that force is already visible. The MIT Technology Review notes that a company capable of extending human life by just one year would command a valuation of $200 billion. A firm deploying GLP-1 agonists, drugs that post-market studies suggest may already add a year of life, has seen its valuation swell by nearly half a trillion dollars. Meanwhile, companies that pipeline oral GLP-1 therapies, such as Eli Lilly, are approaching trillion-dollar valuations.

The most precious thing we own is life itself, and longevity is emerging as the investment theme now beginning to reflect that value.