NewLimit – a San Francisco-based company that aims to reverse aging by reprogramming cells – announced recently that it raised $40 million in funding in a Series A round of funding from Dimension, Founders Fund, and Kleiner Perkins with participation from Eric Schmidt, Elad Gil, Garry Tan, and Fred Ehrsam.
The company was founded by Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong; venture capitalist Blake Byers; Greg Johnson (head of machine learning); and Jacob Kimmel (head of research). Along with the $40 million funding round, Byers and Armstrong also put $110 million into the company.
“NewLimit was founded to cure aging. We are working toward this goal by uncovering sets of transcription factors that can epigenetically reprogram cells. Although our products are designed to treat aging itself, we also believe these products could treat or prevent many diseases associated with aging, including fibrosis, infectious disease, and neurodegenerative disease,” wrote the company in the statement. “This new funding is in addition to the founders’ original $110 million commitment to the company. With the additional capital, we plan to remain a small focused team where everyone contributes to the line work and everyone contributes to company building. There are no shortcuts… Many investors talk about funding transformative companies but few are willing to take on the risk inherent in these kinds of projects. Even though aging is the dominant driver of human disease, aging biology has been underfunded and under-explored. We believe epigenetic reprogramming is a watershed moment for aging research and we hope to spur many more groups to participate in moving this field forward. We are grateful to our investors for their belief in our team and approach.
