On Growth and The Low-Hanging Fruit of Immortality

“It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste much of it.”
– Seneca

If life is short because we waste it, what happens when we unlock the ability to extend it?

In the 1900s, humanity unlocked two civilizational catalysts that made such a question possible: the code of life and the code of silicon.

For much of my journey, I’ve devoted myself to the code of the transistor - expressing ideas on the web page, architecting systems, etc… This has been a source of incredible joy (and frustration sometimes :).

But recently, my life has felt increasingly more controlled by the script written into my biology - showing up in my genetic deficiencies, and in the mutations and diseases others I’m close to experience.

Genes create the base layer of our lives. They account for roughly half of our personalities, set our susceptibility to disease, our taste, and so on… The DNA we inherit is both a blessing and a curse - code we didn’t choose but must live with. The genetic lottery dictates far more than we like to admit, and the sense of being at its mercy frustrates me deeply.

In the 2020s, we’ve made significant progress in using artificial intelligence in the realm of silicon. AI can now fluently write code, test it, debug it, and scale it in ways biology can’t yet match.

Why can’t we program life (yet) with the same fluency we program machines?

The answer lies in biology’s deep and beautiful complexity. Living systems have been shaped by millions of years of evolution, producing networks far richer than anything we’ve built in silicon. Progress has been incredibly slow for various reasons: the relatively small amount of data we have is decentralized and hidden behind walls of IP. Furthermore, every design must be rigorously validated in a lab instead of simply run on a computer. Experiments stretch into months, burdened by material sourcing and regulatory hurdles - and unlike software, where a bug is trivial, in living systems failure can be fatal.

When I think about this genetic lottery and the frustrating gap of potential and reality in the biotech space, I often talk with my co-founder about evolution.

Why are our genes so imperfect? Why don’t we live longer, why aren’t we smarter, more disease-resistant, etc…? Hasn’t evolution had enough time to iron out our flaws?

The answer is surprisingly simple: Evolution doesn’t optimize for perfection, it optimizes for reproduction. For the last hundreds of thousands of years, the key optimizing metric of evolution for Homo sapiens has been infectious disease and survival to reproductive age. If a virus kills you at 25, there’s no evolutionary incentive for genes that would allow you to live till you’re 200.

Thus, evolution hasn’t attempted to encode for long lifespans. Had it tried and failed, we could assume the problem was nearly impossible - but because it never optimized for it at all, the possibility remains wide open. Furthermore, in 2006, scientists discovered the Yamanaka factors - a set of genes capable of turning back a cell’s biological clock. In theory, these factors, when expressed correctly, could create functional immortality (with plenty of caveats and other factors in the aging process).

Achieving this will take trillions of genetic designs (there will be a multitude for each person). Moreover, each of these designs need to be validated in the lab - and right now, it can take months, and hundreds of thousands of dollars to design and validate a single construct. Worse, around 50% of designs currently fail in the lab. There’s no “spell-check” for DNA, just slow iteration.

My co-founder and I are building software to fix this bottleneck, automating the genetic design cycle from sequence design to lab validation and manufacturing. Our goal is to bring smoother workflows to science with better interfaces, smarter assistance, etc… But the purpose goes beyond efficiency: it’s really about unlocking creativity. We envision software that clears away the tedious work scientists spend a bulk of their time on right now. Instead, we’re building a world where scientists can actually focus on ideas - and pursue the discoveries that lead to breakthroughs.

I believe the future of human life will be defined by AI accelerating biotechnology. My calling is to bridge the worlds of silicon and carbon to get us there.

The complete integration of AI and biotech will bring functional immortality - and with it, various ethical conundrums. Such a possibility forces us to rethink what it means to be human - to seek meaning, to create, and above all, to grow.

I used to think of growth in simpler terms - learning more about myself, maturing, and gaining deeper perspective. Growth has always felt urgent, fueled by the scarcity of our time on earth.

If functional immortality becomes possible, that definition is challenged.

Without that scarcity, would growth wither - or would it take on a new form?

As I’ve reflected further, I see that its essence isn’t urgency at all.

Growth is born from the accumulation of irreversible experience. Each chapter of life is unrepeatable - you may live for centuries, but you will never live the same youth, the same love, the same moment twice. Each imprint deepens what comes after, not just shaping the next chapter, but broadening the richness of all chapters still to come.

Immortality won’t erase the passage of life - it will only deepen its texture, giving us more chapters to turn.

Each chapter can only be lived once, and I believe the way to honor it is through creation - shaping something that lasts beyond the moment.

I create to experience each phase of life more deeply, and to carry its imprint forward so the richness of life itself keeps broadening. I create to help people and push humanity forward.

I used to believe these ambitions needed a prelude: that I first had to build something big, then use the resources from it to help people. Now I see that bridging silicon and carbon will be the path towards achieving all of my goals at once.

This bridge will carry us beyond our limits, toward exoplanets and deeper into the unknown - and keep us alive to experience it.