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Jeff Bezos pops champagne after emerging from the New Shepard capsule after his spaceflight on July 20, 2021.
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All things must die, according to the poet Alfred Lord Tennyson, but that could be about to change.

A growing number of tech billionaires have decided they want to use their enormous wealth to try to help humans “cheat death.”

Amazon‘s Jeff Bezos, Alphabet‘s Larry Page, Oracle‘s Larry Ellison and Palantir’s Peter Thiel are just a few of the super-rich who have taken a keen interest in the fast-emerging field of longevity, according to interviews, books and media reports.

While breakthroughs are far from guaranteed, they hope that various medicines, therapies and other life science technologies will enable humans to live well beyond 100 years old and possibly to 200, 300, or even longer.

But are their efforts going to benefit humanity as a whole or just an elite few? It’s a tricky question that divides opinion.

The filter down effect

“Technologies that initially are only affordable to the rich typically become more widely available with time,” Stefan Schubert, a researcher at the London School of Economics and Political Science who specializes in “effective altruism,” told CNBC. Indeed, this is true of everything from air travel to smartphones and medicine.

Tech investor Jaan Tallinn, the co-founder of Skype, told CNBC that Silicon Valley’s quest to live forever will eventually benefit humanity as a whole.

“I think involuntary death is clearly morally bad, which makes the quest for longevity a morally noble thing to engage in,” Tallinn said. “Early adopters always tend to pay more and take larger risks than the ‘mass market,’ so if therapies start off on the expensive/risky side, that’s to be expected.”

Tallinn added that he thinks it’s “counterproductive” to require that a new service be available to everyone before anyone is allowed to use it, but he said he understands the instinct.

Sean O hEigeartaigh, co-director of Cambridge University’s Center for the Study of Existential Risk, told CNBC that many advances in longevity science could have broad benefits, adding that they could reduce the occurrence or severity of older age-related diseases including dementia and heart health.

“Extending max lifespan significantly in the near-term seems unlikely to me; but identifying and arresting aging-related factors that increase preponderance and severity of age-related conditions is more plausible,” Ó hÉigeartaigh said.

Some are concerned that the Earth’s finite resources could come under strain if people live longer, healthier lives.

However, by the time meaningful life extension advances are made, Ó hÉigeartaigh expects population numbers to be more stable in more parts of the world.

“I expect meaningful lifespan extension to be a century or more away, and by then I expect a parallel change in societal attitude towards euthanasia,” he said, adding that he thinks euthanasia will be more acceptable and more common in the coming years.

What about climate change?

While some believe that billionaires should be able to spend their money on what they see fit, not everyone thinks tech billionaires should be using their money to fund life extension research.

Jon Crowcroft, a computer science professor at Cambridge University, told CNBC they’d be better off pumping more of their billions into climate change mitigation technologies instead of longevity research.

“It’s a bit pointless living forever on a dying planet,” said Crowcroft.

But Tallinn told CNBC he finds the tech billionaire’s efforts to support longevity research “commendable.”

“I think it’s generally unfair to pit good causes against each other in a world where most resources are wasted on morally unimportant or even reprehensible things,” Tallinn said.

Billionaire’s chasing immortality

Bezos, the second richest man in the world behind Elon Musk, has invested some of his $199 billion into a new “rejuvenation” start-up called Altos Labs, according to a report from MIT Technology Review earlier this month.

The anti-ageing start-up, which is said to be pursuing biological reprogramming technology, is reportedly also backed by Russian-Israeli venture capitalist Yuri Milner, who made a fortune as an early investor in Facebook.

Elsewhere, Oracle founder Ellison has donated more than $370 million to research about aging and age-related diseases, according to The New Yorker.

Meanwhile, Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page helped launch Calico, a secretive venture that’s tracking mice from birth to death in the hope of finding markers for diseases like diabetes and Alzheimer’s, according to a report in The New Yorker. Calico is part of Alphabet, the holding company that also owns Google.

One of the biggest advocates for life extension among the tech billionaires is Thiel, who co-founded PayPal and Palantir and backed Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.

Peter Thiel, co-founder of PayPal Inc.
VCG | Getty Images

In 2006, he donated $3.5 million to support anti-ageing research through the non-profit Methuselah Mouse Prize foundation. “Rapid advances in biological science foretell of a treasure trove of discoveries this century, including dramatically improved health and longevity for all,” he said at the time. Thiel had upped his investment in Methuselah Mouse Prize foundation to $7 million by 2017, according to Time.

According to The New Yorker, Thiel and Bezos have both invested in San Francisco-based Unity Biotechnology, a company whose founder reportedly said he wants to “vaporize a third of human diseases in the developed world.”

Life extension stocks?

On the other side of the Atlantic, British billionaire Jim Mellon told CNBC last September that he was planning to take Juvenescence, his own life extension company, public in the next six to 12 months.

It’s yet to happen, but Juvenescence is continuing to invest in a wide range of anti-ageing therapies that it thinks have the potential to extend the human life.

One of those investments is Insilico Medicine, which aims to use artificial intelligence for drug discovery. Juvenescence has also backed AgeX Therapeutics, a California-headquartered firm trying to create stem cells that can regenerate ageing tissue, and LyGenesis, which wants to develop a technology that uses lymph nodes as bioreactors to regrow replacement organs.

Other billionaires, including Mike Cannon-Brookes, the co-founder of Australian software firm Atlassian, and NEX Group founder Michael Spencer, have invested in Juvenescence.

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Intuit shares drop as quarterly forecast misses estimates due to delayed revenue

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Intuit shares drop as quarterly forecast misses estimates due to delayed revenue

Intuit CEO Sasan Goodarzi speaks at the opening night of the Intuit Dome in Los Angeles on Aug. 15, 2024.

Rodin Eckenroth | Filmmagic | Getty Images

Intuit shares fell 6% in extended trading Thursday after the finance software maker issued a revenue forecast for the current quarter that trailed analysts’ estimates due to some sales being delayed.

Here’s how the company performed in comparison with LSEG consensus:

  • Earnings per share: $2.50 adjusted vs. $2.35 expected
  • Revenue: $3.28 billion vs. $3.14 billion

Revenue increased 10% year over year in the quarter, which ended Oct. 31, according to a statement. Net income fell to $197 million, or 70 cents per share, from $241 million, or 85 cents per share, a year ago.

While results for the fiscal first quarter topped estimates, second-quarter guidance was light. Intuit said it anticipates a single-digit decline in revenue from the consumer segment because of promotional changes for the TurboTax desktop software in retail environments. While that will affect revenue timing, it won’t have any impact on the full 2025 fiscal year.

Intuit called for second-quarter earnings of $2.55 to $2.61 per share, with $3.81 billion to $3.85 billion in revenue. The consensus from LSEG was $3.20 per share and $3.87 billion in revenue.

For the full year, Intuit expects $19.16 to $19.36 in adjusted earnings per share on $18.16 billion to $18.35 billion in revenue. That implies revenue growth of between 12% and 13%. Analysts polled by LSEG were looking for $19.33 in adjusted earnings per share and $18.26 billion in revenue.

Revenue from Intuit’s global business solutions group came in at $2.5 billion in the first quarter. The figure was up 9% and in line with estimates, according to StreetAccount. Formerly known as the small business and self-employed segment, the group includes Mailchimp, QuickBooks, small business financing and merchant payment processing.

“We are seeing good progress serving mid-market customers in MailChimp, but are seeing higher churn from smaller customers,” Sandeep Aujla, Intuit’s finance chief, said on a conference call with analysts. “We are addressing this by making product enhancements and driving feature discoverability and adoption to improve first-time use and customer retention.”

Better outcomes are a few quarters away, Aujla said.

CreditKarma revenue came in at $524 million, above StreetAccount’s $430 million consensus.

At Thursday’s close, Intuit shares were up about 9% so far in 2024, while the S&P 500 has gained almost 25% in the same period.

On Tuesday Intuit shares slipped 5% after The Washington Post said President-elect Donald Trump’s proposed “Department of Government Efficiency” had discussed developing a mobile app for federal income tax filing. But a mobile app for submitting returns from Intuit is “already available to all Americans,” CEO Sasan Goodarzi told CNBC’s Jon Fortt.

Goodarzi said on CNBC that he’s personally communicating with leaders of the incoming presidential administration.

On the earnings call, Goodarzi sounded optimistic about the economy.

“Our belief, which is not baked into our guidance, is that we will see an improved environment as we look ahead in 2025, particularly just with some of the things that I mentioned earlier around just interest rates, jobs, the regulatory environment,” he said. “These things have a real burden on businesses. And we believe that a better future is to come.”

WATCH: H&R Block, Intuit shares fall after report Trump administration is considering a free tax-filing app

H&R Block, Intuit shares fall after report Trump admin considering a free tax-filing app

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Bluesky CEO Jay Graber says X rival is ‘billionaire proof’

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Bluesky CEO Jay Graber says X rival is 'billionaire proof'

Bluesky has surged in popularity since the presidential election earlier this month, suddenly becoming a competitor to Elon Musk’s X and Meta’s Threads. But CEO Jay Graber has some cautionary words for potential acquirers: Bluesky is “billionaire proof.”

In an interview on Thursday with CNBC’s “Money Movers,” Graber said Bluesky’s open design is intended to give users the option of leaving the service with all of their followers, which could thwart potential acquisition efforts.

“The billionaire proof is in the way everything is designed, and so if someone bought or if the Bluesky company went down, everything is open source,” Graber said. “What happened to Twitter couldn’t happen to us in the same ways, because you would always have the option to immediately move without having to start over.”

Graber was referring to the way millions of users left Twitter, now X, after Musk purchased the company in 2022. Bluesky now has over 21 million users, still dwarfed by X and Threads, which Facebook’s parent debuted in July 2023.

X and Meta didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.

Threads has roughly 275 million monthly users, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in October. Although Musk said in May that X has 600 million monthly users, market intelligence firm Sensor Tower estimates 318 million monthly users as of October.

Bluesky was created in 2019 as an internal Twitter project during Jack Dorsey’s second stint as CEO, and became an independent public benefit corporation in 2022. In May of this year, Dorsey said he is no longer a member of Bluesky’s board.

“In 2019, Jack had a vision for something better for social media, and so that’s why he chose me to build this, and we’re really thankful for him for setting this up, and we’ve continued to carry this out,” said Graber, who previously founded Happening, a social network focused on events. “We’re building an open-source social network that anyone can take into their own hands and build on, and it’s something that is radically different from anything that’s been done in social media before. Nobody’s been this open, this transparent and put this much control in the users hands.”

Part of Bluesky’s business plan involves offering subscriptions that would let users access special features, Graber noted. She also said that Bluesky will add more services for third-party coders as part of the startup’s “developer ecosystem.”

Graber said Bluesky has ruled out the possibility of letting advertisers send algorithmically recommended ads to users.

“There’s a lot on the road map, and I’ll tell you what we’re not going to do for monetization,” Graber said. “We’re not going to build an algorithm that just shoves ads at you, locking users in. That’s not our model.”

Bluesky has previously experienced major growth spurts. In September, it added 2 million users following X’s suspension in Brazil over content moderation policy violations in the country and related legal matters.

In October, Bluesky announced that it raised $15 million in a funding round led by Blockchain Capital. The company has raised a total of $36 million, according to Pitchbook.

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Alphabet shares slide 6% following DOJ push for Google to divest Chrome

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Alphabet shares slide 6% following DOJ push for Google to divest Chrome

Jaque Silva | Nurphoto | Getty Images

Alphabet shares slid 6% Thursday, following news that the Department of Justice is calling for Google to divest its Chrome browser to put an end to its search monopoly.

The proposed break-up would, according to the DOJ in its Wednesday filing, “permanently stop Google’s control of this critical search access point and allow rival search engines the ability to access the browser that for many users is a gateway to the internet.”

This development is the latest in a years-long, bipartisan antitrust case that found in an August ruling that the search giant held an illegal monopoly in both search and text advertising, violating Section 2 of the Sherman Act.

The potential break-up would include preventing Google from entering into exclusionary agreements with competitors like Apple and Samsung, part of a set of remedies that would last 10 years.

CNBC’s Jennifer Elias contributed to this report.

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