The Cryo Group

The puzzle pieces to make cryo work.

As many of you know, longevity has been my primary focus, my intrinsic motivation for more than two decades now. For the last five or six years, cryopreservation has been my path to get there. With “there” I mean a world where everybody can choose how long they would like to live.

By and large, I see two ways to make this happen:

1) A major research breakthrough makes cryopreservation (including human cryopreservation) a field that grows by a few orders of magnitude. Similarly to how ChatGPT has “made” the field of AI in recent years. The only half-realistic breakthrough I can think of is the full recovery/revival of a mammal from cryogenic temperatures.

If archived, cryopreservation research, delivery, regulations, and logistics would take on a life of their own and quickly become a trillion-dollar sector, almost overnight. Big players from biotech, tech, and maybe even pharma would likely get involved to develop new cryoprotective agents, improve surgical techniques, invent warming technology, and so on. Long story short, it would no longer require the consistent and unrelenting push from the few who move the field forward today.

And while we do put resources into recovery and revival research, it’s far from certain that this will be achieved anytime soon.

2) The other option is a longer grind, where progress is being made, but no major breakthrough that fundamentally changes the field happens. This might create a few billion-dollar companies, but it will require the continuous dedication of a few organizations and people to keep everything on track and the long-term mission in sight.

I hope for the breakthrough, but prepare for the grind. Especially, since the longevity field has been plagued by optimistic timelines and assumptions that everything will be different soon, in the past. It’s not a sufficient strategy to hope or gamble for the best possible outcome, especially given how important the topic is.

When I think about the path of highest probability, I don’t just think about research and medical procedures; I think of a group of companies and organizations working together to increase the probability that revival will be possible in the future.

For lack of a better word, let’s call this the “Cryo Group”, made up of the following puzzle pieces:

Professional Medical Teams

The core of every cryopreservation organization is the team that actually does the stabilization, cryoprotection, cooldown, and quality assurance. As of today, we’ve built the best teams in Europe and the US (based on preservation quality). But of course, we need more of them to cover larger and larger areas with as little delay as possible.

Emergency Support Medical Teams

Until more than ≈1000 people are cryopreserved annually, we will need to supplement Professional Medical Teams with Emergency Support Teams to cover areas that would otherwise be too far away to allow for good response times. These teams can consist of local contract doctors, EMTs, nurses, and the like, trained to do the initial stabilization and cooling procedures until a professional team arrives. We will build as many of those as possible and wherever we find motivated people.

Cryogenic Storage Locations

Storage at cryogenic temperatures isn’t rocket science. It just needs to be safe and secure. Nevertheless, safety over decades and potentially centuries is not easy to ensure. While our facility for cryogenic storage is located in one of the most stable countries in the world, this might very well change over of a century. We’re thinking about our second facility now, and over time will build more. Located on different continents to account for geopolitical problems and in areas of political, economic, and social stability. Last but not least, emergency support agreements with other long-term storage facilities can be another fallback. To our knowledge, we’re one of the only two organizations that have formalized such a fallback with each other.

Asset Management

Funds kept to maintain long-term cryostorage and pay for revival, and reintegration into the future society need to be managed separately from all other funds. For now, we have one foundation for that purpose. Next, we will build one for those who want to put additional funds aside (with a small management fee that will fund research). Just like multiple storage locations, different asset management organizations will provide an additional backup. Something you can’t have enough of, given the extreme timeframe we’re talking about.

Governance and Oversight

Mission creep and management with goals that differ from the original vision are a significant danger. Currently, the European Biostasis Foundation, a Swiss non-profit foundation, and the Patient Care Foundation, the organization tasked with overseeing the safety of people in cryostasis provide oversight and guarantee that everybody involved stays mission-aligned. In addition, a government body in Switzerland protects the original purpose of the foundations, even if future management wants to make changes. Nevertheless, we plan to set up additional, independent oversight bodies. Ideally, we would like to create an industry-wide self-governing oversight body that certifies providers and the quality of preservation. But this required a large degree of agreement and coordination between stakeholders, creating considerable complexity.

Research Infrastructure and Funding

We fund research at two private labs in the US, have our own lab in Switzerland, and collaborate with five universities for various topics. We co-founded CryoDAO to multiply existing research funding, especially in areas that otherwise would not get sufficient resources.
Going forward, we plan to double down on conducting intramural research and funding external groups.

Funeral Homes

We started to collaborate with large funeral homes in Europe and the US, and support a closely associated organization in Germany. This gives us a network for logistics and international shipping.

Medical Clinics

As stated many times before, cryopreservation is about 50% logistics. One of the key hurdles are the internal policies of hospitals, such as opening hours, departments having the responsibility for certain procedures, and so on. Controlling the logistics would be extremely helpful to eliminate unnecessary delays. As of today, we know of a few hospitals with good processes for people who have chosen cryopreservation. To ensure that everything goes well, we plan to co-own a small clinic/hospital. While this will not become reality in the near term, it’s on the list for the next few years. Of course, the structure would avoid conflicts of interest and stay well within laws and regulations, while avoiding unnecessary delays.

Insurance Provider

Funding your cryopreservation contract is a bit tedious. The required funding (≈200,000 EUR for whole body cryopreservation in 2025) needs to be available at a moment’s notice at the time of death, or be guaranteed by a trusted party. For now, we use a combination of life insurance, payable on death accounts, and pre-payment solutions.

In the long run, our own term-life insurance and a structure that can accept, invest, and return funds (if people change their minds) are on the to-do list.

Public Affairs and Government Relations

Every country I’m aware of permits an individual to make the choice to be cryopreserved. There are differences, of course, and some countries have less red tape around it than others, but fundamentally, the required procedures are possible almost everywhere. I estimate that this will develop in the direction of further liberalization and more freedom of choice. But, of course, this might not be the case after all, or existing, beneficial laws might be challenged in some regions.

We started to put some effort into public affairs work and will likely do more in the future.

Let me repeat, I hope for a big breakthrough, but prepare for the grind. Of course, this only makes sense if you assume the following:
- We won’t have AGI/ASI soon (or your confidence interval for timelines is very large)

- No major breakthrough in cryopreservation research will provide 100x the funding in the next 5-10 years, and while we do invest in revival research, we just don’t make it our only path to success.

- Longevity escape velocity won’t be achieved before you, or at least a lot of other people, need cryopreservation

- < 1000 people are cryopreserved annually over the next 10 years (we do everything to change that, but don’t want to count on it)

Over the next decades, until I see any of these assumptions change, I will do my best to initiate or build all the parts that make great cryopreservation a reality.

And everything that increases the probability that it will work out as planned: with revival in the future.