Last Updated on May 8, 2025 by factkeeps
NewLimit, a biotechnology startup focused on extending human healthspan by genetically reprogramming cells, has secured $130 million in a Series B funding round led by venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins. The raise marks a significant milestone for the four-year-old company as it accelerates efforts to develop breakthrough anti-aging therapies powered by artificial intelligence and cellular biology.
The round attracted new investors including Nat Friedman, Daniel Gross, and Khosla Ventures, while previous backers such as Founders Fund, Dimension Capital, Elad Gil, Garry Tan, and Stripe co-founder Patrick Collison also recommitted to the vision. This latest infusion of capital follows a $40 million Series A round raised in 2022.
Co-founded by Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong, former GV (Google Ventures) partner Blake Byers, and stem cell researcher Jacob Kimmel, NewLimit is working to develop treatments that could rejuvenate aged cells, potentially delaying or reversing the effects of aging at a cellular level.
“Our mission is to increase how long people can live in good health, not just how long they live,” said Kimmel in an interview with TechCrunch. “We’re not trying to chase immortality—we’re focused on treating aging as a modifiable biological process.”
According to Kimmel, the company has identified three prototype medicines that target liver cells—one of the body’s most metabolically active organs. In lab tests, NewLimit’s treatments were able to epigenetically reprogram old liver cells, restoring functions such as fat and alcohol metabolism to levels observed in younger cells. These findings were established by comparing how young and aged cells responded to various substances, showing that reprogrammed older cells behaved more youthfully.
Despite the early promise, human clinical trials are still several years away. The company is currently refining its discovery process using a feedback loop between AI and lab-based experimentation. The approach—referred to as “lab in a loop”—uses an artificial intelligence model to simulate thousands of experiments, identify the most promising candidates, and prioritize them for real-world testing in the lab. The outcomes of those tests are then used to retrain the AI model, improving its predictive accuracy.
“What the AI model allows us to do is run all those experiments in simulation and then only follow up on the most promising subset,” said Kimmel. This closed-loop system not only speeds up drug discovery but also dramatically reduces the cost and time associated with traditional trial-and-error approaches in biotechnology.
NewLimit’s work builds on advances in epigenetics, a field that studies how gene activity can be changed without altering the underlying DNA sequence. By targeting epigenetic “markers” associated with aging, the company hopes to reset cellular function and restore tissue health—potentially revolutionizing how age-related diseases like liver dysfunction, cardiovascular issues, and neurodegenerative conditions are treated.
While aging remains a complex and not fully understood process, NewLimit joins a growing field of biotech companies—including Altos Labs, Calico, and Rejuvenate Bio—pushing the frontier of longevity science. The funding boost puts NewLimit in a strong position to compete and contribute meaningfully to this emerging space.
With AI Inputs: This article was assisted by generative AI to summarize key investor information, translate complex biological concepts, and contextualize NewLimit’s positioning within the broader longevity biotech sector.
