Some San Franciscans will ring in the new year dancing the night away in clubs; others will partake in low-alcohol cocktails. But those in the growing longevity crowd — who casually drop terms like LEV (longevity escape velocity) and CKM (continuous ketone monitor) as easily as LOL or TLDR — are more likely to celebrate with a social sauna or cold plunge.
They are also more likely to have gifted full-body blood panels than any new gadget for the holidays. A CEO of a robotics firm requested an on-demand MRI for Christmas. A former Nokia president turned DJ gave the entire family Oura rings. For Silicon’s most health-obsessed, 2024opened up new, more accessible frontiers in the fight against death.
With 2025 promising an even fiercer anti-aging arms race, here’s a look at the life-extension trends we covered this year that show no sign of letting up.
Private longevity doctors are the norm for the wealthiest obsessives, but many people can’t drop six figures for a one-on-one session with Peter Diamindis. That’s where concierge startups have stepped in, offering AI-driven health insights and access to longevity medical services at a fraction of the cost.
“We’ve created a language model that scales the brains of elite high-end medical care,” said Jacob Peters, cofounder of Superpower, a longevity concierge startup that has raised $4 million from investors including Tyler Winklevoss and Balaji Srinivasan. “Good health is becoming a status symbol.”
In 2024, Johnson — the tech entrepreneur who pours $2 million a year into his elaborate longevity regimen — catapulted to global fame as the poster child for anti-aging. Fans eagerly shelled out $179 to attend his inaugural Don’t Die Summit in September in San Francisco, a longevity show-and-tell featuring frontier scientists, vendors hawking anti-aging elixirs, and health-obsessed attendees on a quest to find the perfect protocol. Johnson’s trolling for attention and social media posts can grate, but he “put longevity on the map,” according to Joanna Bensz of the International Institute of Longevity, a nonprofit dedicated to establishing industry standards for clinics. He’ll start 2025 with a splash: “Don’t Die,” a new documentary about Johnson’s quest to reverse his aging, hits Netflix on New Year’s Day.
Microplastic testing and plasma exchange
For the past few years, it seemed everyone was talking about microplastics found in blood, urine, and tissue samples. In 2024, testing of the number of microplastics in the body emerged as a surprising trend. A wave of products emerged for DIY testing of the particles, which may be linked to inflammation, hormone disruption, and cellular damage; among them, Johnson’s $149 microplastic test, Numenor’s $221 version, and Tap Score’s $569 water-specific test. One pricey way to try to get rid of the body’s microplastic pollution is therapeutic plasma exchange, which removes the particles from the blood, according to Dr. Dobri Kiprov, founder of Global Apheresis in Mill Valley.
Pop-up cities are often compared to a mashup of SXSW and Burning Man. Fans prefer to call them “affinity accelerators,” places where like-minded people connect over summer-camp-style activities and cutting-edge science salons. In June 2024, Edge Esmeralda — a monthlong pop-up created by the team behind Zuzalu, a decentralized city in Montenegro conceptualized by Ethereum cofounder Vitalik Buterin — took over downtown Healdsburg. In 2025, we’ll see this trend expand: Edge Esmeralda purchased land to build a permanent home, and Vitalist Bay, a two-month longevity pop-up, will head to Berkeley in April.
“Longevity zones serve as hubs for innovation,” said Adam Gries, CEO of Vitalism, the nonprofit coordinating Vitalist Bay. “People are given permission to dream about a better way to address aging.”
Sleep maximization has long been popular in longevity circles, but this year saw a twist on the trend: hacks to optimize waking up. Specifically, time-delayed caffeine capsules are taken at night and aim to get you out of bed with zero grogginess. The science is sound, said Cassie Hilditch, a researcher at the Fatigue Countermeasures Laboratory, noting that people metabolize caffeine at different speeds.
The “live forever” crowd is all-in on zero-proof partying. At the Don’t Die Summit in September, attendees danced with a shirtless Johnson at what some said felt like an “anti-aging amusement park.” In August, people danced at the Brain Wave Rave in the Haight, as Neurosity EEG headsets projected their brain readouts onto the walls in mesmerizing light displays. In December, a two-day longevity symposium at the Buck Institute closed with a rave at a biohacking spa. Tina Woods, executive director of the International Institute of Longevity, who DJs under the name DJ Tina Technotic, explains the connection between raving and life extension this way: “Experiencing joy is essential to living longer.”