Amazon owner Jeff Bezos hopes to look young forever

Amazon owner Jeff Bezos hopes to look young forever

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos was spotted looking buff as he arrived at this week's Sun Valley tech gathering.

The Silicon Valley billionaire didn't look a day of his 53 years as he was seen striding into the Allen & Company Sun Valley Conference with a tight T-shirt to show off his beefy arms. 

But for Bezos and his ilk, it isn't enough just to look young - they want to stay young forever. And they just might do it.

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Swole-con Valley: Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, 53, looks buff and youthful at Sun Valley tech conference this year (left), especially compared to his appearance in 2012 (right)

Amazon warrior: Bezos' buff physique isn't a surprise - he's been focused on extending his life for years, as have numerous other tech billionaires, who are heavily funding research into it

Keeping fit: Venture capitalist Aviv 'Vivi' Nevo (left) and retired general Stanley McChrystal (right) also looked like they'd been keeping in condition as they arrived at Sun Valley

Bezos is one of a number of tech billionaires pumping vast amounts of money into technologies aimed to slow - or stop - the aging process or enable immortality.

His investment company has plowed cash into Unity, a Bay area company that hopes to stop the aging process - and which had raised $116 million in funding by October last year.

The company hopes to find a way to eject senescent cells - which stop cancer cells, but build up over time and go on to cause macular degeneration and arthritis - from the  body.

A study performed on mice suggests that removing the cells 'can prevent or delay tissue dysfunction and extend healthspan. '

Bezos isn't the only one hoping to delay - or stop - the process of aging. 

PayPal founder Peter Thiel, 49, has also contributed to Unity, and has long expressed an interest in stopping the aging process.

'Most diseases are linked to aging,' Thiel said at Web Summit in 2016. 'You have a one in a thousand chance of getting cancer in the next year at age 30, you have a one in ten chance of getting cancer in the next year at age 80.

'So we definitely want to find a cure for cancer, maybe if we find a cure for aging we cure cancer along the way.'

Working out: Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg (left) and Wes Edens, co-founder of Fortress Investment Group (right) have both clearly been keeping fit - the better to enjoy their riches

Forever young: PayPal founder Peter Thiel (pictured), 49, wants to find eternal youth, and like Bezos has put millions into a research program looking at stopping the body from aging. He's reportedly also expressed interest in having young people's blood transfused into him

In the meantime, Thiel has reportedly expressed an interest in a more gruesome solution: vampirism.

Last August, Vulture reported that Thiel had contacted Ambrosia, a California company running a clinical trial to see whether blood transfusions can stop the aging process.

The company charges $8,000 for those wanting to take part in the trial, in which healthy people over 35 are transfused with the blood of healthy people under 25, and the effect on their systems measured.

That claim hasn't been confirmed by Thiel, but in August Inc. reported t hat in 2015 he said he had 'looked into doing [blood transfusions] but I haven't quite, quite, quite started yet.'  

Staying young is only the first step, however; the truly ambitious hope to live forever.

The human body appears to have an age limit: A study from October last year suggests that most people's bodies just give up at around 115.

But some Silicon Valley billionaires hope to blast through that limit - and they're not afraid to put their money where their mouth is.

To date, Larry Ellison, 72, co-founder of software company Oracle, has spent more than $430 million of his own money on research into immortality. 

Eternal life? Larry Ellison (pictured), 72, hopes that full-on immortality can be found, and has put $430 million of his own money into the project

'How can a person be there and then just vanish, just not be there?' Ellison - who lost his mother to cancer - once asked Forbes.

He founded the Ellison Medical Foundation, which is dedicated to biomedical research on aging, including into the hormone DHEA, which could slow the process. 

Google co-founder Sergey Brin, 43, also got in on the act this year, attending the launch of the National Academy of Medicine's Grand Challenge in Health Longevity in May.

The academy - which is also backed by actress Goldie Hawn, who ironically played an beauty seeking eternal life in Death Becomes Her - has put $25 million into research hoping to 'end aging forever.'

But that's peanuts compared to Google's Calico (short for California Life Company), which has ploughed an entire $1 billion into anti-aging research. 

Brin hoping not just for youth, but immortality.

Youthful: Goldie Hawn (left in March, right in 1992 immortality comedy Death Becomes her), 71, joined Google creator Sergey Brin in supporting an academy into slowing aging

His girlfriend, Nicole Shanahan, told NBC that he found himself mentioned in a book about living forever, 'singled out' as one doomed to die.

Author Yuval Noah Hararai wrote that Google's ambitious plan 'probably won't solve death in time to make Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin immortal.'

Brin told her: 'Yes, I was singled out for death; no, I'm not actually planning to die.'

Still, even if he can't outrun death, he might still be able to cheat it, thanks to cryonics companies like Alcor, which freezes the dead in the hope that they can be reanimated at some distant point in the future.

It costs $200,000 to have your entire body frozen in liquid nitrogen - and if you consider that charging and arm and a leg, you can opt to just have your head placed in cryonic suspension for $80,000.

It might sound bizarre, but Thiel has it as a backup if Unity and blood transfusions fail; he has also invested in Alcor.

Won't let it go: Max More (pictured) runs Alcor, which freezes people after death in the hope that they can one day be revived; it costs $80,000 for a head or $200,000 for the whole body

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