In the last few months, Stockholm has become one of the buzziest AI hubs in Europe. But that’s not all Stockholm entrepreneurs care about. Lately, some of them are increasingly focused on their health — and lifespan.
That’s also the focus of the Global Human Improvement Summit in Stockholm this Saturday, hosted by longevity guru Bryan Johnson. For anyone who’s missed who Johnson is: he’s the 40-something fintech entrepreneur who’s spent millions trying to reverse or halt his own ageing process.
He’s not the only longevity speaker at the event, which has been organised by Ash Pournouri, founder of another glossy Stockholm event, Brilliant Minds. Other speakers include Liz Parrish, the entrepreneur who claims to have used gene therapy on herself to stop ageing, scientist Brian Kennedy, and Emil Kendziorra, founder of cryopreservation startup Tomorrow Bio.
From successful entrepreneurs to longevity fans
That Stockholm is hosting this new event is no coincidence, says Pournouri.
“I’ve been operational in the startup sector for a long time and all of a sudden, all those amazingly successful people I’ve met over the years are starting to look this way,” Pournouri says. “When you’ve done everything else, living a longer, healthier life becomes top of mind for most of them.”
In Stockholm’s tech scene, it’s almost rarer to see a startup founder without an Oura ring than the opposite. Others are deep into cryo chambers or life-extending supplements like NAD+. It also might not be long before they join investors — and Johnson — in flying to the Bahamas to be injected with life-extending stem cells; a service provided by another Swedish startup, Cellcolabs.
With a European healthcare system often described as “sick care”, many founders who’ve built successful businesses in other sectors are now entering the longevity space to solve “the problem”.
That mindset drove Spotify founder Daniel Ek and Hjalmar Nilsonne to start body scanning clinic Neko Health in 2018, and Voi cofounder Douglas Stark to start brain health startup Helsa. Stark’s mother was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s in her early sixties, and wasn’t the first in the family; Stark’s fear of getting the disease himself became a powerful motivator behind Helsa.
Helsa offers MR (magnetic resonance) brain scans, which cost around $1k. So far, the company has done 60 scans. The MR scans — which I’ve trialled, courtesy of Helsa — are accompanied by a detailed analysis showing which part of the brain is most active and which can be improved. Mine told me my brain age is seven years younger than my actual age, although I was advised to start meditating and running intervals to improve frontal lobe activity.
Stark says that after nine months of a strict, personalised health regimen — saying no to what others see as guilty pleasures like fatty foods, alcohol and nicotine, and yes to sleep, interval training and just enough food to survive while still feeling slightly hungry — he’s managed to reverse his biological brain age by three years.
Willing to pay for more
Another newcomer is Elfcare, founded by Julia Elf and Kry cofounder and chair Johannes Schildt. The precision prevention startup uses MR scans, data analytics, biomarkers and personalised interventions to predict and prevent disease. Since launching in March, the company has served around 200 customers, each paying about $3k for a scan and analysis.
“Contrary to what people sometimes think, our customer base wasn’t confined to people in the tech ecosystem — we have customers across Sweden with an average age of around 55,” Elf says.
“I started this company because I saw a real change in behaviour. During Covid, people got used to talking about blood tests and became more interested in their health data.”
“That shift has been paired with wearables and tracking devices. On the supply side, the latest developments in MR and AI have made it commercially viable.”
Like many startups in the preventative healthcare space, Elfcare avoids the term “longevity” — even if its customers still want longer, healthier lives.
“The longevity term is a bit problematic to be associated with when it comes to the world of clinicians; it’s perceived as a bit gimmicky,” she says.
Popular gimmick
Gimmick or not, Saturday’s longevity event has proved wildly popular. Since Pournouri wants to keep the event intimate, only 350 attendees have been given a ticket, with more than a thousand on the waiting list. According to him, all the attendees are relevant to the sector and not just longevity fans.
“We’ve had so much traction, I’ve hardly had to work for it,” says Pournouri, who founded the annual tech and music event Brilliant Minds in 2015, which has hosted Barack Obama, Pharrell Williams, Naomi Campbell and Chris Sacca, amongst a long list of other celebrities.
“It’s light years away from when we were organising Brilliant Minds. Back then, it was built on Daniel [Ek]’s and my personal relationships and it was much harder to get people to come to Stockholm.”
“There’s a natural pull toward this topic.”
Whether it will change how people view longevity or startups in the space is hard to say — but for those already in it, it’s at least proof they’re not alone.
“I think this is a landmark event putting Stockholm on the longevity map, simultaneously, as we are doing the same with AI. We have so many great companies like Cellcolabs, Kry, Helsa and new companies popping up every week and month,” Stark says. “We are a country to be counted on in the longevity space.”