NewLimit: Using Epigenetic Reprogramming to Reverse Cellular Aging

It’s not often that a company sets out to tackle aging itself. NewLimit, co-founded by Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong and emerging from Silicon Valley’s growing interest in longevity science, has raised $45 million in new funding to pursue exactly that goal.

The October 2025 round follows a $130 million Series B earlier the same year, pushing the company’s valuation to $1.6 billion. The capital will fund NewLimit’s progression toward clinical trials as it works to translate laboratory insights into therapies aimed at slowing—or even reversing—the cellular changes that accompany aging.

While many longevity efforts focus on supplements or metabolic interventions, NewLimit’s approach goes deeper, down to the molecular machinery that determines how genes behave over time.

Targeting Aging at the Cellular Level

Aging isn’t a single disease—it’s the gradual unraveling of cellular systems that once worked in perfect coordination.
Over time, cells begin to lose their ability to maintain identity and function. The heart stiffens, the immune system falters, and metabolism slows. Traditional medicine treats these outcomes separately: one drug for the heart, another for inflammation, another for energy balance.

NewLimit is taking a different route. Its scientists are focused on epigenetic reprogramming—resetting the chemical markers that sit atop DNA and tell each cell which genes to turn on or off. These epigenetic patterns erode with age, leading cells to forget their specialized roles.

By restoring youthful epigenetic configurations, NewLimit hopes to return aged cells to a healthier, more functional state. It’s an idea once confined to academic theory, now edging closer to translational reality.

No therapy targeting aging itself has ever received FDA approval, in part because aging isn’t recognized as a disease indication. That means NewLimit must build its path differently—starting with measurable, age-related disorders like immune dysfunction or metabolic decline, and working backward toward the root biology of aging.

The premise is bold: if aging drives disease, then reversing its cellular signatures could treat many conditions at once.

Epigenetic Reprogramming Science

NewLimit's approach builds on Nobel Prize-winning research by Shinya Yamanaka, who discovered that four transcription factors (Oct4, Sox2, Klf4, and c-Myc) can reprogram adult cells back to embryonic-like states. Scientists have demonstrated this principle by creating cloned animals from adult cells, though complete reprogramming poses risks including tumor formation.

NewLimit takes a more targeted approach, aiming to restore youthful function without complete cellular reprogramming. The company uses single-cell genomics, machine learning, and high-throughput screening in an iterative "lab in a loop" process, where computational models predict promising therapeutic candidates, experiments validate predictions, and resulting data retrains the AI for improved accuracy.

The company has identified prototype medicines for three therapeutic areas:

• Liver Reprogramming: Three transcription factor combinations that restore aged liver cells' ability to process fat and alcohol, showing effectiveness in animal models of liver disease
• Immune System Rejuvenation: Three factor combinations that restore youthful function to aged T cells in laboratory studies
• Vascular Program: A new initiative targeting endothelial cells that line blood vessels

These results are based on preclinical research in cell cultures and animal models. The company has not disclosed which specific disease indications it will pursue in clinical trials.

Leadership Team

NewLimit was founded by a team combining expertise in technology, venture capital, and biology:

• Brian Armstrong brings entrepreneurial vision and capital-raising experience as co-founder and CEO of Coinbase
• Blake Byers, former partner at GV (Google Ventures) and co-founder of NewLimit, advocates for scientific research showing aging's malleability
• Jacob Kimmel, President and co-founder, is a computational biologist with stem cell research expertise who leads scientific strategy
• Cathy O'Hare, Head of operations, coordinates the company's expanding research programs

The company has assembled a Scientific Advisory Board with expertise in nephrology and aging biology.

Funding & Industry Support

Longevity science used to sit on the fringe of biotechnology. Perhaps not anymore. NewLimit’s latest $45 million raise drew a roster of backers that signals how seriously the industry now takes the space. The round included Eli Lilly and Company, Duke Management Co., and Section 32, alongside returning investors Kleiner Perkins, Dimension, Abstract, Human Capital, and Boost.

It follows a $130 million Series B led by Kleiner Perkins in May 2025, which added names like Nat Friedman, Daniel Gross, Khosla Ventures, Founders Fund, Dimension Capital, Elad Gil, Garry Tan, and Patrick Collison. Before that, NewLimit raised $40 million in its Series A.

Eli Lilly’s participation is particularly notable. For a top-tier pharmaceutical company to invest directly in a longevity startup suggests a shift in attitude—from curiosity to conviction that interventions targeting cellular aging could become a new therapeutic category.

Market Position & Challenges

NewLimit’s goal is deceptively simple: create medicines that target cellular aging itself, not the diseases that follow from it. If successful, such therapies could extend healthspan—the number of years a person remains healthy—by addressing multiple age-related conditions simultaneously.

But ambition alone won’t rewrite biology. The field faces steep hurdles. Demonstrating safety in long-term studies, convincing regulators to consider interventions for otherwise healthy individuals, and proving that cellular rejuvenation in lab models translates to humans—all remain open questions.

So far, the science is promising but unproven. Experiments in mice and cell cultures show that aging markers can be reset through epigenetic reprogramming, but the process is complex and still poorly understood. Even small errors could trigger uncontrolled cell growth or other unintended effects.

NewLimit’s challenge is to turn these delicate, early successes into safe, repeatable therapies—a process that will take years of testing, refinement, and validation.

Next Steps

Over the next few years, NewLimit plans to move its platform toward clinical trials, testing whether the rejuvenation effects seen in laboratory models can hold true in human patients.

The company’s blend of AI-driven discovery tools, significant capital, and pharma partnerships gives it an enviable starting position in a field that’s only beginning to take shape. Eli Lilly’s investment isn’t just financial—it provides a bridge to translational expertise and regulatory insight that most startups in longevity medicine lack.

Still, the real milestone will be evidence in people. Until clinical data show that reprogramming aging cells can safely restore function, the field will remain more promise than proof.

If NewLimit succeeds, it could do more than lengthen lives—it could redefine what medicine treats in the first place.