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8x8

Human lives eight times longer. Eight years to find the way.

Our moonshot is a human life eight times longer than today's: centuries, like the elves in Tolkien's stories. With AI speeding up science, we think the way can be found, and work on it begun, within eight years. Nobody knows how yet, and nothing Indaga offers makes anyone live longer. Here is what is known, what it would take, and what we are doing first.

Why it is not magic

Ageing is the wall, not accidents. In the European Union in 2024, about 1 in 610 people in their forties died during the year. If that risk never rose, half of people would still be alive after about 420 years.28

What stops us is the rise: between 40 and 90, the yearly risk of dying doubles about every seven years.28 The elves of the stories are, in effect, people who stop ageing. Nobody knows how to do that yet. Our goal is to help find out.

It has happened before

Life expectancy in Europe has already more than doubled.

In 1850 a European could expect to live about 36 years; in 2023, about 79.30 In the European Union it reached 81.5 years in 2024.28 Most of that came from fewer deaths in childhood and early adulthood: better food and housing, clean water, vaccines, antibiotics, safer births.34 The longest lives have not moved the same way: the record, 122 years, was set in 1997.8

Life expectancy at birth, Europe, 1770–2023 (years)
0204060801800185019001950200036 in 185079 in 2023

Europe including Russia (UN definition). Before 1950, rough regional estimates for selected years (dots); the straight line between 1913 and 1950 hides the falls during the two World Wars and the 1918 flu. Source: Our World in Data (Riley; Zijdeman et al.; Human Mortality Database; UN World Population Prospects).

Show the numbers
177034.3 years
180033.3 years
182035.6 years
185036.3 years
187036.2 years
190042.7 years
191346.8 years
195062.0 years
195565.6 years
196068.7 years
196570.0 years
197070.3 years
197570.9 years
198071.3 years
198572.2 years
199073.1 years
199572.2 years
200073.4 years
200574.3 years
201076.2 years
201577.8 years
202077.7 years
202379.1 years

What eight times takes

Three doublings.

Life expectancy at birth in the European Union is 81.5 years.28 Eight times longer is about 650 years: three doublings. To find the way in eight years, progress would have to match a full doubling of the human lifespan about every two years and eight months. Nothing has yet slowed ageing itself.

  1. Today

    about 80 years

  2. ×2

    160

  3. ×4

    320

  4. ×8

    640

The intersection

When science adds a year every year.

For 160 years, record life expectancy for women (in whichever country led) rose by almost three months every year.31 If, every year, science added at least a year to people’s remaining life expectancy, ageing would stop being the limit. Researchers call this longevity escape velocity. Ray Kurzweil expects people who are diligent about their health to reach it between 2029 and 2035.32 Olshansky and colleagues concluded in 2024 that, unless biological ageing can be markedly slowed, radical life extension is implausible this century.33

The chart uses a doubling scale: each step up is twice as fast. Since 1960, Europe’s gains have mostly been between one and three and a half months a year; in the 1950s they were about eight. Suppose that from 2026 the pace started at the old record of three months a year and doubled every two years, a doubling time we chose for illustration. It would reach one year per year in 2030. Nothing suggests it will: this is arithmetic, not a forecast. It shows what an exponential path would have to look like.

Gain in life expectancy per calendar year (doubling scale)
Europe, average gain per year in each decadeScenario (illustration, not a forecast): the pace doubles every two years
Kurzweil 2029–352 years1 year6 months3 months1½ months3 weeks11 days19601980200020202040Escape velocity (rough benchmark): +1 year every yearRecord (women), 1840–2000: almost 3 months a yearScenario ≈ 2030

Europe: the average yearly change in life expectancy at birth in each decade, from the series in the chart above (the 1990s fell with the crisis after the Soviet Union; 2019–2023 includes the pandemic). The orange line is an illustration, not a forecast. The one-year line is a rough benchmark: escape velocity is about remaining life expectancy at a given age, not life expectancy at birth. The shaded band is Ray Kurzweil’s window for people diligent about their health; it is not a forecast for Europe’s average.

Show the numbers
Europe, 1950–1960+8.1 months a year
Europe, 1960–1970+1.9 months a year
Europe, 1970–1980+1.3 months a year
Europe, 1980–1990+2.1 months a year
Europe, 1990–2000+12 days a year
Europe, 2000–2010+3.3 months a year
Europe, 2010–2019+3.4 months a year
Europe, 2019–2023+27 days a year
Scenario, 2026+3.0 months a year
Scenario, 2028+6.0 months a year
Scenario, 2030+1 year a year
Scenario, 2032+2 years a year

Where science stands

Big gains in simple animals. None yet in people.

Animals
Removing one gene made worms live about ten times longer. In mice the best results are tens of percent; in flies, up to about double. Rapamycin extended life even in mice that started it late. The gains shrink as animals get more complex.1,2,3,4
Nature's long-livers
Greenland sharks live for centuries (one estimate is 392 ± 120 years), bowhead whales over 200 years, and in naked mole-rats the risk of dying hardly rises with age (disputed). Better DNA repair and resistance to cancer keep turning up in their biology, along with slow lives.5,6,29,7
Humans
Nothing has yet raised the human maximum: the record, 122 years, has stood since 1997. Habits move the average: in two large US studies, women with four or five low-risk habits could expect at 50 about 11 more years free of cancer, heart disease and type 2 diabetes than women with none, and men about 8 more (group estimates, not a forecast for anyone).8,9
Being tried now
Partial reprogramming, which resets cells towards a younger state, reached its first human trial in 2026, in the eye. In two large trials, the GLP-1 medicine semaglutide went with about a fifth fewer deaths from any cause over about three years, in people who were already ill: adults with overweight or obesity and heart disease, and adults with type 2 diabetes and kidney disease (in the first trial, deaths were not a formally tested result). Nothing is approved to treat ageing itself.10,11,12
Measuring it
Proving a longer life takes decades of watching people. Markers of ageing, in the blood and in the body, that could show a change within about three years are the shortcut: research programmes fund them, and one study has already applied them to the stored blood samples of a finished drug trial. No regulator accepts one yet.13,14

Why now

Science is speeding up.

AI is changing how fast biology moves. AlphaFold predicts protein structures that once took years in a lab, and its makers shared the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.15 A drug whose target and molecule were both found by AI has been through a randomised phase 2a trial.16

Indaga itself is built mostly this way: one founder working with more than thirty AI agent sessions. We think AI can be turned on ageing itself in the same way: not only to find the way, but to start carrying it out.

Our plan, step 1

Measure first: eight measures, read for eight years.

Any way to longer lives will show in the body first. So we start where the evidence is: eight routine measures with large published links to disease and death, each read and dated in your own record and re-read over the years. Indaga starts from your DNA; these add what DNA cannot tell you. Six are read today; the view that puts all eight side by side is not built yet. The order is fixed, not a ranking. These measures do not make anyone live longer; they show what is changing.

  1. 01

    VO₂max (fitness)

    Fitness predicted death as strongly as smoking or diabetes, or more, among 122,007 adults sent for a treadmill test at a US hospital.17

    Today From Apple Health, through our iOS app (an invite-only test version on TestFlight)

  2. 02

    ApoB, or LDL cholesterol

    LDL particles cause the build-up in arteries that leads to heart attacks.18

    Today From lab results you add (beta)

  3. 03

    HbA1c (or fasting glucose)

    In adults without diabetes, a higher HbA1c went with more diabetes, heart disease and stroke in later years.19

    Today From lab results you add (beta)

  4. 04

    hs-CRP (a blood test for inflammation)

    Higher CRP goes with more heart disease and deaths, but it is a marker, not a proven cause.20,21

    Today From lab results you add (beta)

  5. 05

    Sleep regularity

    In UK Biobank, irregular sleep went with a higher death rate, more strongly than sleep length did.22

    Today From Apple Health, through our iOS app (TestFlight). Our sleep index is not the one used in that study, so we compare it only with your own usual pattern

  6. 06

    Blood pressure

    At ages 40 to 69, each 20 mmHg higher systolic pressure went with about twice the death rate from stroke and heart disease.23

    Today Not yet. Planned: from a cuff through Apple Health, or typed in

  7. 07

    Waist

    Waist size predicted death even among people with the same BMI, in about 360,000 Europeans.24

    Today Not yet (weight is read today). Planned: from Apple Health, or typed in

  8. 08

    Resting heart rate

    Each 10 beats a minute higher went with about a 9% higher death rate, in 46 studies of 1.2 million people.25

    Today From Apple Health, through our iOS app (TestFlight), shown against your own usual range

Our plan, step 2

Research with partners: do the eight move with blood markers of ageing?

Blood measures of ageing, such as DNA-methylation clocks, can change when a group changes how it lives. In a later analysis of a two-year randomised trial, calorie restriction slowed the pace of ageing measured by one clock, DunedinPACE, by about 2 to 3%; other clocks did not change.26 But no clock is yet steady enough to tell one person their “age”: repeat runs of one blood sample on common clocks can differ by years.27 So clocks stay out of the app.

Instead we want to ask a group question, with academic partners (we are looking for them now): over time, do the eight measures, recorded day by day where a device allows, move together with blood markers of ageing? If they do, everyday measures could help the faster trials that a longer life will need.

  • Any such study would run with a research institution, under its protocol and medical-ethics review.
  • It would recruit its own participants, never our customers, and never use our customers’ data.
  • Its target would be published before it starts, and results reported for groups.
  • Nothing from it would appear in the app, the report or a connected AI. No one is ever given an “age” or a pace of ageing.

Researchers: if you work on biomarkers of healthy ageing, lifestyle studies or wearables in ageing cohorts, and this question interests you, write to support@indaga.ai with “8x8 research” in the subject.

Our plan, step 3

Test AI in the open.

If AI is going to help find the way, it has to be honest about what it does not know. We publish our tests of AI on DNA, with every question and answer, on Hugging Face: a pre-registered benchmark of how often general AI models invent DNA results, and a check of a new DNA model on expert-reviewed ClinVar variants.

The rules we keep

  • A goal, not a promise

    8x8 is a goal for science. Nothing Indaga offers makes anyone live longer, and we never promise years to any person.

  • Eight readings, never one score

    Each measure keeps its own value, date and source. We do not add them up, count how many are “in range”, or rank what to do first.

  • Unknown stays unknown

    A measure that was never read is shown as not measured, never as normal. An old reading keeps its date.

  • No biological age

    Indaga never gives anyone a “biological age” or a pace of ageing. (The app’s “fitness age” only compares your VO₂max with population averages; it is not a biological age.) It is wellness information, not medicine.

  • Checkable

    Every scientific statement here has a numbered source below. We publish our tests of AI on DNA openly, on Hugging Face.

Sources

  1. 1Ayyadevara S et al. Remarkable longevity and stress resistance of nematode PI3K-null mutants. Aging Cell 2008;7:13. doi:10.1111/j.1474-9726.2007.00348.x
  2. 2Rose MR. Laboratory evolution of postponed senescence in Drosophila. Evolution 1984;38:1004. doi:10.1111/j.1558-5646.1984.tb00370.x
  3. 3Flurkey K et al. Lifespan extension and delayed immune and collagen aging in mutant mice with defects in growth hormone production. PNAS 2001;98:6736. doi:10.1073/pnas.111158898
  4. 4Harrison DE et al. Rapamycin fed late in life extends lifespan in genetically heterogeneous mice. Nature 2009;460:392. doi:10.1038/nature08221
  5. 5Nielsen J et al. Eye lens radiocarbon reveals centuries of longevity in the Greenland shark. Science 2016;353:702. doi:10.1126/science.aaf1703
  6. 6Keane M et al. Insights into the evolution of longevity from the bowhead whale genome. Cell Rep 2015;10:112. doi:10.1016/j.celrep.2014.12.008
  7. 7Ruby JG, Smith M, Buffenstein R. Naked mole-rat mortality rates defy Gompertzian laws. eLife 2018;7:e31157 (and the comment by Dammann P et al., eLife 2019). doi:10.7554/eLife.31157
  8. 8Robine JM et al. The real facts supporting Jeanne Calment as the oldest ever human. J Gerontol A Biol Sci Med Sci 2019;74:S13. doi:10.1093/gerona/glz198
  9. 9Li Y et al. Healthy lifestyle and life expectancy free of cancer, cardiovascular disease, and type 2 diabetes. BMJ 2020;368:l6669. doi:10.1136/bmj.l6669
  10. 10ER-100 (partial epigenetic reprogramming) for glaucoma or NAION, Phase 1. ClinicalTrials.gov NCT07290244. clinicaltrials.gov/study/NCT07290244
  11. 11Lincoff AM et al. Semaglutide and cardiovascular outcomes in obesity without diabetes (SELECT). N Engl J Med 2023;389:2221. doi:10.1056/NEJMoa2307563
  12. 12Perkovic V et al. Effects of semaglutide on chronic kidney disease in patients with type 2 diabetes (FLOW). N Engl J Med 2024;391:109. doi:10.1056/NEJMoa2403347
  13. 13ARPA-H, PROSPR: Proactive Solutions for Prolonging Resilience (biomarkers of ageing for faster trials). arpa-h.gov/research-and-funding/programs/prospr
  14. 14Zhavoronkov A et al. Integration of proteomic aging clocks in a phase 2a clinical trial supports simultaneous geroprotective assessment. Nat Biotechnol 2026. doi:10.1038/s41587-026-03286-y
  15. 15Jumper J et al. Highly accurate protein structure prediction with AlphaFold. Nature 2021;596:583. And: The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2024, press release. nobelprize.org/prizes/chemistry/2024
  16. 16Xu Z et al. A generative AI-discovered TNIK inhibitor for idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis: a randomized phase 2a trial. Nat Med 2025;31:2602. doi:10.1038/s41591-025-03743-2
  17. 17Mandsager K et al. Association of cardiorespiratory fitness with long-term mortality among adults undergoing exercise treadmill testing. JAMA Netw Open 2018;1:e183605. doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2018.3605
  18. 18Ference BA et al. Low-density lipoproteins cause atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease (European Atherosclerosis Society consensus). Eur Heart J 2017;38:2459. doi:10.1093/eurheartj/ehx144
  19. 19Selvin E et al. Glycated hemoglobin, diabetes, and cardiovascular risk in nondiabetic adults. N Engl J Med 2010;362:800. doi:10.1056/NEJMoa0908359
  20. 20Emerging Risk Factors Collaboration. C-reactive protein concentration and risk of coronary heart disease, stroke, and mortality. Lancet 2010;375:132. doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(09)61717-7
  21. 21C Reactive Protein Coronary Heart Disease Genetics Collaboration. Association between C reactive protein and coronary heart disease: mendelian randomisation analysis based on individual participant data. BMJ 2011;342:d548 (genetic evidence that CRP itself is unlikely to cause heart disease). doi:10.1136/bmj.d548
  22. 22Windred DP et al. Sleep regularity is a stronger predictor of mortality risk than sleep duration. Sleep 2024;47:zsad253. doi:10.1093/sleep/zsad253
  23. 23Lewington S et al. Age-specific relevance of usual blood pressure to vascular mortality: a meta-analysis of individual data for one million adults in 61 prospective studies. Lancet 2002;360:1903. doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(02)11911-8
  24. 24Pischon T et al. General and abdominal adiposity and risk of death in Europe. N Engl J Med 2008;359:2105. doi:10.1056/NEJMoa0801891
  25. 25Zhang D, Shen X, Qi X. Resting heart rate and all-cause and cardiovascular mortality in the general population: a meta-analysis. CMAJ 2016;188:E53. doi:10.1503/cmaj.150535
  26. 26Waziry R et al. Effect of long-term caloric restriction on DNA methylation measures of biological aging in healthy adults from the CALERIE trial. Nat Aging 2023;3:248. doi:10.1038/s43587-022-00357-y
  27. 27Higgins-Chen AT et al. A computational solution for bolstering reliability of epigenetic clocks. Nat Aging 2022;2:644. doi:10.1038/s43587-022-00248-2
  28. 28Eurostat: life expectancy by age and sex (demo_mlexpec) and life tables (demo_mlifetable), European Union (27 countries), 2024, updated 25 Sep 2026. The 1 in 610, the 420 years and the seven-year doubling are Indaga's arithmetic from the 2024 life table; life expectancy at birth from demo_mlexpec (ec.europa.eu/eurostat/databrowser/view/demo_mlexpec/default/table). ec.europa.eu/eurostat demo_mlifetable
  29. 29George JC et al. Age and growth estimates of bowhead whales (Balaena mysticetus) via aspartic acid racemization. Can J Zool 1999;77:571. doi:10.1139/z99-015
  30. 30Our World in Data: life expectancy at birth, Europe, 1770–2023 (Riley 2005; Zijdeman et al. 2015; Human Mortality Database 2025; UN World Population Prospects 2024). ourworldindata.org/grapher/life-expectancy
  31. 31Oeppen J, Vaupel JW. Broken limits to life expectancy. Science 2002;296:1029. doi:10.1126/science.1069675
  32. 32Kurzweil R. What merging with AI could mean for humanity (Book Bite on The Singularity Is Nearer, Viking 2024). Next Big Idea Club, 25 Jun 2024. nextbigideaclub.com
  33. 33Olshansky SJ et al. Implausibility of radical life extension in humans in the twenty-first century. Nat Aging 2024;4:1635. doi:10.1038/s43587-024-00702-3
  34. 34Cutler D, Deaton A, Lleras-Muney A. The determinants of mortality. J Econ Perspect 2006;20(3):97. doi:10.1257/jep.20.3.97

Wellness information, not medical advice or a diagnosis. Talk to a doctor about your own readings.