As the clinical phase begins, Peter Diamandis outlines the vision behind XPRIZE Healthspan and its challenge to rethink aging.
Earlier this week, the XPRIZE Foundation announced the 40 semi-finalist teams in its $101 million Healthspan competition – a global initiative designed to catalyze scalable interventions that restore muscle, cognitive and immune function by at least a decade in adults aged 50 to 80. The competition, launched in 2023, aims to close the gap between life expectancy and healthspan, incentivizing therapies that are not only effective but also accessible and rapidly deployable.
Longevity.Technology: As the XPRIZE Healthspan competition advances, it is becoming clear that this initiative is as much about shifting mindsets as it is about scientific progress. What stands out about the competition is the deliberate pivot away from lifespan-as-a-metric toward function – restoring the physical, cognitive and immune capacity we associate with youth. That shift challenges the traditional disease-by-disease approach in medicine, replacing it with a holistic vision of rejuvenation. What’s more, XPRIZE is pushing for solutions that work not just in labs or clinics, but at scale – and all over the world. With AI accelerating discovery, and global regulatory frameworks becoming more fluid, there’s a growing sense that healthspan breakthroughs could emerge faster, and reach further, than anyone expected. The XPRIZE doesn’t just seek winners – it seeks a redefinition of what healthy aging looks like, feels like, and ultimately, costs. To find out more about the XPRIZE Healthspan vision and what’s driving this bold ambition, we sat down with Peter Diamandis, founder and executive chairman of XPRIZE, shortly before he took to the stage in New York to announce the semi-finalists.
Function takes center stage
Peter Diamandis emphasizes that the competition is about restoring vitality – not just adding years. “Rather than looking at extending longevity, the question was, really, could we restore function?” he explains. “If I’m 70, but have the cognition, immune function, and muscular strength that I had when I was 50 – that is the quality of life that I would want.”
He describes the Healthspan prize as a vehicle to put function in the spotlight. Rather than chasing abstract biomarkers, the focus is now firmly on outcomes that are felt and measurable in everyday life – clarity of thought, mobility and immune resilience.
Diamandis is clear that this shift challenges traditional medical models that focus on individual disease pathways. “We’re not interested in something that will be a million-dollar treatment,” he says. “We’re interested in something that will be in sufficient volume, equitably available to everybody.”
Affordability by design
He elaborates on the structural thinking behind this: therapies for rare diseases often carry enormous costs because so few patients exist to absorb the development expense. Aging, by contrast, affects everyone. “It’s a condition that 8 billion people have,” he says. “One of the major benefits we have here is that human biology is preserved across the entire human species.”
This opens the door to affordability at scale. “We’ve seen this only really once before, when a gene therapy in the form of mRNA vaccines was developed for billions,” he continues, referring to the COVID pandemic. “When we did that at scale, the price per dose was $1 – $2, for Moderna and Pfizer.” That experience may well have influenced the XPRIZE Healthspan model, where scalable impact is built into the judging criteria.
“If you build something that works in Boston,” Diamandis adds, “it’s going to work in Botswana as well.” That, he argues, is not only possible but essential: equity is not a secondary benefit, but a core expectation.
Private capital and regulatory agility
Diamandis believes that traditional regulatory frameworks and public funding models are unlikely to keep pace with the breakthroughs coming in AI, biotech and cell reprogramming. Instead, he sees XPRIZE as a vehicle for private capital to accelerate innovation.
“My mission at XPRIZE is to bring private capital to bear, versus government,” he says. “Our prizes are typically funded by individuals – whether it’s the purse itself or the money behind the teams.” With over 600 teams participating globally, the Healthspan prize is drawing investment where state support has stalled.
He notes that regulation is also shifting, albeit unevenly. “We’re going to see geographic and regulatory arbitrage, where a therapeutic may be legal in one jurisdiction but not in others,” Diamandis says, pointing to the evolving legality of stem cell treatments in US states like Florida as an early signal that jurisdictions will compete to enable the future of healthspan.
A cultural shift around aging
Diamandis returns frequently to the idea that public perception must evolve alongside technology. “There is so much law and business and cultural elements built on the altar of mortality,” he says. He believes we are only just beginning to confront the social implications of extended healthspan – longer working lives, later-life vitality, and new models of financial planning and social care.
“I want people to begin to develop what I call a longevity mindset,” he says. That mindset includes habits like sleep, nutrition and exercise – but also a willingness to imagine a different trajectory for aging. “You’ve got to be in reasonably good health to intercept these technologies when they become available.”
As the Healthspan competition narrows its field, so too does it sharpen the question it is asking of the world – not simply how long we can live, but how well. In Peter Diamandis’s view, the future of aging will not be handed down by incumbents; it will be built by challengers.
Photographs courtesy of XPRIZE unless otherwise marked.
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