Longevity Investors Lunch reflects a maturing field as science, capital and policy begin to converge beyond alpine optics.
After years of flirting with the edges of the World Economic Forum, longevity is starting to behave as though it belongs in the room – not as spectacle, but as substance. During Davos 2026, the Longevity Investors Lunch convened a small, invitation-only group of investors, founders, scientists and policymakers to interrogate what comes next for a field that now spans drug discovery, preventive medicine, AI infrastructure and national health strategy. The setting was familiar; the tone was notably restrained.
Hosted alongside the wider WEF ecosystem, the Lunch was not designed to announce deals or unveil technology. Instead, it leaned into a more reflective posture: how longevity is being built, financed and governed as it shifts from an emerging narrative to an operational reality. That distinction matters. The aim was not acceleration for its own sake, but coherence across timelines that rarely align neatly – scientific validation, clinical translation, regulatory approval and capital return.
Longevity.Technology: Davos has a talent for turning almost anything into a “moment” – but the Longevity Investors Lunch is interesting precisely because it tries not to; in a week optimized for velocity, it deliberately slows the conversation down and insists on the awkward basics of evidence, translation and timelines that stretch beyond the next funding cycle. That matters, because longevity is increasingly behaving less like a neat sector and more like a permeating layer across healthcare, technology and society – which is wonderful for opportunity, and terrible for clarity unless someone keeps asking what is clinically credible today, what is merely computationally plausible, and what can survive contact with regulators, payers and real patients. The emphasis on capital efficiency is another quietly important tell: if we are serious about prevention-first medicine and durable healthspan gains, we will need business models that can compound over decades, not just sparkle through a bull market. In other words, the signal here is not that longevity has “arrived” at Davos; it’s that parts of the field are starting to behave as though it intends to stay.
The Lunch’s guest list reflected that breadth, spanning figures such as biophysicist and geroscience heavyweight Peter Fedichev, physician-researcher Evelyne Bischof and dermatologist Liv Kraemer – a mix that underscored the Lunch’s emphasis on translation rather than spectacle.
Longevity as infrastructure, not ornament
Positioning longevity as infrastructure rather than disruption, Marc P Bernegger, cofounder of Longevity Investors, noted: “When we started Longevity Investors, the goal was simple: to bring serious capital into a field doing profoundly important work for humanity. Longevity is not a trend – it’s one of the defining investment and societal challenges of this century.”
Dr Andrea Gartenbach and Dr Evelyne Yehudit Bischof during the panel discussion Applied Longevity Medicine: Translating Science Into Human Performance
Several sessions returned to a recurring theme: longevity is no longer best understood as a discrete industry. Instead, it is emerging as an enabling layer that cuts across biopharma, diagnostics, data science, insurance and public health systems. That framing shifts the burden of proof. It is no longer sufficient to demonstrate biological plausibility or algorithmic elegance; longevity interventions must integrate with healthcare delivery, reimbursement logic and population-level constraints.
This layered view also helps explain the growing interest from institutional capital and sovereign stakeholders. Aging demographics are not a future scenario but a present condition, exerting pressure on labor markets, pension systems and healthcare budgets simultaneously. Longevity, in this context, is less about individual optimization and more about systemic resilience.
Capital efficiency over velocity
One of the more striking undercurrents during the event was a collective impatience with growth narratives untethered from durability. Discussions emphasized capital efficiency, disciplined deployment and realistic timelines – language more commonly associated with infrastructure investing than frontier biotech. That shift reflects hard-won experience: longevity science is deep, slow and expensive, and the mismatch between biological time and venture expectations has already claimed casualties.
What emerged repeatedly was a familiar tension: progress depends on clarity; capital only matters when it can genuinely move the needle. Short bursts of enthusiasm can move valuations; they rarely move clinical endpoints. The emphasis on capital that can tolerate long horizons and incremental validation signals a recalibration rather than a retreat.
Paolo Pio, Dr Liv Kraemer, Freda Lewis-Hall, MD, with moderator Jonathan Violante Pica in the session on Longevity Trends, Trajectories and the Road to 2030
“Longevity is developing at an extraordinary pace, but progress depends on clarity – understanding what the science truly tells us, and where capital can genuinely move the needle,” said Longevity Investors cofounder Dr Tobias Reichmuth.
Evidence, finally, at the center
The program repeatedly circled back to evidence – not as an abstract virtue, but as a practical constraint. AI-enabled discovery platforms, biomarker-driven prevention and longitudinal health data all featured prominently, yet always alongside questions of validation, interpretability and regulatory acceptability. In a field sometimes prone to collapsing these distinctions, the insistence on separating promise from proof felt deliberate.
That caution extends to preventive longevity medicine itself. While practices are proliferating globally, their heterogeneity poses challenges for standardization, oversight and outcome measurement. Several discussions touched on the need for shared benchmarks and longitudinal data frameworks capable of supporting both clinical rigor and policy confidence.
Speaking on longevity science versus fiction, Dr Jordan Shlain discussed what happens when ambition runs ahead of what medicine can currently deliver with confidence. Progress, he argued, does not come from shortcuts, but from prevention-first care grounded in clinical discipline and long-term systems thinking.
Longevity Investors team L–R: Marc P Bernegger, Founding Partner, Petra Belopotocka, Event & Marketing Manager, Lucia Kupcova, CEO, and Dr Tobias Reichmuth Founding Partner A closed room, for now
The Longevity Investors Lunch remains a deliberately curated gathering, which lends it focus but also raises familiar questions about reach. If longevity is to influence health policy and economic planning at scale, it will eventually need to translate its internal consensus into public frameworks – language legible to regulators, payers and governments, not just founders and fund managers. For now, the value lies in alignment; exposure can wait.
A longer horizon
Longevity’s presence at Davos no longer feels incidental. Yet its significance lies less in visibility than in behavior. A field that once chased attention is beginning to prioritize architecture – scientific, financial and institutional. That is slower work, and quieter work. It is also the kind that tends to last.
The dialogue continues at the 7th Longevity Investors Conference in Gstaad, Switzerland, from 14-17 September 2026. Register your interest here.
Photographs courtesy of Longevity Investors Lunch. Main image shows Dr Jordan Shlain during his keynote Longevity Science vs Fiction at the Longevity Investors Lunch 2026.