In January 2022, the biotech start-up Altos Labs came out of stealth mode and publicly affirmed its existence. Altos raised $3 billion in seed money, which is thought to be the most money any biotech company has ever raised in a single round. The company’s focus is “cellular rejuvenation therapy,” or reversing the aging process. With a star-studded board full of Nobel laureates and reported investments from Jeff Bezos and Yuri Milner, it’s evident that billionaires are betting big on science to treat aging.

There is nothing inherently wrong with studying anti-aging — in fact, it represents a fascinating and potentially rewarding research trajectory. But Altos Labs is emblematic of a more troubling misalignment of research and development funding with the public good. Rather than the public deciding how and for what purpose pharmaceutical development should be funded, we increasingly find ourselves at the mercy of billionaires, who have the means to buy their own research agendas.

Billionaire-backed biotech firms with colossal funds are able to perform innovative research while not being profitable. Thanks to the massive consolidation of wealth under capitalism, firms like Altos Labs are buffered from market forces that so harshly impact pharmaceutical development and innovation in other areas of research. If we want to be able to do pharmaceutical development that benefits the public, we must similarly insulate firms pursuing research that is of interest to people who aren’t ultrawealthy.