American entrepreneur who sold Braintree for about 800 million dollars and now runs Blueprint, an intensively quantified attempt to slow his own aging.
Facts
- Born
- 1977, Utah, USA
- Known for
- Blueprint protocol, "Don't Die"
- Founded
- Braintree, Kernel, OS Fund
- Focus
- Measured self-experimentation
Background
Bryan Johnson is an American entrepreneur and investor best known for Blueprint, a highly publicized personal project to slow and measure his own aging through an intensively controlled diet, exercise, sleep, and supplement regimen. After founding the payments company Braintree and selling it to PayPal in 2013 for about 800 million dollars, Johnson turned his attention and fortune to longevity, becoming one of the most visible figures in the biohacking movement.
He grew up in Utah, served as a Mormon missionary in Ecuador, and has cited that experience as shaping his interest in reducing human suffering. In 2014 he founded OS Fund to invest in genomics, synthetic biologyArticleSynthetic BiologyEngineered cells and biological circuits could sense disease, manufacture therapies, and adapt inside the body.Read entry →, and other deep technologies, and later founded Kernel, a company developing noninvasive brain-computer interface and brain-imaging hardware.
Blueprint
Blueprint is Johnson's flagship project, begun in earnest around 2021. He assembled a team of physicians and a protocol intended to bring every measurable organ system to an optimal state. Widely reported features include a calorie-restricted, largely plant-based diet of precisely weighed meals, dozens of daily supplements adjusted from blood biomarkers, structured daily exercise, a strict tracked sleep schedule, and frequent blood tests and imaging. At its peak he reported spending roughly two million dollars a year on the effort and publishing his results openly.
Elements of his approach overlap with mainstream longevity science, including caloric restriction and careful attention to sleep, while others are more speculative. Among the most controversial was a 2023 multi-generational blood-plasma exchange involving Johnson, his teenage son, and his father, an idea related to research on young blood and heterochronic exchange; he later said he discontinued it after seeing no benefit.
Reception
Supporters credit Johnson with popularizing systematic self-measurement and with funding and publicizing serious questions about aging. Critics argue that a regimen costing millions of dollars is irrelevant to most people, that many interventions lack strong evidence, and that publicizing an extreme protocol can mislead. His public profile grew further with a 2025 Netflix documentary that brought the "Don't Die" message and the broader longevity subculture to a mass audience.