Who Funds Cryo? The 2025 Money Map of Preservation at –196°C
For the first time, serious venture firms, family offices and even DAOs are all betting, each in their own way, that storing life at –196°C is worth real money.
The Landscape of Cryopreservation in 2025: A Niche Yet Growing Sector
Cryopreservation sits at the intersection of regenerative medicine, longevity research, and bioethics. Market forecasts indicate robust growth; for instance, the global cell cryopreservation market (used by ~every wet lab, ~every day) is estimated at $13.89 billion in 2025, projected to expand to $77.52 billion by 2034 at a compound annual growth rate of 21.2%, driven by advances in biobanking, stem cell therapies, and transplant logistics. Similarly, cryopreservation equipment, including freezers and storage systems for -196°C, is valued at approximately $676 million this year, with expectations to reach $1.23 billion by 2035 at a 6.2% CAGR. However, there are still no official market estimates for whole body cryopreservation. I asked several LLMs (ChatGPT 5, Grok Expert, Gemini 2.5) to provide estimates and reach a *speculative* consensus, presented below.
“Globally, around 500-650 individuals have been cryopreserved as of mid-2025, with major providers like Alcor (248 patients), Cryonics Institute (over 250), KrioRus (103), Shandong Yinfeng (29), Southern Cryonics (4 in 2025), and Tomorrow Bio (20 humans) accounting for the bulk. Annual preservations hover at 30-40, reflecting slow but steady uptake amid ~5,000-6,000 memberships worldwide. Costs for whole body preservation average $100,000-$200,000: Alcor charges $200,000, Cryonics Institute $28,000, Tomorrow Bio $220,000 plus $55 monthly, and international options like KrioRus or Yinfeng $50,000-$100,000. Membership dues ($120-$500/year) add recurring revenue of $2.5-3 million annually. Speculated 2025 market size: $6-11 million, derived bottom-up from preservations (30-40 * $150,000 average = $4.5-6 million) plus dues ($2.5-3 million), adjusted for ~60-70% whole body focus (vs. neuro/DNA). Broader cryonics reports peg the market at $10-200 million in 2024, growing at 10.5-12% CAGR, but these include neuro and cell preservation; whole body likely comprises the majority.
Projections to 2034 assume 10-12% CAGR, conservative versus cell market’s 21.2%, due to ethical/regulatory barriers. Optimistic scenario (12% from $11 million 2025 base): $31 million by 2034, driven by longevity boom ($9.8 billion in 2025) and providers like Southern Cryonics adding capacity. Conservative (10% from $6 million): $18 million, factoring persistent doubts.”
While these projections outline the financial contours of a still-nascent industry, they also underscore the gap between market enthusiasm and scientific feasibility. Revenues may be growing, but the science behind whole-body cryopreservation remains highly experimental. The state of the art as of September 2025 is cryopreserving, rewarming and transplanting a rat kidney with virtually no life/functional damage at University of Minnesota, where I had an honor of training. So far, no bigger tissue was ever functionally rewarmed and transplanted, so as of now, discussions of achieving that in whole organisms are farfetched. There are still great challenges like cryoprotectant toxicity or irreversible cellular damage during thawing. Ethical debates swirl around the promise of “cheating death,” with proponents arguing it offers hope for terminal patients, while critics highlight unproven revival prospects. This tension between expanding economic signals and unresolved technical barriers defines cryonics today and connects it to the broader landscape of biotech innovation, where longevity-focused investments are gaining momentum, but cryopreservation itself continues to be treated with caution.
Despite this, 2025 so far has seen unprecedented cryo funding.
Key Cryo Financing Events in 2025
2025’s activity centers on a handful of high-profile deals, with total disclosed funding exceeding $65 million in core raises, plus acquisitions around $200 million when including enabling technologies for -196°C storage. Traditional cryonics providers like Alcor Life Extension Foundation and the Cryonics Institute continue to operate on membership dues and donations rather than venture capital. Instead, startups and DAOs (decentralized autonomous organizations) dominate the headlines. Note: This overview excludes any entries focused on non-cryogenic preservation methods, such as normothermic or hypothermic techniques not involving -196°C.
Until Labs:
Investors/Partners: Founders Fund (lead), Lux Capital, Field Ventures
Purpose/Focus: Develop reversible organ cryopreservation tech at temperatures enabling indefinite storage (around -196°C), including cryoprotectants, perfusion hardware, and rewarming protocols; expand team and infrastructure for human trials. Focus on transplants, with long-term goal of whole-body medical hibernation and fully reversible cryopreservation.
Notes/Details: Total raised >$100M; co-founders Laura Deming (longevity investor) and Hunter Davis emphasize solving organ timing mismatches. Scaled from neural slices to large-animal organs, demonstrating rewarming of cryopreserved neural tissue with restored electrical activity. San Francisco-based; hiring for expansion
Tomorrow Bio:
Investors/Partners: Blast.Club (co-lead), TruVenturo (co-lead, via Nils Regge’s Family Office), Zain S Hasan Charitable Remainder Trust, Asia Venture
Purpose/Focus: U.S. expansion; enhance R&D for preservation quality, including improved cryoprotectants and vitrification for storage at -196°C. Offers whole-body ($220K) and neuro ($80K) cryopreservation with hope of future revival.
Notes/Details: Europe’s first dedicated cryonics lab, founded 2020 by Dr. Emil Kendziorra; preserved 20 humans and 10 pets in partnership with Swiss nonprofit European Biostasis Foundation (EBF), which maintains the long-term cryogenic storage facility in Rafz, Switzerland at -196°C. Over 800 pre-paid signups worth >€160M in contracts, reflecting growing public interest. Investors view it as a “visionary moonshot” in extreme longevity tech. Total raised ~$8.24M; forming local response teams and medical partnerships for rapid post-mortem perfusion
CryoDAO:
Purpose/Focus: Fund high-impact research in cryopreservation at extremely low sub-zero temperatures (including -196°C), biostasis, and cryobiology, including whole-mammal preservation, new cryoprotectants, vitrified ovaries, CPA databases, and facilities like STASIS. Applications in organs, cryosleep, and human cryo.
Notes/Details: Decentralized model with 6,000+ members; funded 6 projects (e.g., CRYORAT for high-subzero cryopreservation and revival, ultrasound heating for cryogenic recovery, Cryopets which recently preserved their first animal). Perks for larger contributors include NFTs, facility tours, and emergency kits. Previous BioDAO launch raised $3M; collaborates with organizations like Tomorrow Bio for initiatives like STASIS.
There are other promising startups emerging this year like WakeBio whose financing is not disclosed as of 2025.
Who are the VCs who invest in cryo?
When Founders Fund, famous for early bets on SpaceX and Facebook, writes the lead check into a cryopreservation startup, it signals that cryo has moved from science fiction to a credible frontier market. Founded in 2005 by Peter Thiel, is structured as a multibillion-dollar fund investing across stages and has become famous for its early bets on some of today’s worlds most famous companies. In 2025, it led Until Labs’ $58 million Series A, continuing its tradition of backing ambitious science ventures. Lux Capital, founded in 2000 and managing several billion in assets from New York, focuses on frontier technologies where science meets engineering; its reputation was cemented through investments such as Aurora Innovation in autonomous vehicles and its role in Until Labs reflects this appetite for high-risk, high-reward biology. Field Ventures, by contrast, is a smaller early-stage investor concentrating on niche tech and vertical SaaS, with a track record including Ambrook in agricultural finance; its participation in Until Labs suggests a willingness to branch opportunistically into biotech. On the European side, Blast.Club, a French investment club launched in 2023, is structured as a membership-based syndicate allowing individuals to pool capital in tranches as low as €1,000, and one of its most visible deals was co-leading Tomorrow Bio’s €5 million seed round to expand cryonics. Alongside them, TruVenturo, the Hamburg-based family office and venture builder founded in 2010 by entrepreneur Nils Regge, has backed more than 30 startups and co-founded Audibene, the hearing aid marketplace later acquired by Sivantos; its participation in Tomorrow Bio reflects a natural extension of its health and longevity investment thesis. Decentralized models via DAOs like CryoDAO leverage blockchain for community funding, raising questions about governance but enabling “fringe” research in cryogenic tech
Bottomline
Taken together, the financing patterns of 2025 reveal that cryopreservation is no longer sustained only by idealistic nonprofits or isolated enthusiasts. Instead, it has become a testing ground for very different classes of capital; top-tier VCs like Founders Fund treating organ cryo as a frontier moonshot, family offices and investment clubs experimenting with longevity as an asset class, and DAOs mobilizing grassroots enthusiasm into research dollars. The scientific breakthroughs remain incremental, and whole-body revival is still firmly speculative, yet the money now flowing into the field creates a small but durable industry footprint. The point is not that cryonics is about to rival mainstream biotech, but that it has crossed the threshold from fringe to investable niche, drawing in a spectrum of backers who see in cryo either a pragmatic tool for transplantation, a cultural statement about life extension, or a long-tail bet on human futures. In that diversity of motives lies the real story: cryopreservation is no longer just a dream of resurrection, but a mirror of how different investors imagine, and are willing to pay for, the edges of human possibility.