In August 2023, at Zuzalu’s experimental city in Montenegro, tech entrepreneur–turned–biohacker Adam Gries launched Vitalism, a manifesto that treats aging as a curable condition instead of an unavoidable fate. Now, he’s leading a global grassroots movement through dynamic conferences, targeted research grants, and an audacious plan to transform existing governments into “Longevity States”, all aimed at redirecting 1 percent of global GDP toward eradicating age-related diseases for good.
When Gries talks about humanity’s next frontier, he’s not thinking about Mars or the next big social network. He’s focused on something far more personal—and universal. In a live interview with tech podcaster Maria Nimfuehr, she asked, “What does it mean to be human?” Gries leaned forward and answered, “I think it boils down to four things: agency, self-awareness, emotions, and mimicry.” In other words, it’s about feeling in control, knowing you exist, experiencing emotions, and connecting with others. But he warns that all of this is under siege by our own biology. Aging, he says, is like a software update gone wrong, one that makes our bodies glitch, frays our minds, and eventually threatens to erase who we are.
Surprise: Aging leads to death
Out of that conviction, Gries co-founded Vitalism. He describes it as both a moral philosophy and a community of action. At its heart is a five-point Vitalist Declaration, which begins with a simple but provocative line: “Life and health are good. Death is humanity’s core problem, and aging its primary agent.” From there, the declaration lays out how we can shift our culture, science, and politics to treat aging itself, not just its symptoms.
By the mid-2010s, Gries had already built and sold multiple software startups, gaming apps, education platforms, retail tools—amassing tens of millions of users along the way. Yet his real turning point came when he began outsourcing every part of his daily routine, meal plans, meditation timers, workout schedules, to apps and algorithms. One day he paused and asked himself, “If I outsource my life to an algorithm, what’s left of me?” His answer was stark: “I wouldn’t have agency, choice, wonder, or surprise.” That fear of becoming a robotic version of himself planted the seed for Vitalism’s core strategy: instead of waiting for AI to save us, we have to mobilize human ingenuity — and political will — to tackle the problem of time.
From his home office overlooking the Bay Area hills, Gries works in three overlapping spheres. First, he forges deep partnerships with leading scientists. Second, he organizes high-intensity gatherings of Vitalists, blending hackathons, biohacking clinics, and policy workshops. Third, he lobbies existing governments to declare themselves “Longevity States,” dedicated to supporting aging research and industry.
Rebuilding a broken healthcare system
Why the political push? Because right now, our healthcare system is broken. The global healthcare industry tops $10 trillion a year—more than the GDP of most countries—but less than 1 percent of that goes to studying the biology of aging itself. Instead, we spend billions treating late-stage cancer, heart disease, dementia, and other age-related illnesses. As Dr. Aubrey de Grey, founder of the SENS Research Foundation, puts it: “Aging is no longer a law of nature. It is a disease we can treat.” His 2007 TED Talk, “Ending Aging,” has more than two million views, yet most big pharma still channels its cash into symptom management rather than root causes.
Meanwhile, the fledgling field of longevity biotech has attracted only a few billion in venture funding—a drop in the bucket compared to the trillion-dollar prize of extending healthy human life. Last year, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences warned that global spending on “sick care” is unsustainable as the number of people over 65 doubles by 2050. To Gries, that’s not just an economic warning—it’s proof of a collective defeatist mindset. “If we all assume aging is invincible, we’ll never innovate our way out of it,” he says.
Vitalism’s audacious political goal is to redirect 1 percent of global GDP—roughly $1 trillion a year, toward curing aging.
Our aging population is our biggest economic and moral crisis,” Gries declares. “The only moral stance is to treat aging itself.”
The movement went public at Zuzalu in August 2023, a pop-up city in Montenegro where technologists and dissident thinkers gather. From a makeshift podium by a lake, Gries unveiled the Vitalist Declaration and called on scientists, entrepreneurs, and everyday citizens to sign on. That was Phase One: unite around a shared mission. Phase Two: “Spark an Ecosystem” means funding targeted research, hosting startup hackathons and biohacking clinics, and trialing Vitalist principles in micro-communities. Starting in April 2025, “Vitalist Bay” will run in a converted industrial campus in Berkeley, California, with policy workshops, AI-bio collaborations, and more.
Phase Three is the greatest challenge: convincing states to transform into Longevity States. Rather than carving out new sovereign zones in remote jungles, Gries and co-founder Nathan Cheng aim to convert existing political entities – big or small – into labs and launchpads for the longevity industry. Their first pilot is Rhode Island. With 1.1 million residents, top universities in Providence, and easy rail access to Boston’s biotech hub, the Ocean State seemed like fertile ground. A task force has mapped the political landscape, identified local champions, and drafted sample legislation to incentivize aging research and novel therapies.
Quantification of a domino effect
“Our hope is to create a domino effect,” says Cheng. “Once one state proves it can reallocate budgets, attract talent, and streamline trials, others will want in.” Skeptics point to the entrenched power of hospitals, insurance companies, and pharma lobbyists. Gries responds that Longevity States don’t have to dismantle the existing system — they just need to invest in preventive and repair-based therapies, pilot new reimbursement models, and fast-track promising treatments. “If a state can show that spending $100 million on senolytics and gene therapies saves $500 million in downstream costs, politicians will have a no-brainer reason to pivot,” he says.
Even with all the policy work, Gries never forgets the human side. He recalls a period of extreme self-quantification—logging meals, tracking every heartbeat, micro-dosing nootropics, and meditating obsessively, until he hit a wall. “I thought I was hacking the perfect life, but I lost wonder and surprise,” he says. “I could plan every moment, but I couldn’t feel magic.” That epiphany led him to embrace what he calls a vitalist ethos: use technology to repair and enhance life, but never at the expense of spontaneity and choice.
Flush old cells out of your body
On the science front, progress is accelerating. Senolytics—drugs that clear out old cells—are in Phase II trials. Epigenetic reprogramming has reversed markers of aging in mice. Telomerase-activating therapies promise to shore up our chromosomes. And AI-driven drug discovery firms are lining up hundreds of candidate compounds to test against the hallmarks of aging. Yet turning lab results into human therapies remains a massive hurdle: Phase III trials cost billions, and regulatory bodies have no clear pathway for approving treatments that directly target aging processes. That’s where Vitalism’s political push comes in. “We need Fast Track status or dedicated longevity divisions in FDA-like agencies,” says Dr. Emily Carter, a geriatric oncologist advising the movement. “Without that, it could take decades for breakthroughs to reach patients.”
Policy alone won’t guarantee success. Aging isn’t a single defect you can patch; it’s a network failure across every cell, every organ, every system. But for Gries, the moral urgency trumps caution. “If we delay this mission because it’s hard, we condemn billions to unnecessary decline and death,” he argues.
In the end, the proof will be simple: new votes in state legislatures carving out aging-focused budgets; measurable jumps in longevity R&D spending; and, most importantly, the first approved therapies that extend healthy human life by not just months, but years. “That’s when you know the story has changed,” Gries says. “When aging stops being a distant dread and starts looking like a solvable problem.”
In a world where each calendar page turns with a loss, Vitalism offers a different promise: not just more birthdays, but more days filled with wonder and agency. Gries believes that promise, rooted in the joy of living might just be the most powerful medicine we have.