XPRIZE Founder Diamandis to Speak on Longevity at Caltech

The man who offered $10 million to the first team that could build a private spaceship is turning his attention to a different frontier — the biology of aging. And he’s coming to Pasadena to talk about it.

Peter H. Diamandis, the physician-entrepreneur who founded the XPRIZE Foundation and co-founded the longevity diagnostics company Fountain Life, will deliver a keynote and field audience questions at Caltech on Wednesday, April 15.

The free event, held in the 150-seat lecture hall of the Chen Neuroscience Research Building on Caltech’s Pasadena campus, is the latest in a growing speaker series organized by the student-run Caltech Longevity Club.

The event is open to the public, though advance registration through the event platform Luma is required and subject to approval. A live Zoom stream will also be available for those unable to attend in person. Registration is available at luma.com/i1bprpfv. The Zoom link is caltech.zoom.us/j/87996823235.

Diamandis has founded or co-founded more than 25 companies spanning health technology, space, education, and artificial intelligence, according to his XPRIZE Foundation biography. The XPRIZE Foundation, which he established in 1994, has launched more than $600 million in incentive competitions designed to spur breakthroughs in fields from space exploration to human healthspan. In November 2023, the foundation launched the $101 million XPRIZE Healthspan competition, which challenges teams to demonstrate a therapy capable of restoring muscle, immune, and cognitive function in people aged 65 to 80.

Fortune named Diamandis one of the “World’s 50 Greatest Leaders” in 2014, according to multiple published accounts. He holds degrees in molecular genetics and aerospace engineering from MIT and an MD from Harvard Medical School, according to the event listing. His books include the New York Times bestsellers Abundance and BOLD, as well as the more recent Longevity Guidebook.

At Fountain Life, the longevity diagnostics company he co-founded, Diamandis serves as executive chairman, according to Fountain Life’s website. The company operates clinics focused on preventive screening and early disease detection.

“We’re so close to longevity escape velocity that I urge you to remember that your sole responsibility right now is to avoid dying from something stupid,” Diamandis said in a 2025 interview with TechCrunch.

The Caltech Longevity Club, which organized the event, has hosted previous speakers including physician and health-technology entrepreneur Jordan Shlain in January 2026 and former Boston Consulting Group managing director Michael Ringel in May 2025, according to the Caltech events calendar. The club is also organizing a Longevity Hackathon scheduled for later in 2026.

The April 15 event begins at 6:00 p.m. in Chen 100, located in the Chen Neuroscience Research Building at 1200 East California Boulevard. Refreshments will be served for in-person attendees. The lecture hall holds 150 seats. The building, which opened in 2021, houses Caltech’s neuroscience research hub — a fitting venue, perhaps, for a speaker whose central question is how long the human brain and body can be made to last.