Multi-millionaire tech mogul Bryan Johnson, 47, said he looked “on the brink of death” after reducing caloric intake at the start of his journey to look younger — prompting him to implement “Project Baby Face,” which backfired big time.
A tech mogul on a mission to look as young as possible is opening up about one of the early setbacks in his journey.
Bryan Johnson launched his personal Project Blueprint initiative in 2021 and aims to “combat entropy by maintaining perpetual youth” and “maximally slowing your pace of aging and reversing the aging that occurs.”
In that time, he’s reportedly spent millions on wild treatments, including receiving a plasma transfusion from his then-17-year-old son, Talmage, in 2023, while also giving some of his own blood to his father, Richard.
Over the weekend, Johnson took to Instagram to answer a question he must get all the time: “Have any of your therapies gone wrong?”
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Tech Mogul Uses Teenage Son’s Blood in Quest for Eternal Youth
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He explained that at the start of his journey, there was a lot of focus on “caloric restriction,” as he dropped his calorie consumption from 2,500 to 1,950. “As a result, I got really lean and lost a lot of fat — especially in my face. My biomarkers were improving, but I looked gaunt. People thought I was on the brink of death,” he shared.
That left them realizing that facial fat “is pretty important for how people perceive youth,” so they implemented something called “Project Baby Face” to figure out how they could fix the apparent problem.
“We selected a first therapy: injecting a fat-derived extracellular matrix to restore volume by stimulating my body’s natural fat growth,” he explained, adding, “It’s possible to use one’s own body fat for this but the problem was I didn’t have enough fat on my body to extract, so I used a donor.”
After injection the donor’s fat into his face, however, things started to go wrong.
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“Immediately following the injections, my face began to blow up. And then it got worse, and worse, and worse until I couldn’t even see. It was a severe allergic reaction,” he wrote, sharing photos of his extremely puffed up face.
He was supposed to have a meeting with a reporter from Bloomberg following the treatment, saying he warned her about his appearance and said, “Hey, so that you’re not alarmed, you may not recognize me today. I think I’m ok. I hope I’m ok. If I’m not ok, are you by chance trained to perform any life-saving actions?”
Per Johnson, his face was “back to normal” seven days later … and they moved full speed ahead on tweaking the treatment for their next attempt.
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Back in October, Johnson underwent what he called a “total plasma exchange,” or TPE, where he removed all the plasma from his body and replaced it with Albumin. He explained that, unlike last year, he did it without the help of his “blood boy” son, Talmage.
“The operator, who’s been doing TPE for 9 years, said my plasma is the cleanest he’s ever seen. By far. He couldn’t get over it,” he said. “When we finished, he couldn’t bring himself to throw it away. He was imagining all the good that it could do in the world.”
Over the weekend, Johnson also showed up to Jake Paul’s big fight against Mike Tyson in Texas — with Paul saying he’s a fan of Johnson’s Instagram page and telling him they should meet, because he’s got some “ideas” for the tech entrepreneur.
Johnson earned his fortune from his mobile and online payment system Braintree, which acquired Venmo in 2012. PayPal purchased Venmo in 2012.
According to Fortune, in 2023, Johnson’s net worth is around $400 million.
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