Putting Death on Hold: Inside Tomorrow Biostasis' Biostasis Bet
Key points
Key takeaways from Core Memory Podcast interview with Tomorrow Biostasis founder and CEO Emil Kendziorra (Sept 2026):
Applied biostasis, not cryonics. Kendziorra rejects the loaded term "cryonics" in favour of "applied biostasis"——putting biological material into stasis, whether cells, organs or whole organisms, and expects new companies in the biostasis research field to announce themselves over the next couple of months.
Vitrification, not freezing. Tomorrow replaces blood and water with a mixture of cryoprotectants——DMSO, formamide and ethylene glycol——via a heart-lung machine on the ascending aorta, cooling tissue to around -196°C so it turns glass-like without ice crystals, which are what destroy cells.
Europe's sole cryopreservation provider. The company positions itself as the only serious such organization in Europe, versus US incumbent Alcor (~50 years old, based in Arizona, mixed reputation), where Ted Williams is stored; Kendziorra himself signed up with Alcor years ago as a "backup" for a "non-zero chance".
From doctor to founder. Trained as a physician in Germany, he became disillusioned with the pace of academic research, built and sold two tech companies, and after finding nothing promising in traditional longevity in 2020, founded Tomorrow Biostasis as a "stop-gap measure" giving people the choice to live longer.
Why lifespan, not health span. His personal driver: "I do this because I do not want to die"——and he argues that a 40-year-old and an 85-year-old with terminal illness both deserve the right to more years; health span, he says, is the easy part——working on lifespan is the hard problem.
A first-date decision. His partner signed up for cryopreservation on their first date——"Yeah, this is fine"——and today both are signed up, a sign of how normalized the choice is becoming.
New-wave companies. Until Labs, backed by longevity investor Laura Deming, is working on the same class of technology——though neither wants the "cryonics" label, and Kendziorra expects more biostasis companies to emerge soon.
The garage era. Visiting Russian outfit Cryorus around 2018, host Ashlee Vance found dogs, cats, parakeets and human heads stored in liquid-nitrogen cylinders at a suburban Moscow house——a remnant of Soviet-era transhumanism, and a reason today's organizations insist on professional, stable, company-run storage rather than unstable nonprofits.
Read more: Core Memory Podcast
