Cure Baldness? Heal Arthritis? Erase Wrinkles? An Unknown Billionaire's Quest To Reverse Aging

If you Google Osman Kibar's name you'll find pictures of him playing poker. But Kibar, an engineering PhD who emigrated from Turkey to the US for college, doesn't need to bet on cards for money. Samumed, the San Diego firm he has been stealthily building for a decade, is the most valuable biotechnology startup on the planet. Based on investments made by private investors that include IKEA's private venture firm, anonymous high-net-worth individuals and a single venture capital firm, Samumed has raised $220 million, and the most recent round of financing valued it at $6 billion. It is halfway through raising another $100 million at a $12 billion valuation. Kibar owns a third of the company, which would give him a net worth of $4 billion. Samumed is finding it easy to raise huge amounts of cash because it believes it has invented medicines that can reverse aging. The firm's focus, disease by disease, symptom by symptom, is to make the cells of aging people regenerate as powerfully as those of a developing fetus.