Bryan Johnson entered public attention through an unusual route. After building and selling a successful technology company, he redirected his resources toward an intensive personal health experiment that has become equally compelling and controversial. His Project Blueprint, launched publicly in 2021, represents an attempt to document and quantify biological aging through comprehensive measurement and intervention.
Johnson was born on August 22, 1977, in Provo, Utah, and raised in neighboring Springville as a middle child with a brother and sister. The region’s religious community shaped his early environment, and these formative years would later influence his departure from faith-based certainty toward data-driven decision-making.
Background and Early Life
After his parents divorced, Johnson lived with his mother and stepfather, who owned a trucking company. The family environment emphasized work and religious devotion rather than financial abundance.
At 19, he became a Mormon missionary and spent two years in Ecuador. This period exposed him to economic conditions vastly different from his Utah upbringing, experiences that would later inform his business thinking and broader worldview.
His childhood in Springville was marked by the cultural and religious norms typical of small-town Utah in the 1980s and 90s. The structured environment provided discipline but limited exposure to alternative perspectives.
Education and Early Professional Direction
Johnson graduated from Brigham Young University in 2003 with a degree in International Studies. During his college years, he launched his first business ventures, selling cell phones to fellow students and earning commissions that helped finance his education.
After reading The Economics of Life by Nobel laureate Gary S. Becker, a Chicago Booth professor, Johnson became interested in quantitative frameworks. “I had grown up in a religious community, where certainty was created by faith and scripture, not through numbers and models and mathematics,” he later explained.
This intellectual shift led him to Chicago, where he enrolled in the University of Chicago Booth School of Business Executive MBA Program in his mid-20s, becoming one of the youngest students admitted to the program.
Building and Exiting a Technology Business
Johnson founded Braintree in 2007, a company specializing in mobile and web payment systems for e-commerce companies. The timing proved advantageous as online commerce accelerated and mobile payments emerged as critical infrastructure.
The company grew rapidly, ranking 47th on Inc. magazine’s 2011 list of the 500 fastest-growing companies and 415th in 2012. That year, Braintree acquired Venmo for $26.2 million. The combination positioned Braintree as a major player in digital payments.
By September 2013, the company was processing $12 billion in payments annually. Shortly afterward, PayPal acquired Braintree for $800 million. According to Time Magazine’s reporting, Johnson personally received over $300 million from the transaction.
This liquidity created options that few entrepreneurs experience, fundamentally altering the trajectory of his professional focus.
A Shift in Personal Focus
Following the Braintree sale, Johnson established OS Fund in 2014, investing $100 million of his personal capital into early-stage science and technology companies. The fund concentrated on frontier technologies including synthetic biology, artificial intelligence, and space exploration.
In 2016, he founded Kernel, investing another $100 million to launch a neurotechnology company creating devices that monitor and record brain activity. The company aimed to develop non-invasive brain-machine interfaces, technologies Johnson viewed as potentially transformative for human cognition.
These ventures represented increasingly ambitious questions about human potential and biological limitations. The focus had shifted from commercial technology toward more fundamental questions about human capability and lifespan.
The Blueprint Project
On October 13, 2021, Johnson publicly announced Project Blueprint, describing it as an endeavor to “measure all 70+ organs of my body and then maximally reverse the quantified biological age of each”. According to his official Blueprint website, the project involves comprehensive biomarker tracking and systematic intervention based on measurement data.
Johnson has stated he spends approximately $2 million annually on the regimen, which includes a team of over 30 medical professionals monitoring various physiological metrics. The approach attempts to create protocols that could theoretically be scaled beyond individual application.
The project attracted significant media attention partly because of its scope and partly because of controversial elements. Johnson underwent a series of plasma transfusions with his son as one donor, though he later stated he would not repeat the transfusions due to lack of observed benefits. The FDA has stated that such transfusions are without proven benefit and may be harmful.
Structure, Discipline, and Daily Life
His routine follows rigid parameters. He wakes at 4:30 AM, consumes all meals before 11 AM, and adheres to a bedtime of 8:30 PM. The regimen includes taking over 100 pills daily, structured exercise, and constant monitoring.
The dietary component is plant-based with limited exceptions, and caloric intake is carefully controlled. His approach prioritizes measurable biomarkers over subjective experience, with decisions about diet, sleep, and activity driven by data rather than preference.
This level of structure eliminates spontaneity in pursuit of optimization. Social activities, travel to sunny locations, and typical leisure patterns are constrained by the protocol’s requirements.
Personal Life
Johnson has three children from a previous marriage. Details about this marriage and its conclusion remain private.
From 2016 to around 2019, he was in a relationship with internet personality Taryn Southern. The relationship ended while she was undergoing breast cancer treatment, leading to legal disputes that were resolved through arbitration.
In December 2025, Johnson stated he has been in a long-term relationship with Kate Tolo, a cofounder of his Blueprint venture. This represents his current confirmed relationship status.
He has been candid about how his regimen affects personal relationships, acknowledging in 2023 that factors including eating one meal daily, sleeping alone, scheduling intimate activities, and going to bed by 8:30 PM create challenges for conventional partnerships.
Beliefs, Values, and Public Statements
Johnson’s public statements emphasize personal responsibility and systematic self-control. He has described his approach as demoting conscious decision-making in favor of algorithmic protocols based on biological measurement.
His language around the project includes phrases like “firing Evening Bryan” to describe removing impulsive decision-making authority from his nighttime self. This framing treats different aspects of himself as competing entities requiring hierarchical organization.
Regarding religious faith, he has publicly described his transition from religious certainty to quantitative frameworks, stating his upbringing created certainty through “faith and scripture, not through numbers and models and mathematics”. His current worldview appears grounded in measurable outcomes rather than spiritual belief systems.
Earnings and Financial Standing
According to Celebrity Net Worth, his estimated net worth is approximately $400 million as of 2024. This figure derives primarily from his Braintree exit, minus subsequent investments in OS Fund, Kernel, and Project Blueprint operations.
His ongoing income likely includes returns from OS Fund portfolio companies, though specific performance data for the fund is not publicly disclosed. The Blueprint project itself currently represents expenditure rather than revenue, though he has begun commercializing some protocols and products.
The $2 million annual spending on Blueprint represents roughly 0.5% of his estimated net worth, sustainable indefinitely at current asset levels assuming reasonable investment returns.
Public Response and Discussion
Reception to his work divides along predictable lines. Some view him as pioneering a data-driven approach to health optimization that could eventually benefit broader populations. Others see expensive self-experimentation unlikely to produce transferable insights.
Medical experts have expressed skepticism. Moshe Szyf, a professor of pharmacology and therapeutics at McGill University, has questioned whether science is capable of achieving the results Johnson claims. Longevity scientist Andrew Steele emphasizes that Johnson’s practices cannot change his underlying genetics.
Media coverage alternates between fascination and criticism. Bloomberg, Time, and Forbes have profiled him extensively, with coverage from Bloomberg, exploring both the methodology and the broader questions his work raises about mortality and human limitation.
He was featured in the 2020 documentary “I Am Human” about brain-machine interfaces, and became the subject of the 2025 Netflix documentary “Don’t Die: The Man Who Wants to Live Forever,” which brought his work to mainstream audiences.
Read Also: Sam Parr Biography and Business Journey Explained
About The Author
