Since then, as Johnson’s successes and failures have garnered greater attention and the longevity lifestyle has gained traction, Blueprint and Johnson’s paths have diverged.

Blueprint has become a one-stop shop for all things longevity—from olive oil to supplements—while Johnson himself is spearheading what he calls the ‘Don’t Die’ ideology. Leading the former is detracting from the work he can do on the latter, he said this week.

Writing on X, the centi-millionaire said the business aspect of his project had become a “pain in the ass.”

He’s hiring a new CEO and CTO, he added, “who can lead the business while I focus on Don’t Die.”

Blueprint has “kept me from not focusing on the single thing I’m consumed with: how does the human race survive the rise of super intelligence,” Johnson explained. “Every minute spent dealing with problems like ‘why a supplier shipped us something out-of-spec’ (now stuck on a boat) is a minute not spent figuring out how to make Don’t Die the fastest-growing ideology in history, increasing our odds of survival and thriving.”

He continued: “After my team and I built a protocol for myself, my friends and family asked if they could get access too. Then their friends and family asked and I said yes again. The circle kept on expanding until we stumbled into Blueprint becoming a company.

“My goal was never to sell nutrition. It’s the last thing in the world I ever imagined doing. I don’t need the money.”

Blueprint’s next phase

Johnson’s activities have been viewed with some skepticism. After all, as the saying goes, the only certain things in life are death and taxes.

The notion of making mortality optional, as Johnson previously told Fortune, has led critics to question the credibility and the motives for expanding Blueprint commercially. How much could a $50 bottle of olive oil or an $135 bag of ‘longevity protein’ really extend customers’ lifespans, spectators argued.

“I started Blueprint and people began calling me a grifter,” Johnson said. “Whatever. They don’t understand.”

But Johnson added he has been grappling with the “tension” of his longevity project and questions of its links to commercial gain, adding selling or shutting down the company might address the issue.

The tech founder of Braintree—which was sold to PayPal for $800 million a little over a decade ago—instead decided to “go all in” he added, and is raising investment as well as recruiting what he called “hard core builders.”

Next in the pipeline for Blueprint are clinics offering “access to cutting-edge longevity technologies, protocols, and therapies,” as well as a ‘quantified’ certification program for food purity, and a tracking biomarker platform for users to measure their progress over time alongside peers.

‘Blueprint Nourish,’ he added, is an extension of existing supplements which will cover “50-100% of your daily nutrition, hair care, skin care, oral care, etc.”

The longevity question

While Johnson’s particular brand of biohacking—from eating his last meal of the day at 11 a.m. through to his 4.30 a.m. wake-up call—may not appeal to all corners of the scientific community, the impact of lifestyle on aging and longevity is no new phenomenon.

In fact, researchers have been tracking people in blue zones—regions where culture and characteristics play a part in “significantly longer and healthier” lives—since the late 1990s.

Since them, blue zones have been identified in Ikaria, Greece, Loma Linda in California, Sardinia, Italy, Okinawa in Japan, and Nicoya in Costa Rica.

The reasons for longevity in these regions are, in some parts, loosely aligned with Johnson’s findings. The diet of people living in Okinawa has been the basis of some research into their lifespans, for example, while the physical activity and family networks of Nicoya have been credited as potentially leading to longer lifespans in that area.