Longevium raises $7 million to build a longevity AI research lab at Dubai Science Park

Longevium has closed its first investment round at $7 million and begun construction of a Longevity AI Research Laboratory at Dubai Science Park, with the facility scheduled to open in the fourth quarter of 2026, the Dubai-based clinic network said on Monday.

The capital will fund the laboratory alongside the development of new longevity technologies, diagnostics and clinical research programmes. The site will operate as a research and development hub rather than a fourth patient-facing location, connecting artificial intelligence, biomedical research and clinical practice to build technologies that predict health risk, measure biological ageing and extend healthy lifespan.

Dr Ksenia Butova (MD), Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Longevium, said the company’s mission is “to make the world’s most advanced longevity innovations accessible to more people” and to help create a future in which healthy human lifespans of up to 200 years may become possible.

Regulatory clarity has turned Dubai into a destination for longevity capital

The announcement comes less than two months after Dubai gave its longevity ambitions a legal structure. Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, issued Law No. 17 of 2026 establishing the Dubai Longevity Authority, tasked with making the emirate the world’s foremost hub for regulated longevity, wellness and advanced healthcare, and with opening channels for investment into the sector. Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Crown Prince of Dubai, serves as President of the authority, with Helal Saeed Almarri, Director General of the Dubai Department of Economy and Tourism, appointed Chairman.

That structure matters commercially because longevity medicine has spent a decade operating in the regulatory gaps between licensed healthcare and consumer wellness. The authority is charged with implementing a science-driven, risk-proportionate regulatory framework for longevity therapies and innovations, and with attracting global experts and international brands to the emirate. It also supports the Dubai Economic Agenda D33 and the Dubai Social Agenda 33, which target a top-three global ranking for quality of life and a leading position in healthy life expectancy. Sheikh Mohammed said at the time that “our ambition is for Dubai to become the world’s leading hub for longevity”, wellness and advanced healthcare. For companies raising money in the sector, a licensing pathway for trials and therapies converts a jurisdictional risk into a jurisdictional advantage, and Longevium’s round is among the first to test that proposition at scale.

Clinical volume gives the research programme its most valuable input

The laboratory will be built on a network of three Dubai clinics in Jumeirah 3, Jumeirah Lake Towers and Jumeirah Village Circle, staffed by a multidisciplinary team of nearly 100 physicians and specialists. Those sites have treated more than 30,000 patients, which gives the research programme a longitudinal data source that most standalone longevity startups spend years trying to assemble.

Butova has consistently argued that measurement, rather than intervention, is the discipline the sector lacks. “Longevium is building a measurable medical system for longevity,” she said when the clinics opened, adding that healthy ageing must be approached clinically through diagnostics, biomarkers, physician supervision and longitudinal tracking. The laboratory extends that logic, with a biological age platform intended to integrate laboratory biomarkers, ultrasound imaging, body composition analysis and wearable device data into what the company describes as the region’s reference AI model for biological age.

The programme is ambitious to a degree that will invite scrutiny. Alongside the biological age work, the laboratory will pursue patient-specific digital twins built using Yamanaka factors, allowing physicians to test medications and treatment protocols on a computational replica before clinical use. It will also run research into regenerative therapies and tissue engineering, robotic diagnostics including swallowable capsules for gastrointestinal imaging, automated AI skin scanners for early melanoma detection and smart contact lenses that monitor health through tear fluid analysis.

A dedicated noble gas therapy programme will investigate xenon, which the company describes as the most clinically advanced of the group with evidence for organ protection and stress-related conditions, alongside earlier-stage work on argon, helium and krypton. Each of these sits at a different distance from clinical validation, and the credibility of the laboratory will rest on how transparently it reports the ones that fail. The company already operates two technologies clinically, Doctor Deep, an AI assistant for physicians, and a biological age application, which gives it a working precedent for moving research into practice.

Credibility remains the constraint the wider longevity market has yet to resolve

The commercial context here is a sector with a persuasion problem. A Dubai survey published last year found that 90% of longevity clinics prioritised marketing over science, prompting medical experts to caution consumers about clinics selling unproven anti-ageing treatments. Butova, commenting on those findings, said the results showed an industry “where credible interventions struggle to gain prominence” amid commercially driven hype.

A research laboratory backed by clinical volume and institutional regulation is the most direct answer to that criticism available to any operator in the market, which is why the model is likely to be copied quickly across the Gulf. Longevium is recruiting scientists internationally and inviting collaboration with research institutions, clinical partners, investors and technology companies working across longevity, AI-enabled diagnostics and preventive medicine. Butova has said the next era of healthcare will be defined by the ability to combine physicians, data and artificial intelligence into a single system, and the laboratory is where that argument either produces published evidence or remains a marketing claim.