Bryan Johnson

Bryan Johnson is an American entrepreneur who founded the payments company Braintree in 2007, created the venture fund OS Fund in 2014, founded the neurotechnology company Kernel in 2016 and, from 2021, built the Blueprint longevity regimen and the Don't Die project. He grew up in Springville, Utah, served as a missionary of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Ecuador, and, according to the New York Times, left the church after the 2013 sale of Braintree to PayPal. On October 2, 2017 Alex Klokus, then chief executive of the website Futurism, introduced him by email to Jeffrey Epstein (through Masha Drokova), and a Zoom call between the two was scheduled for October 6, 2017.¹²³

Utah, Ecuador and Chicago

A 2010 profile in the Chicago outlet Technori describes Johnson as the middle child of a large Mormon family in Springville, Utah, whose parents divorced when he was young and who was raised by his mother and a stepfather who owned a trucking company. At nineteen he left for a two-year mission in Ecuador; he told the interviewer it was "incredibly rewarding, yet difficult" and that he "didn't know the language, I was sick with worms, slept with fleas." He attended Brigham Young University, resold cellular telephones through a student sales network, and co-founded a voice-over-IP startup, Inquist, with his brother and two others, which raised 500,000 dollars in angel money before failing after the September 11 attacks and the dot-com collapse. A 70 million dollar mixed-use real estate project with Fannie Mae as an institutional investor failed after cost overruns of 2 million dollars. During those years he sold credit card processing, earning by his own account about 15,000 dollars a month.¹

He moved to Chicago to enroll in the executive MBA program at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, citing the economist Gary Becker and Becker's book on the economics of life. He worked door-to-door for the card processor RBS Link and briefly in a strategy role at Sears, which he called "the most unsatisfying thing I have ever done in my life." He left Sears to found Braintree, flew to Utah to ask his ten largest former customers whether they would switch to a processor of his own, and said six agreed, producing 6,200 dollars a month.¹

The New York Times reported in March 2025, when he was 47, that Johnson had "soon shed his Latter-day Saints roots" after the 2013 sale, had divorced his wife (the couple have three children), and, according to friends, former employees and court documents, had used drugs including LSD, ibogaine and dimethyltryptamine; the Times described him as a former Latter-day Saint missionary.²

Braintree and Venmo

Braintree was incorporated in Delaware and based at 833 West Jackson Boulevard in Chicago. A Form D filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on July 13, 2011 (accession 0001524770-11-000001) lists Johnson as chief executive officer and director, Dan Manges as an executive officer, and Ryan Sweeney of Accel Partners as a director; it reports 34,200,097 dollars sold to six investors in an offering whose first sale was June 28, 2011. A second Form D followed on November 21, 2011.⁴

On September 26, 2013, eBay's PayPal unit announced the purchase of Braintree for about 800 million dollars in cash. TechCrunch reported that Braintree had raised 69 million dollars from Accel, New Enterprise Associates, RRE Ventures, Greycroft and others, that it had been asking about 1 billion dollars, and that it had bought the peer-to-peer payments application Venmo the previous year for 26.2 million dollars. Braintree's chief executive at the time of announcement was Bill Ready.⁵ In an October 2024 interview Johnson said that Braintree had partnered with Coinbase in 2013 and that "had I not sold Braintree, I just would have been entirely all in on crypto."⁶

OS Fund and its Portfolio

On October 20, 2014, Fortune reported that Johnson had created a 100 million dollar fund, the OS Fund, for ventures he described as "crazy" (his stated aim was to take "a company from 'crazy' to 'viable'"), and had already placed 15 million dollars in seven startups. The portfolio then named was Planetary Resources (asteroid mining), Vicarious (machine learning modeled on the brain), Human Longevity, Inc. (a company seeking to extend human lifespan to 120 years) and Matternet (drone logistics). A relative who was an early employee at his companies was quoted in the article.⁷

SEC filings show the fund's later structure. OS Fund II, L.P. (Delaware limited partnership, 250 South Northwest Highway, Park Ridge, Illinois) filed a Form D on May 10, 2018, signed by Johnson as a member of its general partner, OS Fund II GP, LLC, and amended it on July 10, 2019, October 2, 2019 and October 2, 2020 over signatures of Jeff Klunzinger. All four filings report total amount sold as zero. OS Fund Biome LLC filed a Form D on December 4, 2018 and an amendment on January 9, 2019 listing Klunzinger and Johnson as promoters (managing members of the managing member of the issuer); the amendment reports 3,450,000 dollars sold to nine investors.⁸

Johnson also appears as a director on two Form D/A amendments filed by Planetary Resources, Inc. (Redmond, Washington), on May 26, 2016 and November 16, 2016, alongside the director Peter Diamandis (the filings name a director Johnson; they do not state that he is the Kernel founder, an identity assumed here from the Fortune report that the OS Fund invested in the company), Eric Anderson, and, in the November filing, Georges Schmit. The May amendment reports 20,734,417 dollars sold of a 33,844,416 dollar offering to 28 investors; the November amendment reports 34,783,603 dollars sold of 49,445,177 dollars to 29 investors.⁹

A mass mailing sent from Johnson's Kernel address in October 2018, "Impact Investing Just Doesn't Cut It," states that Synthego "was among OS Fund's first investments in 2015."¹⁰

Kernel

Johnson told Crunchbase News in July 2020, "In 2016, I set off to find a way to build technology that would allow us to do high-fidelity imaging of the brain," and the outlet reported that he had financed the company with 54 million dollars since its founding in 2016, before its first outside investment.¹¹

The entity that filed with the SEC is KRNL, Inc., a Delaware corporation formerly named Haos LLC, with a stated year of incorporation of 2017. Its Form D of June 29, 2020 (accession 0001104659-20-077936), signed by "Bryan R. Johnson, CEO," reports 52,959,990 dollars sold to eight investors, first sale June 26, 2020. The company is matched to KRNL, Inc. by the Culver City address, Johnson's signature as chief executive and the matching amount, not by name on the filing. The raise was announced on July 9, 2020 as a 53 million dollar Series C led by General Catalyst with participation from Khosla Ventures, Eldridge Industries, Manta Ray Ventures, Tiny Blue Dot and Johnson himself; Quentin Clark of General Catalyst joined the board. Crunchbase News reported total funding of 107 million dollars and that its products, Flux (magnetic fields of collective neural activity) and Flow (cortical blood flow), fed a "Neuroscience-as-a-Service" platform.¹¹

A second Form D, filed December 1, 2023 (accession 0001104659-23-122797), lists Ryan Field as chief executive officer and directors Jason Johnson, Bryan Johnson, Riaz Valani, Alex Morgan and Leah von Siemens at 10361 Jefferson Boulevard, Culver City, California. It reports 5,246,256 dollars sold of a 25,000,000 dollar offering to nine investors, first sale November 21, 2023.¹¹

Employment Agreements, Taryn Southern and the National Labor Relations Board

The New York Times reported in March 2025 that confidentiality agreements at Johnson's companies had grown from four and a half pages at Kernel to a twenty-page Blueprint employment agreement, and that Taryn Southern, his former fiancee and a Kernel employee whom Johnson fired in February 2020, sued him in 2021, contending that he had breached a promise to pay her 150,000 dollars in exchange for rent and moving out of their home. The Times reported that Johnson moved the suit to arbitration, that in 2023 an arbitrator ruled she must adhere to her employment separation agreement, and that she was ordered to pay Johnson more than 584,000 dollars in legal fees on his countersuit; the Times also reported that Johnson has not paid the 150,000 dollars. At least three former employees, among them Southern and Johnson's former personal assistant Jamie Contento, filed complaints with the National Labor Relations Board over the agreements, according to the Times, which saw copies of two of them. The employment lawyer Cliff Palefsky told the Times that Johnson was "counting on people being afraid."²

The attorney Matt Bruenig, who has written on the matter on his Substack NLRB Edge, stated on March 21, 2025 that Southern signed three employment agreements with arbitration clauses, that the arbitrator dismissed the case on the release clause in a separation agreement without reaching the merits of her claim, and that the fee award followed from a fee-shifting clause. Bruenig's account is an advocate's account and cites no NLRB docket numbers. Johnson has disputed the Times account in a post on X, writing that the agreements "have evolved, just like everything else I iterate & improve upon."²¹²

The 2017 Epstein Correspondence

On February 5, 2026, NBC News reported that the Justice Department's Epstein library contained a 2017 email exchange in which Futurism chief executive Alex Klokus introduced Johnson to Epstein by email, after which the two agreed to a video call. Johnson told NBC by email that "It wasn't part of my algorithm to run a background check on people introduced to me by acquaintances," and that during the call he "was left with a deep unsettling feeling and left the call feeling as though Epstein was the most dark and evil person I had ever encountered." In posts on X, as reported by UNILAD Tech, he wrote that the call lasted about ten minutes, that a mutual contact put them in touch because of Epstein's supposed neuroscience work at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Johnson's work on Kernel, that he "felt sick to my stomach" and told Epstein he never wanted to speak to him again, and, of an offer to meet in person, that "It ended up being a call (first and last time I interacted w him)." Klokus did not respond to NBC's request for comment. The same NBC article named other technology figures with ties to Epstein, including Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, Bill Gates and Reid Hoffman.³¹³

The documents in the library date the chain as follows. On May 23, 2017 (EFTA01047005) Masha Drokova told Epstein that Futurism, which she described as media "in the intersection of science and futurism," was run by a founder whose LinkedIn page she linked (Klokus). On September 18, 2017 an in-person "Interview w/Futurism Editor, Alex Klokus" appears on Epstein's schedule at 1:30 p.m., prepared by his assistant Lesley Groff (EFTA02223354 and others). On October 2, 2017 (EFTA00999952) Drokova forwarded to Epstein a note from Klokus: "I was sitting with Bryan Johnson today, who was telling me about everything he's working on at Kernel ... Bryan is building a neural implant that is intended to enhance cognition." Epstein answered "always interested." At 8:39 p.m. that evening, Klokus wrote to Johnson and Drokova, in a message quoted in EFTA02227011: "Bryan is building Kernel, and today I spoke with Masha about the potential value of him and Jeffrey chatting." On October 3 Johnson wrote that he was "in town until Wednesday afternoon and have a really tight schedule but would like to meet up with Jeffery if possible" (EFTA02227025); Epstein wrote that he was "in florida until friday" (EFTA01000443), and a message signed "Lesley" asked whether a call could be coordinated instead (EFTA02225373). Groff and Kernel's executive assistant arranged a video call for Friday, October 6, 2017; Epstein told Groff to "move barry abd sarah to 4 can we do bryan at 5 instead" (EFTA00460518), Groff's schedule for the day listed "5:00pm ZOOM Interview w/Bryan Johnson and possibly Masha" (EFTA00460043), Epstein chose "zoom" over a regular call (EFTA02225564, invitation "Sync: Bryan/Jeffrey/Masha," host kernel-hi.zoom.us), and Groff asked Johnson to delay it to 5:15 p.m. because Epstein was running late (EFTA02226959). A message from Drokova quoted in EFTA02226363 reads: "I managed to free up earlier and join Jeffrey and Bryan too." No document read records that the call took place or what was said; the schedule moved it from 3:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. and then to 5:15 p.m., and Drokova's 5:14 p.m. message says she had freed up time to join. The September 18, 2017 meeting with Klokus is likewise recorded only as a scheduled entry.³

Later items in the same files: a July 20, 2018 message from a "Bryan Johnson" with the subject "Becoming a zero detective" (EFTA02294943, body not present in the release page read), and the October 26, 2018 mass mailing from a Kernel address addressed to Groff (EFTA00484119). No payment, investment, in-person meeting or later exchange between Epstein and Johnson, Kernel or OS Fund appears in the documents read.¹⁰³

A Form D of Futurism, LLC (Brooklyn, New York) filed on December 19, 2016, signed by Klokus as chief executive officer, lists as related persons Klokus and Dan Sutera (executive officers and directors) and two further directors, Michael Clark and a person entered with first name "Johnson" and last name "Bryan"; it reports 6,000,652 dollars sold to one investor, first sale November 22, 2016. The filing gives no other identifying detail for that director.¹⁴

In the same library, correspondence between Groff and Peter Diamandis, then chairman and chief executive of the X Prize Foundation and a fellow Planetary Resources director named on the same Form D amendments as Johnson, dates from May 1, 2013 (EFTA00391312), when Groff wrote that Epstein wanted him to make contact "whenever you come to New York".³

Blueprint, the Plasma Exchange and the 2025 Reorganization

Johnson founded Blueprint in 2021 at his Los Angeles home to sell products tied to his personal regimen. The Times reported about 40 million dollars in revenue in its most recent year, about 40,000 customers, about 30 employees, a monthly shortfall against break-even of at least 1 million dollars, and 25 million dollars invested by Johnson as sole investor. It described a supplement study in which about 1,700 participants each paid more than 2,100 dollars and about 60 percent experienced at least one side effect, and a 49 dollar "longevity mix." In the same month, the Times wrote, he announced a new religion called "Don't Die."²

In April 2023 Johnson, his teenage son and his father took part in what Fortune called "the world's first multigenerational plasma exchange" at Resurgence Wellness, a Texas medical spa: the son's plasma went to Johnson, and Johnson's plasma to his father. Fortune put the regimen's cost at about 2 million dollars a year and noted that the Food and Drug Administration cautions against young-blood infusions, citing a lack of "compelling clinical evidence on its efficacy." Johnson had earlier received plasma from screened anonymous donors.¹⁵

On October 29, 2025 a trade outlet reported that Blueprint had raised 60 million dollars from investors including Kim Kardashian, Paris Hilton, Saquon Barkley, Cameron Winklevoss and Tyler Winklevoss, Jay Shetty, Naval Ravikant and Steve Aoki, and that Gyre Renwick, formerly president of Modern Health, had become chief executive.¹⁶

Don't Die and the Network State

The Times reported that Johnson announced the "Don't Die" religion in March 2025.² The journalist Gil Duran wrote in The Nerd Reich on March 28, 2025 that Johnson "regularly pals around with" Balaji Srinivasan, had vowed to create a "Don't Die Network State," and had visited the Prospera charter city in Honduras for experimental longevity treatments (which Duran attributes to an earlier article of his own); Duran also reported attending Johnson's Don't Die Summit in San Francisco in September 2024.¹⁷ Cointelegraph Magazine, in an interview recorded at Token2049 in Singapore and published on October 3, 2024, wrote that Johnson co-founded the Network School with Srinivasan, a three-month program in Malaysia's Forest City, and reported that Vitalik Buterin had appeared at the school with both men. Johnson said: "Bitcoin fundamentally rejects inflation, and I fundamentally reject aging." Srinivasan, per the article, drew the parallel on stage between Bitcoin resisting state erosion of wealth and Don't Die resisting state erosion of health.⁶

Political Statements

On November 6, 2024 Johnson wrote on X, in a post timestamped 17:43 UTC: "Congratulations @realDonaldTrump on becoming the 47th President of the U.S. I am with you and @RobertKennedyJr in making America the healthiest, most vibrant, and strongest nation in the world."¹⁸