Kai Micah Mills

On the Narratives podcast in March 2022 he said that his family are Latter-day Saints (LDS)—“they’re Mormons”—and that as he got older he himself became somewhat disconnected from it; he also said that he does “come from a military background.”⁠[1]

Accounts of where he grew up differ. His biography on the Lifeboat Foundation website says that he grew up in UtahUtahUtah is a U.S. state bordered by Idaho to the north, Wyoming to the northeast, Colorado to the east, Arizona to the south and Nevada to the west, with its capital at Salt Lake City. It was admitted to the Union on January 4, 1896, as the 45th state, and the 2020 census (April 1, 2020) counted 3,271,616 residents.Open the full entry and that his career began with Minecraft game servers he ran from his family’s basement in Utah; on the same podcast he said, speaking of the time when he was 12 or 13 and had no connections in biotechnology, that he “grew up in a townhouse outside of Baltimore.”⁠[2][1]

On the Narratives podcast he recalled that in 2011, when he was about 12, he came across the 2045 Initiative and became interested in life extension.⁠[1]

The Lifeboat Foundation biography says that he has built technology companies since 2012 and that he founded CraftFest in 2012. On the Narratives podcast he said that he taught himself to code at a young age, starting with Minecraft plugins.⁠[2][1]

On the Narratives podcast he said that he dropped out of high school in his freshman year to pursue life extension, and that the extra sleep this gave him was “a game changer for me.” TechCrunchTechCrunchTechCrunch is an American technology news outlet founded in 2005 by Michael Arrington and Keith Teare and headquartered in San Francisco; it mainly covers technology companies, startups, and venture capital, and hosts events such as TechCrunch Disrupt. Its ownership passed successively through AOL, Verizon, and Yahoo, and in 2025 Regent announced its acquisition.Open the full entry wrote in November 2020 that he had dropped out of high school to run Minecraft servers full-time.⁠[1][3]

The Lifeboat Foundation biography says that from 2014 to 2015 he was founder and lead developer of Yeti Crew.⁠[2]

The Lifeboat Foundation biography says that in 2015 he co-founded MyMCServers as its CTO. On the Narratives podcast he said that at about 15 he started a Minecraft server hosting company, which became one of the larger providers and was the first company he sold. TechCrunch wrote that he and Dayton MillsDayton MillsDayton Mills is a game entrepreneur who in 2020 co-founded Branch, a Seattle gaming startup that he led as chief executive and that developed the browser multiplayer game Castaways, and who later co-founded the independent game studio One Big Sip; he is a member of the 2022 class of the Thiel Fellowship.Open the full entry both began building Minecraft servers to sell to gamers at age 15, earning thousands of dollars a month.⁠[2][1][3]

The Lifeboat Foundation biography says that he founded DediFire and led it as CEO from 2016 to 2017. On the Narratives podcast he said that he went on to expand into game servers, dedicated servers, web hosting and VPS and sold a second company; he also said that he visited the cryonics organization Alcor in 2016 and had known about cryonics before that.⁠[2][1]

The Lifeboat Foundation biography says that in 2017 he co-founded GodlyCloud as its CTO, and that MyMCServers, DediFire and GodlyCloud were all acquired; from 2017 to 2019 he was co-founder and executive director of Konjure, and from 2018 to 2020 founder and lead developer of Sitesire. His GitHub profile lists Konjure among his organizations. On the Narratives podcast he said that in 2017 he built a website builder that deployed sites to IPFS.⁠[2][4][1]

The Lifeboat Foundation biography says that from 2020 to 2021 he was co-founder and COO of Branch, a Seattle virtual office platform. In an article on virtual headquarters products on November 18, 2020, TechCrunch wrote that Branch, founded by Dayton Mills and Kai Micah Mills, was the result of years of experimentation by the two rather than a pandemic-era product; it had raised $1.5 million from investors including Homebrew, Naval RavikantNaval RavikantNaval Ravikant is an entrepreneur and angel investor and a co-founder of AngelList. Early on he co-founded the review site Epinions; he and Babak Nivi later grew AngelList out of the startup-fundraising blog Venture Hacks, and he co-founded the cryptocurrency hedge fund MetaStable Capital and Spearhead, which backs founders to make angel investments. His views on startups and life were compiled into the book The Almanack of Naval Ravikant.Open the full entry, Sahil Lavingia and Cindy Bi, had more than 500 companies on its waitlist, and retained 60% of its users after one month.⁠[2][3]

On the Narratives podcast he said that Dayton Mills is a friend—they share a surname but are not brothers—and that Branch’s CTO was the person with whom he had built his first Minecraft server. His biography on the Foresight Institute website describes him as a serial entrepreneur with over a decade of experience building and scaling tech companies, most recently Branch Technologies.⁠[1][5]

The Lifeboat Foundation biography says that he left Branch in 2021 to focus on longevity and received On DeckOn DeckOn Deck is a founder community and program company launched in June 2019 by David Booth and Erik Torenberg, connecting founders with peers, capital and advice; its first program was the Founders Fellowship (ODF). It raised a $20 million Series A led by Founders Fund in March 2021 and cut staff twice in 2022 as it narrowed its business.Open the full entry’s Longevity Biotech Fellowship in 2021. In the Narratives podcast episode published in March 2022 he said that he first came up with the idea for Cryopets “in July last year.”⁠[2][1]

The Lifeboat Foundation biography says that he founded Cryopets in January 2022 to offer whole-body cryopreservation for pets. On the company page of Cryopets’ website he writes, “I started Cryopets to save my cat, Atlas”; the founder’s biography there says that he dropped out of high school and became an entrepreneur in order to build the science and the company that could save Atlas, and that he has founded dozens of organizations, among them CryoDAO and HydraDAO, which have funded millions of dollars of research into cryopreservation and biological replacement.⁠[2][6]

On March 28, 2022, the Narratives podcast hosted by Will Jarvis published its 87th episode, a conversation with him about cryonics. In it he described Cryopets as a combination of an animal hospital and a cryonics facility—“we’re actually a hybrid facility”—and said that the company had just started raising its seed round “at the beginning of this month, end of last month” and that it was going “extremely well.”⁠[1]

Writing on the Fight Aging! website on March 25, 2022, the author Reason described Cryopets as a newly formed cryonics provider that planned to build self-sustaining veterinary hospitals that offer cryopreservation of pets as an additional service; the post argued that starting in veterinary medicine is far cheaper and that, if the main goal failed, the business would still function as a company, making it more attractive to investors than some other options.⁠[7]

His Foresight Institute biography says that his focus is now on cryonics, with Cryopets constructing a hybrid of an animal hospital and a cryonics facility to advance the science of full-body cryopreservation for pets and humans alike.⁠[5]

The Lifeboat Foundation biography says that in September 2022 he co-founded CryoDAO, a decentralized collective based in Zug. An article by Carrie Radomski in The Biostasis Standard on February 15, 2025, says that CryoDAO was founded in 2022 by a group of biostasists and names its founders as Kai Micah Mills, Emil Kendziorra, Eli Mohamad and Vincent WeisserVincent WeisserVincent Weisser is the co-founder and CEO of the artificial intelligence company Prime Intellect, which provides a compute and infrastructure platform for training, evaluating and deploying models and trains frontier models in the open.Open the full entry; it says that CryoDAO had raised millions over the previous three years, that more than a thousand people held tokens entitling them to vote on its activity, that the token’s market capitalization was $16 million and the treasury worth around $20 million, and that token holders had voted more than $1 million in funding for five research projects, including CRYORAT, whose token sale aimed to raise $600,000 and raised $900,000 (246 ETHEthereumEthereum is an open, general-purpose smart contract blockchain that launched in 2015, and its native asset is ether (ETH). The project was proposed by Vitalik Buterin and advanced jointly by eight co-founders; the network now uses proof of stake and centers on the EVM, the account model, a rollup scaling roadmap, and the open EIP process.Open the full entry). The author discloses that she is part of the HydraDAO team.⁠[2][8]

CryoDAO’s website says that it funds research projects with high potential to increase the quality and capabilities of cryopreservation; the projects it lists include “Total Recall,” on proving that complex mammalian memory can be cryopreserved, multi-organ cryopreservation and rewarming in a pig model, the American Biostasis Foundation’s purpose-built long-term cryopreservation facility and research lab (STASIS), and high sub-zero preservation and revival of a small mammal (CRYORAT).⁠[9]

The Lifeboat Foundation biography says that he received the Foresight Institute Fellowship in 2022. The Foresight Institute website carries his talk “Getting Cryonics to the Masses,” given as CEO of Cryopets on October 12, 2022, on what it would take to bring cryonics into hospitals. The page says that he sees death as the loss of a “library of experiences” and argues that preserving it should be a top priority, that he believes that mathematically everyone will eventually need cryonics, so that it should be a standard of care in every hospital, and that he proposes animal cryonics and animal hospitals as a practical proving ground.⁠[2][10]

On February 8, 2023, the Thiel Foundation announced its next class of 20 Thiel Fellows, listing him ninth, with Salt Lake City, Utah, as his hometown; the announcement describes his project as follows: Cryopets is developing whole-body cryopreservation for pets. The announcement states that the Thiel FellowshipThiel FellowshipThe Thiel Fellowship is a two-year grant program started by investor Peter Thiel and run by the Thiel Foundation that funds young people who skip or stop out of college to build new things instead. The program has been criticized by figures in education for encouraging young people to leave college.Open the full entry launched in 2011 and that during the two-year program fellows receive $100,000 and mentorship; the class joined 251 previous fellows.⁠[11]

ENTER.CO wrote in May 2023 that Peter ThielPeter ThielPeter Thiel is an American entrepreneur and investor, a co-founder of PayPal and Palantir Technologies, and the first outside investor in Facebook. He is a partner at the venture capital firm Founders Fund and founded the Thiel Fellowship, which funds young people to leave college and build new things; his public skepticism of higher education, his support for Trump in 2016, and his funding of litigation against Gawker Media have drawn controversy.Open the full entry had announced in February that he would join the next class of Thiel Fellows, together with 19 others, each receiving $100,000 for their company; the Lifeboat Foundation biography also says that the Thiel Foundation named him to the Thiel Fellowship in February 2023. In a Q&A with OpenVC he said that the Thiel Fellowship got Cryopets “more officially kicked off,” bringing news coverage, pet sign-ups and a waitlist.⁠[12][2][13]

The technology outlet ENTER.CO wrote on May 5, 2023, that he, then 24, had founded Cryopets to freeze pets by cryopreservation so that they could be revived once science finds the right method; the animals’ bodies would receive a solution that protects them from damage, and the temperature inside the metal cubes in which the bodies would rest could reach −196°C. The company’s infrastructure was being built in Utah; it had a waitlist of more than 500 animals, and its first clients were expected to include dogs, cats, hamsters and a monkey.⁠[12]

On May 24, 2023, The Free Press published an article by Suzy Weiss on technologists pursuing immortality, which opens by stating that he is going to freeze his parents. He said that they are “both going to be cryopreserved, regardless of their wishes,” and added, “Even my dad has been pretty open to it. Most Mormons are really just transhumanists.” A photo caption in the article says that he has cryogenic storage chambers in the garage at his home in Millcreek, Utah.⁠[14]

On July 15, 2024, Molecule announced a partnership with CryoDAO to bring cryopreservation research projects to the decentralized science (DeSci) community through its IP-NFTs and IPTs, with CryoDAO’s research dealflow team working with Molecule’s biotech team; the announcement identifies him as co-founder of CryoDAO and describes CryoDAO’s mandate as to “make death optional.”⁠[15]

The Lifeboat Foundation biography says that in September 2024 he launched HydraDAO, whose mission is to enable partial and whole-body biological replacement for humans. Carrie Radomski’s article in The Biostasis Standard says that HydraDAO was launched in 2024 by the four founders of CryoDAO together with core members Austin Lynch and Si Maclennan, pursuing tissue engineering approaches to bypass the problem of aging, and that its initial token sale closed in January 2025, after which the token began trading on Uniswap and other platforms. HydraDAO’s website says that it funds and incubates research into biological replacement parts for humans, including whole-body replacement, and lists projects including Kind Bio and Dowell Bio.⁠[2][8][16]

On October 9, 2024, The Biostasis Standard published an overview of pet cryopreservation services by Lauren Fosco, which says that Cryopets, based in Salt Lake City, Utah, was still in the early stages of development, combining veterinary care with pet cryonics in a membership service with a “full stack approach” and aiming for a veterinary clinic that offers pet cryopreservation, with no clear timeline for when the services would become available.⁠[17]

The Lifeboat Foundation biography says that he serves on the board of the American Biostasis Foundation, founded in 2025. The foundation’s “About” page lists him on its board and says that he leads Cryopets and oversees facility operations as the foundation’s purpose-built facility moves toward construction. The foundation’s website says that it is building the most advanced cryopreservation research lab and long-term storage facility in the United StatesUnited StatesThe United States is a federal country in North America made up of 50 states, the District of Columbia as the seat of government, and territories such as Puerto Rico and Guam; its capital is Washington, D.C. The Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. The 2020 census (April 1, 2020) counted a resident population of 331,449,281, and the 435 seats of the House of Representatives are apportioned among the states on the basis of the census.Open the full entry. The company page of Cryopets’ website also presents the American Biostasis Foundation as an upcoming nonprofit research lab and long-term care facility, its location “Coming soon.”⁠[2][18][19][6]

On August 3, 2025, The Biostasis Standard published an episode of the Biostasis Podcast hosted by Max More, introducing him as co-founder of CryoDAO and HydraDAO and founder and CEO of Cryopets; the episode covers the origins of CryoDAO, the surprising speed and effectiveness of its initial fundraising, CryoDAO’s security, its main funded projects, especially the CryoRat research project, and HydraDAO’s work on regeneration.⁠[20]

On September 9, 2025, LEVITY, a longevity podcast hosted by Patrick Linden and Peter Ottsjö, published its 31st episode, “He wants to save your pet with cryo.” The episode description says that he left high school early to pursue entrepreneurship and became a tech entrepreneur in his teens; its chapter titles include “Timeship in TexasTexasTexas is a U.S. state in the south-central United States, with its capital at Austin and its largest city Houston. It was admitted to the Union on December 29, 1845, as the 28th state, and the 2020 census (April 1, 2020) counted 29,145,505 residents.Open the full entry,” “Vitalism,” “Bryan JohnsonBryan JohnsonBryan Johnson is an entrepreneur and investor who founded Braintree and OS Fund and later pursued neurotechnology and personal health experimentation through Project Blueprint and the Don’t Die initiative.Open the full entry, Mormonism and Vitalism,” “Dropping out of highschool to play video games,” “Becoming a Thiel Fellow,” “Cosmism,” “Building Cryopets,” “Cryo rat,” “CryoDAO HydraDAO and replacement” and “Talent shortage in cryogenics.”⁠[21]

In a Q&A with him, Shaun Gold of OpenVC wrote that Cryopets closed a $1.5 million pre-seed round in fall 2025. In the Q&A he said that he is a serial entrepreneur who had sold multiple companies in tech and crypto and raised tens of millions of dollars before, but was new to bio and deep tech; he first aimed to raise $8 million, and when that early attempt, made while it was still just an idea, went nowhere he self-funded for about a year and built the first version of the cryobiology lab in his garage in Utah. He said that this round was harder to raise than his previous $10 million round and that he pitched hundreds of investors; the first check came from Valyrian, a fund for Thiel Fellows, Patrick, his contact at Prelude (primarily a crypto fund), said yes within about five minutes; after he submitted his information on OpenVC, Francis Santora contacted him within a day and decided to invest; and Gaingels invested $25,000 through Francis Santora.⁠[13]

In the same Q&A he said that the waitlist had been under 5,000 at the pre-seed stage and was “just crossing 10,000 now,” and that the first pets had gone through the full process—“They’re still with us.” He said that the company was raising a $5 million seed round, to be followed by rounds of $20 million or more from institutional funds, and that the pre-seed round paid for critical hires, including a chief scientific officer and a head of engineering.⁠[13]

The press section of Cryopets’ homepage lists a headline linked to Business InsiderBusiness InsiderBusiness Insider is a digital business-news organization.Open the full entry, “Cryopets raises $2m from Thiel, Prelude, Zee Prime, and Valyrian.” The investors listed on the company page include Thiel, Prelude, Zee Prime Capital, Valyrian, Erebos, Carrie Radomski, Athenaeum Ventures, Novelty Ventures, Max Marty, Paul Gu, Bill Cherman, TruVenturo, Roadrunner Ventures, Alex Zhavoronkov, Francis Santora, Dayton Mills, Jordan Roberts, Will Jarvis, Captain Nemo, Nick Tong and Gaingels.⁠[22][6]

The Lifeboat Foundation biography says that since May 2026 he has served on the board of the Mormon Transhumanist Association.⁠[2]

As of November 2026, the company page of Cryopets’ website lists him as founder and CEO, with a team that also includes chief scientific officer Chana Phaedra, head of growth Hyrum Wolf, head of engineering Jake Beebe, head of operations Austin Lynch and head of member care Apryl Bromm; the page says that the company has raised millions, that its headquarters is in Boerne, Texas, and its job postings give San Antonio as the on-site location. Cryopets’ homepage says that Cryopets, Inc. offers “cryosleep” for pets, stabilizing them at very low temperatures after clinical death for possible revival in the future; the process consists of a field stabilization procedure by trained surgeons with cryo ambulances, transport to a long-term care facility, a slow cooldown toward −196°C, and storage in cryogenic dewars topped off with liquid nitrogen, with service “Anywhere in the U.S.”⁠[6][22]

The Lifeboat Foundation biography says that he lives in San Antonio, Texas, and lists him on the foundation’s advisory board, as a member of its Biotech/Medical, Life Extension, New Money Systems and Space Settlement boards. His GitHub profile bio reads “Founder of Cryopets, CryoDAO & HydraDAO - Thiel Fellow,” gives his location as Utah, and also lists the Foresight Institute among his organizations.⁠[2][4]

ENTER.CO wrote that when he was 14 and a lonely child he adopted a tabby cat, from which the idea for Cryopets came, and that ten years later he hoped to preserve the cat so that they could spend more time together. On the Narratives podcast in March 2022 he said that he had a cat there with him, then 10 years old.⁠[12][1]

On the Narratives podcast he said that if he has children, they will be homeschooled and allowed to sleep in.⁠[1]

The Lifeboat Foundation biography calls him a cosmist; the title of his personal website describes him as “High school dropout, cosmist, Thiel Fellow,” and the site’s description says that he “is working on the death problem.” In the OpenVC Q&A he described Cryopets’ long-term goal as pausing biology in order to address causes of death such as cancer, old age and trauma.⁠[2][23][13]

Personal website: https://kaimicahmills.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[23][4]

Cryopets: Official website: https://cryopets.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[22]

CryoDAO: Official website: https://cryodao.org/ (opens in a new window).⁠[9]

Thiel Fellowship: Official website: https://thielfellowship.org/ (opens in a new window).⁠[24]

HydraDAO: Official website: https://hydradao.org/ (opens in a new window).⁠[16]

American Biostasis Foundation: Official website: https://americanbiostasis.org/ (opens in a new window).⁠[19]

Mormon Transhumanist Association: Official website: https://transfigurism.org/ (opens in a new window).⁠[25]

Lifeboat Foundation: Official website: https://lifeboat.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[2]

X: Public account: https://x.com/kaimicahmills (opens in a new window).⁠[6][4]

LinkedInLinkedInLinkedIn is a social networking platform for professionals. It was founded in 2002 by Reid Hoffman and others, launched in 2003, and listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 2011; after Microsoft acquired it for approximately $26.2 billion in 2016, it became a wholly owned Microsoft subsidiary. Its revenue comes from membership subscriptions, advertising, and recruitment solutions.Open the full entry: Public profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kaimicahmills/ (opens in a new window).⁠[6][5]

GitHub: Public account: https://github.com/kaimicahmills (opens in a new window).⁠[4]