Roughly 35 kilometres from Zurich, nestled in an unassuming industrial facility, stainless steel tanks hum quietly. Within them, dozens of human bodies lie suspended in liquid nitrogen at -140°C, preserved in a glass-like state. Their mission? To be resurrected from the dead.

These aren’t the futuristic tombs of tech oligarchs that one might expect from Silicon Valley. This is Tomorrow Bio, a Berlin-based cryonics company offering cryopreservation not just to the ultra-rich, but to anyone who can afford a €50 monthly subscription alongside a one-time-payment of €200,000.

Preservation Was Never the Plan

Cryonics, the process of preserving legally dead individuals at ultra-low temperatures with the hope of revival in the future, has long been dismissed as science fiction. But for Emil Kendziorra, CEO of Tomorrow Bio and a medical doctor who graduated magna cum laude from the University of Göttingen, it represents a serious medical and ethical pursuit.

«Cryopreservation was never the plan,» Kendziorra reveals. The original goal was to develop a pill to extend human life indefinitely, he shares. Upon realising the science for this purpose was many years away, cryopreservation, on the other hand, seemed technically possible. At least partially. While companies like Tomorrow Bio have the technology to preserve bodies, they do not have the science to bring patients out of cryonic states. However, the chance of coming back from cryopreservation is higher than from cremation, says Kendziorra.

Body Transitions Into a Glass-Like State

Once a doctor or hospital has told a client that they are going to die within the next few days, the firm dispatches a specialised team to wait on standby at the location. When the patient is declared legally dead, the team immediately starts a process similar to CPR, called cardiopulmonary support, and supplies the patient with oxygen. The member is then transported to a cryopreservation facility, where they undergo vitrification. Instead of freezing, all the body's fluids are replaced with cryoprotective agents that prevent ice formation, allowing the tissues to enter a glass-like state. The body is then stored in a custom-built cryogenic tank and cooled to
-140° in liquid nitrogen, awaiting future revival.

But who would opt for a fate like this?

Desire for a Second Life Raises Questions

Clients typically fall into two camps. The first are younger individuals whose lives have been cut short by illness. After all, some of Tomorrow Bio’s patients were as young as 20 at the time of preservation. For them, cryonics represents a second chance at a life that was interrupted. This idea is not entirely different from more common medical therapies available today, such as patients awaiting heart transplants.

The second faction is more pragmatic. These are individuals who may be older but are simply not ready to die yet. However, this raises alternate questions, such as how much would an individual want to be revived in the future if everyone they know might be dead? Or would the next line of thought be cryogenic family tombs? However, both groups are in the search of something that today’s world cannot offer: more time.

Part of the Payment Flows Into a Zug-Based Foundation

So, how does Tomorrow Bio finance this enterprise? The moonshot’s service is paid through a one-time payment of €200,000, which is usually paid via life insurance taken out by the patient. Tomorrow Bio, the beneficiary of the life insurance, then uses €80,000 for its cryogenic process and puts the remaining €120,000 into a foundation in Zug The foundation then invests this money with an 80- to 100-year investment horizon.

Usually the capital goes into high-risk tech ETFs. The foundation also has a special deferred taxation ruling, so it only needs to tax the return of the investments, while the principal amount is not taxed until it is used in 80 to 100 years.

However, a lot of people going into cryopreservation also want to keep part of their money for the future. This is when things get a little complicated. «When you're dead, you're not a legal entity, so you cannot have money while you're dead. You just don’t exist, legally speaking,» explains Dr Kendziorra. This is why the company is now setting up a trust or foundation in Liechtenstein, where individuals can place their wealth at the end of their life. The foundation will then return the assets to the person when they are revived, says Kendziorra.

A Completely New Understanding of Death

Cryonics is often framed as a scientific or ethical debate, but at its core, it’s also a philosophical one that forces us to rethink death. While this may sound futuristic, the sentiment behind it is far from new.

In fact, cryogenics has several parallels to Ancient Egypt, a civilization, which was similarly obsessed with life after death. Similarly, Egyptians injected bodies with preservation fluids, buried possessions for use in the next world, and built monumental tombs to defy death. In many ways, today’s cryonic tanks are modern pyramids, not carved from limestone but forged in steel and liquid nitrogen.

Already More Than 1,000 Clients

However, unlike the pyramids which were reserved for the elite, these tombs are intended for anyone willing to pay the price of a monthly TV subscription.

According to Kendziorra's presentation at the Longevity Investors Conference in Gstaad, 1,000 people have already signed up to its service. Tomorrow Bio currently has €200m in contract value.

For those who are not ready to be frozen yet, Tomorrow Bio currently also offers pet preservation.