There is something beautifully irrational about building a biotech company around love. Not love in the Hallmark sense. Love in the 6 a.m. walk, rain in your face, dog looking back at you like you hung the moon sense. That is the market Loyal is playing in. And now that market just wrote a $100M Series C check.
Loyal, the San Francisco clinical stage animal health company developing prescription drugs to extend the healthy lifespan of dogs, announced a $100M Series C led by age1, the next chapter of Laura Deming’s Longevity Fund. Existing investors including Baillie Gifford participated. Since founding in 2019, Loyal has now raised over $250M to chase a bold thesis: aging is not a vibe, it is biology, and biology can be regulated.
Let’s be clear about who is steering this rocket. Celine Halioua, Founder and CEO of Loyal, left the traditional academic path and decided to commercialize longevity science where it could move fastest. Not in mice. Not in theory. In dogs. The animal that already lives in 65M American households and, more importantly, in the emotional center of those homes.
The lead program, LOY-002, is targeting FDA Expanded Conditional Approval through the Center for Veterinary Medicine. Loyal has already completed 2 of the 3 major technical requirements and enrolled approximately 1,300 dogs across 70 veterinary clinics in what it describes as the largest clinical trial in veterinary medicine history. That is not a science fair project. That is infrastructure, data, and regulatory choreography moving in sync.
Alex Colville, Co-founder and General Partner at age1, did not lead this round for the optics. Longevity is one of the most overpromised sectors in tech, but this is different. Prescription drugs. FDA oversight. Real endpoints. Tom Slater, Partner at Baillie Gifford, is backing a company that understands capital is fuel, not confetti.
There is a lesson here for founders watching from the sidelines. Loyal did not chase hype cycles. It built credibility brick by brick: rigorous trials, regulatory engagement, a portfolio that now includes LOY-001, LOY-002, and LOY-003. It raised from investors who understand long timelines and longer conviction. In biotech, patience is not a virtue. It is a moat.
For veterinarians and pet owners, the signal is even louder. If LOY-002 reaches approval, you are not buying a supplement with a cute label. You are prescribing a drug designed to target the underlying mechanisms of aging. That shifts the conversation from treating decline to extending vitality.
This is what happens when science meets scale and capital meets discipline. Loyal is not selling immortality. It is building margin into the years that matter most. And in a world obsessed with speed, there is something powerful about a company betting that more time, done right, is the ultimate premium product.
