iM8 health: A clinical study deep dive, and the Beckham multiplier effect in real-time
Beckham's longevity bet: Inside the cap table, the clinical trials, and a curious look at their marketing tactics
‘Hey David, it’s Danny, what’s up? Victoria doing okay? Cool, yeah anyways. So I’m thinking, what if we built this stuff in space? Like actual space. I’m thinking NASA meets the world’s best athletes? Just an idea, lmk!’
That’s how I picture the discussion went when co-founder Danny Yeung decided, along with the folks at Prenetics, to launch one of the most extravagantly endorsed, if not the most endorsed, longevity brands on the market: iM8 Health. The world today, more so than ever before, has shifted into what looks like a desperate pursuit, where eternal life seems to be at the forefront of everyone’s mind.
So if we look at the science, and we look at the strategy so far, what do we learn from iM8? Is it truly remarkable as far as the product goes? Is it really democratizing longevity for all at their price point? As excited as I am for the future of this market, and with experience working with amazing scientists from Yuvan Research and Oxford’s longevity society, I can’t help but feel a little unenthusiastic about the idea of chasing this longevity chalice. Nonetheless, here’s a deep dive into one of the most exciting stories in the niche.
Their science is exciting, but we’re still on hold
If you’ve ever watched Nick Fury assemble the Avengers, you’ve basically seen the iM8 science page. The advisory board includes a former NASA Chief Scientist (Dr. James Green, 42 years at the agency), the director of Cedars-Sinai’s Microbiome Research Institute (Dr. Suzanne Devkota), the founder of Mayo Clinic’s integrative oncology program (Dr. Dawn Mussallem), a cardiovascular researcher with 300+ papers (Dr. James DiNicolantonio), plus a handful of integrative and sports medicine MDs. David Beckham is the Tony Stark of the operation, providing both the funding network and the wattage. It is, on paper, a hell of a team.
Credit where it’s due: iM8 isn’t a tin-foil-hat operation. Both Daily Ultimate Essentials and Daily Ultimate Longevity carry NSF Certified for Sport, which apparently is a genuinely hard credential to earn. NSF tests for 270+ banned substances, verifies the label matches the bag, and screens for heavy metals, allergens, and pathogens. Eurofins handles allergen testing, VitaQuest handles batch dosage certificates, NSF handles the sport piece. That stack puts iM8 above the vast majority of greens powders on the shelf. And the individual ingredients (vitamin C, MK-7, methylcobalamin, ashwagandha, rhodiola, the named probiotic strains) are themselves well-studied in the literature. The constituents are real and the testing is real, especially if you want endorsements from athletes like Sabalenka (who is also on the cap table), you better be at least NSF certified. Rumour has it, Jannik Sinner’s application was denied…
What hasn’t been demonstrated yet is the combination. Parent company Prenetics has registered two trials with ClinicalTrials.gov, both Prenetics-funded, both at the same San Francisco site, neither published. The flagship (NCT06655597) puts 60 people on Daily Ultimate Essentials for 12 weeks versus a “usual diet” control. Randomized, but only single-blinded, and no placebo. Primary endpoint: body morphology. Secondary: a self-reported energy questionnaire. Primary completion was February 2025 and results have not been posted. The longevity trial (NCT06714162) is, charitably, a pilot: 30 people, single-arm, no randomization, no blinding, no placebo, and the only outcome measure is the Mini Mental State Exam (a dementia screen, not a longevity biomarker). No epigenetic clock, no telomere assay, no inflammatory panel.
So when iM8 says “clinically proven,” what they technically have are a strong supply chain, a stacked roster, well-evidenced ingredients, and two underpowered trials that haven’t reported yet. Granted review periods can take a while, but it’s fairly clear these trails are designed to succeed. Which for an entry-level trial is a LONG time to wait on results to be published compared to Stage 2 or Stage 3 trials. However, this is a perfectly reasonable starting position for a young brand, but for a brand that’s just signed Inter Miami FC, powerful voices across all athletic verticals and leading scientists across the board, you’d MAYBE expect a little more confirmation before you start pushing our claims in your advertising? We’ll get to that part…but for now, let’s look at how iM8’s product roster compares to the rest of the longevity mafia.
How does iM8 compare to others in the ring?
So let’s take a look at three contenders with three slightly different pitches: iM8 wants to sell you the dream team, AG1 wants to sell you the routine, NOVOS wants to sell you the data. On marketing wattage they aren’t really comparable, but strip the celebrity layer off and look at what each brand has actually put on the record.
Three things jump out.
First, certification is a real tie. iM8 and AG1 both hold NSF Certified for Sport, the cleanest third-party credential in the category. NOVOS doesn’t carry it, which matters less for a longevity-positioned product than it would for an athlete-targeted greens drink, but is still a real gap. On “is what’s in the bag what they say it is,” iM8 and AG1 are level. NOVOS asks you to trust the formula sheet instead.
Second, evidence and dose transparency go in opposite directions. AG1 is the only brand with published peer-reviewed human trials (a 2024 RCT in JISSN and a SHIME in vitro model), measuring real microbiome endpoints with progressively tighter blinding. NOVOS is the only brand that publishes per-ingredient doses tied to specific aging-hallmarks literature, and uses the TruDiagnostic epigenetic clock as its primary readout. For added context, I’ve worked with longevity scientists with credited backgrounds at Oxford, and they always spoke highly of NOVOS and backed the science. iM8, despite the bigger roster and louder marketing, has neither peer-reviewed results nor disclosed individual doses inside its 92-ingredient blend.
Third, the endpoint each brand chose tells you what they think they’re selling. AG1 is measuring gut function (a daily-nutrition story). NOVOS is measuring biological age (a longevity story). iM8 is measuring the Mini Mental State Exam and self-reported energy, which is neither. That endpoint mismatch is the cleanest signal in the whole table. You don't pick MMSE because it's the best longevity biomarker, you pick it because it's the most realistic thing a 12-week supplement trial can hope to move. To be fair to iM8, the harder measurements (TruDiagnostic methylation age, hs-CRP, IL-6, HOMA-IR, telomere length, or a more sensitive cognitive battery like MoCA or CANTAB) are expensive, slow, and often flat over a three-month window. MMSE is friendlier.
The trade-off is that it's also a dementia screen designed for clinical populations, not a longevity readout in healthy adults, so even a positive signal doesn't really tell you whether the product is doing anti-ageing work. It's a defensible choice for a young brand running its first trial. It's a less defensible foundation for the "anti-ageing" claims already running in the ads.
“Why does the associate down the hall look 5 years younger than you”
As a team that relies heavily on marketing as a form of acquisition, if not the primary form of acquisition, there’s always a debate about how close you want to walk the wire. A lot of iM8’s UGC genuinely lands. The ambassadors are credible, the production value is high, the testimonials feel like real humans. That side of the funnel is doing the job a premium brand needs it to do, and is closely aligned to all the right industry standards.
While the static ads are primary all made with love (they really do use this word a lot), there’s a few that seem like a pretty clear reach. Overall look is slick (they’re doing a great job with AI), but for a company so committed to the longevity thesis they’re running experiments in space, some of the ads on Meta are leaning on the oldest lever in direct-response: fear. The average person, unfortunately, is gullible (to put it politely), and instilling fear and jealousy, especially when you’re dangling eternal life as the prize, is a low point in my opinion.
The ironic part is the caption “The Associate Down The Hall Looks Five Years Younger Than You” insinuates that there’s been a visible transformation in appearance, despite the brand being fairly new. Even copper-peptide solutions (e.g GHK-cu) take time to show improvements and typically minor to the naked eye if we’re being real. Are we also focusing our target demographic on 30-year old investment bankers chewing on ZYN sachets behind the trading desk? The “Your Parents Aged Without a Choice” line is cheap stab at boomers. The actual purpose of these longevity formulas, until Bryan Johnson, the loyal guinea pig to mankind, proves otherwise, is to increase quality of life for longer, not to grant eternal life. While your parents were busy socialising without their phones and raving to Bon Jovi in the 80s, you’re sat behind a screen being convinced that taking iM8 is the holy grail to immortality. That sounds like fun.
So this tells me the team is in heavy experimentation and clickbait mode. Often the case with a “grow at all costs” model when you’ve got VCs or public companies on your back. The bigger question is whether it’s working? Fuck yeah it is.
Is the Beckham multiplier working?
To iM8’s enormous credit, the financials are the part of this story that’s hardest to argue with. Prenetics, iM8’s parent and already a NASDAQ-listed company under ticker PRE, reported FY 2025 revenue of $92.4 million, up 480% year-on-year, with iM8 alone contributing $60.1 million in its first 12 months and exiting December 2025 at roughly $120 million ARR. The brand shipped to 30+ countries with over 60% of revenue coming from outside the US, the payback period tightened to 3.5 months by Q4, and Q4 adjusted EBITDA loss narrowed to $2.3 million, a 70% improvement year-on-year. Whether or not you love the ad funnel, that is one of the fastest scale-ups the supplement category has ever produced. The website is genuinely best-in-class, and CEO Danny Yeung’s track record at brand-building, means none of this is accidental.
The strategic read is more interesting than the headline numbers. Prenetics has spent the last 18 months divesting its legacy genomics and distribution businesses (ACT Genomics for up to $72M, Europa for up to $13M, the Insighta stake to Tencent for $70M) and now sits on roughly $171M in adjusted liquidity. Read that move plainly and the company is quietly becoming an iM8 holding entity. With Prenetics guiding to triple iM8 revenue in 2026 while accepting a similar EBITDA loss, the next 18 months will be defined by whether that growth holds long enough to either (a) get reflected in PRE’s market cap as a consumer health pure-play, or (b) justify a separate iM8 IPO or strategic exit, with a global CPG buyer (P&G, Unilever, Reckitt) being the obvious counterparty. Although iM8 does give me a modern Korean-electric energy in its branding, so a suave Asian counterparty (also massive Beckham fan base) could be on the cards.
In reality, iM8 is nothing shy of impressive. From behind the lens of a media buyer, there are a few things that feel typical and a little clickbaity, but I think people have accepted that in a space where CAC is typically incredibly high (I’ve seen it range north of $400 on Meta even for the big players), walking the wire on creative strategy is almost a necessity. A bootstrapped operation in longevity is equally as impossible, so with an arsenal of cash and monsters on their cap table, I wouldn’t be surprised if in a couple of years we’re looking at the next Oura or WHOOP of the longevity world.