How much does the Cryorus company earn from storing bodies in liquid nitrogen?
Cryopreservation costs over 1 million rubles, but there are almost no free places in the company's storage facility.
Cryorus stores the bodies of people and animals at an ultra-low temperature that almost completely stops decomposition.
There are two more large companies in the world with their own storage facilities, both located in the USA. This activity is legal, but there is still no scientific research on the possibility of reviving people.
Foundation of the company
The idea arose in 2006 at one of the seminars of the "Russian Transhumanist Movement" - a public organization advocating for longevity and immortality.
One of the members of the movement, Danila Medvedev, told how he conducted the country's second cryopreservation of a woman in St. Petersburg. The first cryopreservation of the brain was performed by his movement colleague Igor Artyukhov in 2003.
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After the speech, the members of the organization decided to create the first cryofirm in Russia for freezing and storing the bodies of people and animals - in the hope of their revitalization in the future. “First of all, we wanted to save our relatives,” says Valeria Udalova, co-founder and current CEO of the company.
Valeria Udalova.
In total, Kriorus has 11 co-founders. Danila Medvedev became the first CEO, but in 2009 he moved away from operational management, focusing on his own projects (he is developing a tool for creating models "NeuroCode" and a system for manipulating atoms in a virtual working environment "NanoLab"), and he was replaced by Udalova.
At the start, the entrepreneurs invested $ 12 thousand in the company from their personal funds. They organized the first cryostorage of the company - in the assembly hall of the former school in Alabushev, Moscow Region.
In 2012, KrioRus moved to a new storage facility near Sergiev Posad. The founders spent about 1.5 million rubles on the building and plot of 400 m². It now contains the bodies and heads of cryopatients, their brains, DNA samples, and pets.
Work technology
In 1962, a book by physicist and mathematician Robert Ettinger, The Perspectives of Immortality, was published in the United States, in which he discusses the possibilities of conquering aging and death. The world's first person was cryopreserved in the United States in 1967.
Nine years later, Ettinger founded the Cryonics Institute, the world's first cryocompany with its own storage facility, which continues to operate.
Cryopreservation technologies in Russia and the USA are not fundamentally different. First, the bodies (called "cryopatients" in the company) are pre-cooled with dry ice.
Then heparin (an anti-clotting agent) is injected and the blood is replaced with a special substance - cryoprotectants (based on glycerin and other components) so that ice crystals do not appear in the cells.
The body is then covered with dry ice and transported to storage. There it is placed in a ten-meter container (called a Dewar vessel) for storage in liquid nitrogen at a temperature of -196 ° C.
Dewar vessel.
Dewar vessels are not kept autonomously - approximately twice a month they need to be pumped up with liquid nitrogen and a vacuum maintained between the walls.
Kriorus is confident that colleagues in the transhumanist movement will develop the company and keep cryopatients even if something happens to the founders. However, under the contract, the company does not guarantee keeping its customers unchanged and their subsequent revival.
Cryopreservation is possible even after an autopsy or a serious accident. “In this case, we will keep what we have,” says Udalova. According to her, the company has never had any technical errors in the procedure.
For perfusion (replacement of blood with a cryoprojector), Kriorus has so-called rapid response teams throughout the country. These are teams of specially trained volunteers, almost all of them are surgeons.
“They constantly write to us, there are hundreds of volunteers who want to do something,” Udalova says. “A week is enough for a doctor to learn our technique.” If volunteers cannot leave, the company uses the services of embalmers - during their studies they learn to do similar procedures.
Dog perfusion.
The main activity of the company under the charter is scientific research. According to Udalova, they have never encountered misunderstanding on the part of the supervisory authorities. “On the contrary, sometimes we carry out custody for the investigating authorities,” she adds.
However, residents of houses near the cryostorage complained about such a neighborhood. In addition, one day a prosecutor's check came to the company after a story in the media that body parts were illegally stored in their store, but the inspectors did not find any violations.
The main current expenses of the company are salaries of four full-time employees and maintenance. Pumping Dewar vessels with liquid nitrogen costs about 100 thousand rubles a month.
The cost of one such vessel with a capacity of up to 10 human bodies is 1.5 million rubles. Smaller vessels - 300 thousand rubles. The company now has three large vessels and two small ones.
They are made from composite materials at Kriorus's own production facility near Pskov. The company equipped its workshop in 2012, spending about 1 million rubles on the launch. The free space in the factory is rented by the company that produces the yachts. The director general of "Kriorus" did not disclose the name of the plant.
The company also rents an office in the center of Moscow, but does not disclose the cost of renting Udalov. According to her, the team plans to find more spacious premises in the near future.
Clients and income
Full body cryopreservation at Kriorus costs $ 36,000 at the exchange rate on the date of signing the contract. Preservation of the head or brain (neurosaving) - $ 15,000 for Russians and $ 18,000 for foreigners.
For this, the company concludes a 100-year contract with automatic renewal every 25 years at no additional charge. DNA preservation for 25 years will cost 60 thousand rubles.
For 14 years "Kriorus" has concluded about 500 contracts for cryopreservation of people and 90 for cryopreservation of animals. Of these, 66 people and 33 animals have already been cryopreserved. About 20% of the company's clients are foreigners (most of all from Italy and Ukraine).
Storage "Kryorus" near Sergiev Posad.
According to Kontur. Fokus, in 2017, Kriorus's revenue amounted to 12 million rubles, profit - 9.6 million rubles. Financial indicators for 2018 are not disclosed in the company. “Initially, we agreed to reinvest all the profits back into the development of cryonics, and almost all of the co-founders have another business,” Udalova says.
According to her, in 2018, the company signed about 70 contracts. She expects that in 2019 the number of concluded deals will exceed this figure.
The contracts for body preservation and brain preservation are in a 50:50 proportion. If the contract is concluded by the future cryopatient on his own, then a will, certified by a notary, on his body or a written statement of will is attached to it.
One of the clients - a follower of transhumanism Mikhail Voronin - was not cryopreserved because he was cremated by a widow. According to Udalova, after six months she asked the company to return the money.
“We never give money for one reason - so that there is no temptation. We are thinking of changing the contract: if relatives interfered with cryopreservation, they will pay for it,”Udalova says. According to her, women - relatives of clients - often oppose cryopreservation.
According to Roman Yankovsky, an advisor to the legal company Tomashevskaya & Partners, the company will not be able to keep the money if the person, for example, was not found after the plane crash.
“The heirs are the legal successors of such obligations. If, in fact, the body has not been transferred to the storage, then they can return the money paid minus the costs incurred by the company to prepare for storage,”he explains.
Not all clients can immediately pay for cryopreservation, so the company offers an installment plan of up to two years, but there are no clear rules - each case is considered individually.
Now "Kriorus" has two debtors. “One of our cryopatients died in the UK and was transferred to our storage facility. His son paid us the first part - 15%, and now he is selling an estate in India worth $ 300 thousand to pay us,”Udalova says.
In addition, the company entered into preliminary agreements with banks on the possibility of carrying out cryopreservation on credit, but the general director of Kriorus did not disclose details.
The company also plans to promote insurance for young people with monthly premiums of $ 50-100 (their amount depends on the age and place of residence of the client) towards the future cryopreservation, which will be paid until the moment of disability. According to Udalova, Kriorus has already signed about 30 such agreements.
The company has opened offices in St. Petersburg, New York, Milan and South Korea and receives about 150 calls from potential customers every month.
Kriorus has agents in New York, Italy, South Korea, Belarus. According to Udalova, sales through them are still going slowly, for example, in Italy, only four contracts for cryopreservation were signed. The company is also developing an agent network in Russia: representative offices have already been opened in St. Petersburg and Chelyabinsk.
“Our clients are mostly people with higher education, more than men, but not much. There are many programmers, the average age is 35. There are very few rich people,”says the CEO of Kriorus.
The cost of Udalov's company is estimated at $ 20 million.
Promotion and ICO
The first time after the launch of the company, clients came by recommendation. The interest of potential customers increased when the company sent out its first press release - and the media wrote about it. According to Udalova, the company almost never refuses to shoot and interview.
The company has not used paid promotion before, but now it plans to try online advertising and promotion on Instagram. “We artificially held back growth because there is little storage space,” explains Udalova.
From time to time "Kriorus" participates in professional exhibitions. “We are usually invited to participate for free,” Udalova says. "Exhibitions help us build connections in the funeral industry, now almost everyone knows us there."
Danila Medvedev at the Necropolis exhibition.
In 2017, Kriorus held an ICO, offering potential investors discounts of up to 50% on cryopreservation. The company's tokens were purchased by about 1,500 people at the rate of $ 1 per token.
With the help of ICO, it was supposed to raise money for a new cryostorage in Switzerland, but this goal has not yet been achieved. According to Udalova, it took about $ 10,000 to prepare for the ICO.
About 3 million of the company's tokens were stolen. According to Udalova, once unknown persons came to her who allegedly wanted to invest in the company. Five months later, during regular negotiations, the attackers, left alone in the room, gained access to her computer and withdrew tokens.
“They pressured us to continue selling this token, but I decided that we would no longer support it,” Udalova says. “We issued another token and transferred it to everyone except the thieves.” How much money was raised thanks to the ICO, Udalova does not disclose.
The company's immediate goal is to open a new storage facility in the Moscow region with large laboratories. The current one is almost completely filled. According to Udalova, they will need a building on an area of approximately 500 m².
She does not disclose the amount of possible investments in the new storage facility, but notes that the company was offered to open a credit line for $ 8 million. She is afraid to attract investments because of possible difficulties in managing the company, and she has not yet been able to receive grants from Kriorus.
“Although large American companies like Alcor and the Cryonics Institute are actively working with sponsors,” she concludes.
Opinion on the prospects for cryonics
Philip Haytovich neurobiologist, professor at the Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology:
Based on modern scientific views, personality is determined by how different types of cells are connected to each other in the brain. Our brain can live without energy (glucose and oxygen) for about five minutes, and then irreversible destruction begins - first of all, the neurons in the frontal lobes, which are responsible for our behavior, die.
It happens that a drowned person is caught, pumped out. Those centers of the brain that are responsible for breathing and digestion have recovered, but a person cannot think, stops recognizing people, and so on. This is a human trait. And if, for example, you cut off the head of a lizard, its brain will live for 20 minutes.
A person dies, lies somewhere, then they bring him in and freeze him. During this time, so many changes take place in the brain that even the best scientists of the future, I think, will not be able to cope with returning it to a full life.
If it were possible to obtain complete information about how the brain works, how to preserve it completely, then perhaps it will be possible to save it, but for this it is necessary that a person should be frozen almost during his lifetime.
