Cryonics Institute

The Cryonics Institute occupies the value end of a field whose demand is quietly inflecting, and on the terms that matter for a member-owned nonprofit it is remarkably durable. Founded in 1976 by Robert Ettinger — the "father of cryonics" himself — CI reported roughly 276 patients and nearly 2,000 members as of October 2025 (plus over 290 preserved pets), making it one of the two largest cryonics organizations in the world. Its defining structural advantage is radical affordability: as a member-owned nonprofit with no stockholders, CI has held its minimum whole-body cryopreservation fee near $28,000 since inception — a price that, uncorrected for five decades of inflation, would sit around $170,000 if indexed, meaning members today buy preservation at a fraction of real cost. That pricing, typically funded through life insurance, opens cryonics to a far broader population than Alcor's premium tiers and drives membership growth as the "don't die" movement lends the field mainstream cultural oxygen. The member-ownership model aligns governance with the people whose bodies are at stake, and CI offers whole-body, pet, and DNA/tissue preservation from a single Michigan facility. As a foundational reference point for human cryopreservation, CI's combination of longevity, scale, and unmatched affordability is its own kind of moat.