I'm so ambivalent about this kind of thing. On the one hand, that's a lot of money for science research. On the other, do scientists want to be the vassals of mega rich mega narcissists? It's a comi-tragedy that these a-holes feel the need to do this.
That's a lot of money, that could potentially lead to discoveries applicable to many fields, no? Couldn't the research you are doing apply?
IMO, all research funding dedicated to fundamentally understanding and eliminating/preventing degenerative diseases is a good thing; regardless of the egos involved.
I was under the impression that the initial explicit mission of Calico had nothing to with degenerative diseases and was simply about studying the "disease" of aging using genomics-like technology, so it's nice to see them change course and get real. I'm still skeptical about their approach, but they haven't elucidated much about that yet. I guess if you already can own a Porsche/Tesla by the age of 30, your mid-life crisis is gonna look pretty different from what mine will probably look like.