(Re)Share | #17 - Welcome to Gattaca
IVF Automation | Nuclear Fusion | Biopackaging | AI Panic |Cool stuff in space
Greetings from 35,000 feet, somewhere over Canada and en route to Japan. I am extremely excited for this trip, which has been delayed for the last five years (new job, wife’s book launch, COVID, COVID, COVID). My excitement is slightly tempered, however, by my grievous error of booking a ~15 hour flight in Economy. Nevertheless, a bunch of cool deep tech stuff from the past few weeks + a fresh Series A from the portfolio.
Stuff worth sharing
Male enhancement - The world recently welcomed the first baby (actually two) that was conceived via a sperm-injecting robot. Spanish startup Overture Life, developed the mechanized stud to be fully controllable with a PlayStation 2 controller, which I find incel-ironic. There’s a lot of talk in the news of AI replacing jobs, but now our hobbies too?
Lab to table - The UK parliament recently revised their positioning on genetic technology within food. For those that don’t spend as much time across the pond as I do, genetically modified crops are very unpopular. Imagine Ted Lasso drinking tea - that’s how most Europeans feel about GMOs. Despite that, genetic engineering offers enormous potential for crop resiliency, water usage, pesticide avoidance, etc. The key qualifier is that it allows “precision breeding”, which is limited to modifications that could have occurred naturally.
Capitalist Space Race - A Japanese startup, Ispace, launched their M1 lander towards the moon in the hopes of becoming the first successful private moon mission. This could be the catalyst for a new “lunar logistics” industry, which is very much a market I wish was a thing during my supply chain consulting days.
The Three-Body Problem - It’s said that raising a child takes a village and in the UK that’s now true. The Newcastle Fertility Centre recently delivery a world first - a baby with three parents. Mitochondrial replacement therapy (MRT) is a novel technique that alters an embryo with partial donor genes to lower the risk of of genetic disorders. Tl;dr - the UK is Gattaca and Mother’s Day is more expensive.
You’ve got to blow on it - (that’s what she said) While Mario 64 may be adorably simple by today’s standards, video games have consistently been a key driver in pushing the boundary of what’s possible. This incredible, three hour episode of Acquired covers the multi-decade battle between Nintendo, Sega, Sony and Xbox. Come for the deep track nostalgia like GoldenAxe, stay for the business strategy.
More than the Gogeta dance - Nuclear fusion startup, Helion Energy, announced its first commercial agreement with Microsoft. Fusion, the atomic process that powers our sun, has been a scientific pipedream since forever. Many are skeptical if this is even possible so this news was particularly notable with the claim that Helion will be producing 50 megawatts in just five years. That deadline will almost certainly be missed, but you have to respect the ambition of clean, reliable modular energy. Or they’re creating a miniature sun that will incinerate the Pacific Northwest - tomayto, tomahto.
Biden’s Bio Blueprint - My good friend and bio investor friend, Shelby Newsad, wrote a great summary piece on the last year’s Executive Order on Advancing Biotechnology and Biomanufacturing Innovation. This $2 billion investment plan has all the clarity that we’ve come to expect from this administration, but it’s still quite positive. Shelby’s summary maps out the high level priorities, like focused R&D or strategic subsidies, as well as some interesting early players.
Guilt-free guilty pleasures - Bio-packaging / UK tech darling, Notpla, announced a big distribution deal to bring their “designed to disappear” takeaway packaging to market in a big way. Notpla’s core innovation is a novel seaweed-coating that allows single-use items to be composted at home or recycled without contaminating paper waste streams – thus replacing harmful plastics. Enjoy your marginally less bad Five Guys.
Deep space dross - Swiss startup, Clearspace, announced a mission to capture and deorbit a chunk of garbage weighing over 100 kg. I don’t know why I’m so interested in space debris, but I am. It’s a problem that nano-satellite founders have been talking to me for years and yet very little has been done. I guess what I’m saying is Oscar as a point.
Age of Ultron - Grandfather of AI and current doomsday alarmist with no plan, Geoff Hinton, made waves recently with his departure from long-standing employer Google. He made the exit due to mounting concerns over the pace and trajectory of AI and the existential risk he now sees has probable. This ~35 minute interview basically boils down to, “we won’t be able to control AI and we can’t really stop it but maybe we will unify together in a shared enemy”.
Shameless Plug
I’m thrilled for Pear Bio (Fly portfolio) and their just announced $14 million Series A. This is an amazing technology and one of the most exciting startups I have the pleasure of working with. Pear’s core product is an “organ on a chip” testing platform, which allows for combination therapy testing on live tumor samples in parallel. Translation - we can monitoring how drugs will affect our own cells in a fully controlled environment; no more drug trial and error over months. The impact of Pear’s technology on clinical treatment and drug development can be massive. 1000% a watch this space.