Ryan Orbuch @orbuch

@nanransohoff @incredutility ❤️

Congratulations to Nan and @incredutility! Nan has a special gift for converting big abstract problem spaces into projects that feel extremely obvious in hindsight + the fundraising/recruiting ability to make them happen. A true GM: if you get a cold now you can blame her.

Nan Ransohoff @nanransohoff

a day ago

Today we're launching Intercept: a $500M philanthropic initiative to make respiratory infections, like the common cold and flu, a thing of the past. We treat respiratory infections as a minor nuisance, but that’s really not the case. Most of us will spend 5% of our lives (!)

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Today we're launching Intercept: a $500M philanthropic initiative to make respiratory infections, like the common cold and flu, a thing of the past. We treat respiratory infections as a minor nuisance, but that’s really not the case. Most of us will spend 5% of our lives (!) sick from these viruses, they kill 1M people a year, cost $600B annually in productivity, and periodically threaten civilization through pandemics. So, if they’re such a big problem, why haven’t we dealt with them yet? Last year we convened ~40 leading scientists, pharma R&D leaders, biotech investors, and regulatory experts to better understand that. We heard two main reasons: (1) First, it’s just technically very challenging: respiratory viruses represent hundreds of distinct, mutating strains across several families. Fortunately, recent breakthroughs make this newly possible. (2) Second is a lack of funding: broad-spectrum solutions have historically been underfunded, in part because they’re not a great fit for most philanthropic or commercial funding (and while COVID generated a burst of activity around preventing and understanding respiratory infections through an influx of new funding, that hasn't been sustained). We think that with enough focus and funding, this might be solvable. Intercept is a $500 million philanthropic initiative that will take advantage of new tools to catalyze the development and deployment of two types of products: broad-spectrum preventatives and air cleaning technologies. This problem is undoubtedly difficult. But it’s more tractable now than it’s ever been. We think we should give it our best shot. We’re enormously grateful to our anchor funders: @stripe, @AnthropicAI, @TheFluLab, @FoundationOAI and individuals from Jane Street. And, I’m very excited to be building this with @incredutility and the rest of the team.

Nan Ransohoff @nanransohoff

a day ago

interceptfund.substack.com/p/ending-respi…

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I joined @Stripe in January to build a new philanthropic initiative with @nanransohoff. Today we’re announcing Intercept, a $500m innovation fund focused on radically reducing the burden of respiratory viruses. I’ve spent the past decade investing in vaccines and drugs for infectious disease, and this is the most exciting thing I’ve ever been a part of. Thrilled to be working with @Stripe, @AnthropicAI, @TheFluLab, @FoundationOAI, @coeff_giving and individuals from Jane Street. We've raised the capital and now it’s time to get to work.

Nan Ransohoff @nanransohoff

a day ago

Today we're launching Intercept: a $500M philanthropic initiative to make respiratory infections, like the common cold and flu, a thing of the past. We treat respiratory infections as a minor nuisance, but that’s really not the case. Most of us will spend 5% of our lives (!)

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i wish i could do more - i wish i had a thousand hands and a thousand eyes and a thousand years and army of angels and a thousand stars that lit the sky so bright that the night would never come and that our sleepless dreams would fill this world

Delighted to share that Frontier has raised an additional $915 million to accelerate the world’s best carbon removal companies. frontierclimate.com/writing/growth…

The modern world is predominantly a result of both lack of control and an abdication of responsibility, rather than particularly malevolent control.

quote @itsmubashi

2 months ago

Hit me with the harshest reality truth.

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Really neat new tool by the folks at @IFP to help find the best funding mechanism based on the problem you're trying ot solve.

Matt Esche @matthewesche

3 weeks ago

At @IFP, we’ve spent the past 3 years thinking about all the different ways the US government & philanthropy fund R&D. Until now, R&D funders haven’t had a systematic way to match the innovation problem to the right funding tool. We built THE ATLAS OF INNOVATION to fill that

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Documentary recapping Rainmaker's historic accomplishment for the Great Salt Lake this past winter We are the first company to repeatedly prove we're making it snow The care, toil, and brilliance of our team was heroic But we still need more water, the jobs not finished

New blog post: The third wave of American philanthropy Hundreds of billions of dollars in new philanthropic capital will soon become liquid. The OpenAI Foundation holds 26% of OpenAI, worth about $220B at today’s valuation. Anthropic’s seven co-founders have pledged to give away 80% of their wealth and have instituted the most aggressive donor matching program for employees in tech history. How much does this all add up to? And how meaningful is that in the context of philanthropy today? I was doing some simple napkin math to wrap my head around the scale of what’s coming, and radicalized myself in the process. I had dramatically underappreciated the scale of the philanthropic capital that’s about to become available and the corresponding gap in talent and organizations that will be needed to make the most of it. This piece aims to directionally sketch the scale of what’s coming, the gap in operational capacity needed to absorb it, and what we can do to fill it. (Link to full post in reply)

Climate activists have spent decades shutting down nuclear, blocking clean energy transmission, and trying to ban research on cooling the planet... but the movement that wins the next century will be led by the people doing the work, not those protesting it. New essay out today👇

great success had with no fatalities on this the second annual Nebular Deep Dive freediving excursion

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Today we're announcing @_panthalassa’s $140M Series B, led by Peter Thiel, with participation from John Doerr and many other incredible investors. The mission: unlock the ocean as another planetary-scale energy resource for humanity. First stop: compute.

We should fund and build more organizations that are meant to solve problems - instead of working on them. New essay.

1/ @OctopusEnergy is backing Living Carbon with $500M to reforest degraded land and remove CO₂ across North America. This major project financing comes with an additional ~$13M investment in our carbon business. Living Carbon is putting low quality land back to work. Our innovative reforestation turns low quality land into thriving forests faster to remove carbon or produce sustainable forest products. Read more about it in today’s @WSJ (link in the comments) →

Mankind has always been at the mercy of the weather. No longer. Rainmaker is the first company in history to routinely, unambiguously, modify the weather. Last quarter, we produced >143MM gallons of unambiguously man-made precipitation. Here’s how we do it 🧵

In spite of how I present myself on the internet (unhinged, slightly feral) I do Real Work on Cool Things in Various Places and have published a new post to revive my substack / push myself to talk about this more. Link in next post to game the algorithm 👇

excellent as usual from @hollyjeanbuck, Actual Understander Of The Thing People Are Being Crazy About

Andy Masley @AndyMasley

2 months ago

Oh my God this is so good

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So, @_panthalassa operated mostly in secret for a decade. And what it built is nuts. Massive, massive floating data centers that drive themselves out to sea and then capture water inside of them to spin a turbine and power GPUs. Look at these things. Full episode on the tech here youtube.com/watch?v=Q4PCJR…

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A couple years ago the Ulysses team wheeled a tub of water and their first robot into our SF office. They said they would give humanity the tools to unlock the ocean frontier. They’re making good on that promise. Grateful to have backed them since the beginning 🦈

will o’brien @Willob

2 months ago

Ulysses has raised $46M led by a16z American Dynamism. We are building The Ocean Company. The ocean is 71% of the planet. But it is less explored than Mars, and full of secrets, waiting to be told. It is the backbone of global defense. Home to the critical infrastructure that

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